DATURA
11.10.20
You’re Bilingual.
Because you understand the expansiveness of exquisite variation.
The difference between “There’s a fox at your door.” and “There’s a fox at your door.”
Love happens in so many spaces. You, like myself, occupy the spaces between time, feeling, and the undefined. We remain enthralled by the festival of living, and we occupy each and every space handed to us without reservation. We’ve conjured diligent designs sketched over a lifetime wanting, but knowing they may never live in skin. Wrapped and coiled in colors of cinnabar, lemon, incarnated in scales of dragons, the bark and spined books, shields welded by generations cast aside in the ink stained afterlife of what trees once were. We know this language like the back of our hands, the same that slaps expectation each time we try — and fail– to integrate it in our relationships. Some acts of violence are necessary before another synapse can fire within these labyrinthine brains.
You detect differing accents and letters without need for pursuit, even when you repeatedly discover perfect similitude you know the off white color of the page is, yes off-white but in the failing light appearing almost colored or the memory of a color, somehow red or violet, or close to that, or not at all. We know the weight and implication behind every experience. The same awareness that only comes to most in obvious extremes. Explain this to a friend, and they’ll laugh and tilt their head. Explain the freedom of running in the daylight, and compare it to the fear of running at night, and curious placation becomes understanding empathy.
The cipher clues of this subtle lifestyle are hidden among shared pages, plant tastings, old poetry, new poetry, and music. The type of depth that can turn Sunday into the personification of empathy without endorsement for the rest of the week. That is movement, even in stasis, even when the world looks upon us and sees no shift, we still dance with our idioms, play hide and seek with our art, let creativity be the flow of mischief, of catch and release, of explaining the unexplained. Failure to do this causes…. Monotony. Stagnation. Simplification and Tedium. A whole lot of rot suddenly packed up my nose with the stench of routine.
Quick note here: If this type of whimsy is hard for you to stomach; if you’ve never had a similar experience, then you should come to grips with the fact that you’ve got a TV dinner for a heart and might want to consider climbing inside a microwave and turning it on high for at least an hour, which if you do consider only goes to show what kind of unrealistic expectations for life you have, because microwaves are way too small for anyone, let alone you, to climb into.
Yes, this is a high standard, taller than most my demands — so hear me out here:
While it’s true the simple intake of life as it comes provides satisfaction for the average person; I exists in different lives simultaneously and thanks to years of living with myself, I’ve come to understand this more and more as a gift rather than the pathology most simple-folk indite. Private nomenclature develops in tight, set-upon circles, right? So, is it too far-fetched for individuals to develop their own? I sure have. And that has value, to hell if I’ll settle for ignoring what’s written between the lines, it’s those spaces (and what we do with them) that fuel so much of the energy behind my love. Hell, who I am. What kind connection sustains itself on half-knowing?
So yes, you’re bilingual, trilingual, multilingua;, you’ll teach me new ways of speaking without talking. I’ll share my books, my herbs, these ramblings of mine. You’ll learn of past MUSES, MIRRORs, and SNAK.S.SKIN, we’ll play tag with the day’s song. You’ll show me yours, I’ll show you mine. We’ll meet in the place no one else goes.