We Loved the Earth But Could Not Stay

I'm kind of one to let holidays sneak up on me. It's American Thanksgiving Day today. I'm grateful for love in my life, though I'm afraid I don't appreciate the avenues at times. I've never confronted myself on this before, though I've reassured the faint tingling that comes from the emerging threat of this vision to keep it from surfacing.

We prove our existence through love. We prove our worthiness to live through it and when we feel incapable of doing so, we begin to die. The definition of death is something strange we gain from spiritual understanding; death is a separation. Pardon the cliche, but we live in an age of addictive and easy connections. We protrude from the vast unknown with representative descriptions and avatars to others who catch us in similar fashion. We transmit contents of what we wish others to see of our souls and anxiously await the same. We withhold and disclose according to our fears and trust, but we wish for that hit that validates us. It has a familiar fragrance that returns to us with hope. When we experience this for the first time, the miracle is similar to any other times we realized that we had some sort of power over our environment. We find that we are active agents and there are others like us with dimensions limited only to our depth of inquiry and appreciation. They may not ever see this depth in themselves, but it lies there awaiting discovery. And we find a tender voice that lets us inside of something strange, yet comfortable.

We learn a common language, which we soon favor exclusively. Some struggle to force theirs upon others. Some conform desperately to speak others'. On rare occassions, both give each other a choice to learn, and both are joyfully enlightened. They create a city that can only be destroyed from the inside; a delightful kingdom filled with an air of freedom and unity.

I am grateful for the kingdoms I have been a fellow citizen of. I have citizenship to a family that has kept its towers high despite the threats of invasion, assailment, and sedition. I walk freely through the gates of valuable friendships. I have cofounded kingdoms that have grown quickly and fallen just as fast. I have watched some fall apathetically and fought for some voraciously in vain. I have become comfortable in some that were never my home, and I have watched others do the same.

I don't know how to explain that some we leave and expect to never see again.

Strangely these cities become ancient ruins we build upon. We do archaeological work and reconstruct civilizations that once thrived in us. We try to learn from them and take something from them for ourselves. That is the only choice we have. Giving to the dead seems to show a lack of allocation. Many cultures do this. Some place flowers by remains. Others leave food, drinks, toys. The Latter day Saints perform sacred ordinances in holy temples, and the Orthodox light candles and offer prayers of assistance. We believe in connecting this way and sometimes we literally do. Other times it is to fall on our knees in acceptance of reality. How rituals bring closure is not something I understand.

This is something I have thought about in preparing to leave again. I wish I could forget what it was like so I could just let it blindside me again. Experience is a one way steet though, and asking to forget is like asking to be able to sleep in the height of resentment or fear.

One must be careful what to write, because a mutation occurs that creates crystallized images of organic and fluid beings. These evolve differently in the laboratories of letters appearing on white flickering screens than in the breathing ecosystems we wake up to the next day. And a wall rises between the writer and subject. Never let them read it for fear that they will prove it a myth. Let the myth live on the paper undiscovered or let it continue to grow in your mind unhindered by the checks and balances of reality. We pen only cross sectionally. We must love longitudinally.

I have seen this time and again as I have gone back to the world I changed on paper, which obviously did not listen to my pen or my will. I can only touch the world when I am in it. That is why there was a council in heaven. That is why that council alone was not sufficient to bring about our progression. I live inside at times exploring only possibility or despairing at my inability to find it. Outside is a diamond mine of truth and renewal and dead ends that must be seen and felt and taken in. But sometimes writing allows us to color our memories. It allows us to unravel knots and sometimes in our groping for meaning to blurred experiences at breakneck speeds or as we pluck some hidden core of learning from a seeming sludge of monotony, we touch truth a moment and feel it.

I found this from T.S. Eliot, who says it much better than what I thought.



We die to each other daily.
What we know of other people
Is only our memory of the moments
During which we knew them. And they have changed since then.
To pretend that they and we are the same
Is a useful and convenient social convention
Which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember
That at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.

That last line contains a wonderful and often forgettable caveat: we have depth to find in those we think we have mined to obsolescence. I hear people say that they over analyze. I argue that they were only ignorantly or carelessly analyzing. But we go back to the eye and collect. We may spend our entire lives finding the reason for that collection or we may turn from that to see a world of kingdoms waiting to be built and inhabited. Otherwise we may spend our whole lives in the process of archaeology, but never become part of our own civilization. In this case then, in the previously stated sense of the word, we have already chosen death; having become eternal investigators of ourselves.