Musing About My Muses and Origins
Existential is what the kids call it, though I am feeling more extraterrestrial.
It was just a couple days ago that I was driving down my road admiring the long piece of the journey to my home that includes my favorite driving scenery: tree tunnels. You know, when two trees on opposite sides of a road grow big and tall and stretch as far as they can to embrace each other, despite the concrete barrier placed between them. When you drive through it and look up you see fractals of light flying all around you because of the chaotic shadows cast by the tree branches. It’s like a natural bridge, you feel like you are somewhere magical, even if it is just the road home.
I don’t know when I began loving this natural architecture, it predates my ability to make memories. I assume it stems from my love of older movies and the beautiful florals and landscape in them. Something about Mother Nature’s design ability is what makes me believe in magic.
Today, on my same route home a construction working instructed me to stop while his company chainsawed huge branches into the road.
Those outstretched arms yearning to hug, severed.
Hours later when I had to leave the house again all that were left of my beloved trees were stumps.
Some trees under go the same process, less severely. They have limbs lobbed off without a second thought. Ones that they had spent eons thinking up, imagining stretching to the perfect spot in the sky, endlessly. Now all that remains of this dream is scars torn into their flesh.
I cannot seem to shake the thought, what makes them different from us?
That they do not bleed? Scream? Fight back? That their enemy is not themselves, but us. The people. Top of the food chain.
As I get older and learn more about the world I am becoming more and more convinced that humans are a virus on Earth. The question more becomes, am I human? Am I one of the viruses?
I used to muse that I was part alien. It wasn’t all muse though. I do think that a piece of me came from very far away, that piece is new to this world and continuously amazed by its beauty, as well as its pain. She knows nothing of the people who are here and cannot seem to fully assimilate to what is expected of her. In some ways this is the part of me that feels the most real and authentically me.
Then there’s an entire section of me who is so human it wants to throw up from even admitting to their human meat body-ness. This part feels so heavy, so deeply that sometimes it is as if she cannot go on anymore. All she can muster up the energy to do lately is leave this world for dream land. She wasn’t always like this…the humanness of the world has been too much for her as of late.
So, I’ve been kind of relying on the alien me to get by…I’ve needed her optimism, her genuine curiosity and never ending energy to explore. The thing is, people don’t get her. She is confusing, even to those who are closest. It’s like she just can’t quite get the language right, so she’s relying on the nonverbal to convey her messages. To even share that she’s here.
She’s here and she’s still so grateful that she gets to be. That she gets to exist and have this experience, that gift of feeling. No matter how much human me thinks it hurts too bad, alien me knows that it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.
I wonder if the trees feel this way? If they are just happy that they tried to reach out for that sunny spot. I wonder if when they finish mourning their fallen brothers they then celebrate the abundance of sunlight.
It’s not that I don’t think alien me cannot feel, or that she is naive to pain. She just has seen a different pain, one I can’t begin to put into words and sometimes feels as out of this world as she does. It’s a pain that manifests beyond physical, being consciousness. A pain that I fear even when I sleep.
Though my whole being has never met this pain, my alien self knows her well. I think that may be why she is so fucking grateful, she knows what else is out there.
Though, I imagine the discomfort of this split does not make her feel very good either…I don’t think any piece of me likes this…separation of us from our oneness. How crazy does that sound? That the parts the build me aren’t on the same page. Perhaps I will ponder that next…
Thank you for being here and allowing me this space to release my full soul to the world, as silly as it may seem, it gives me so much meaning.
Below I have linked several other humans in this world, ones that because of where they are do not have the opportunities that many of us do. If you are able, please share what you can. Even if that is simply a share of the link. You will also find some resources for yourself and your personal development!
GoFundMe for Munir and Her Children
GoFundMe for Hany's Children in Gaza
GoFundMe to Help with Fadi's Son's Medical Expenses
GoFundMe to Help Mohammad Survive
GoFundMe to Help Bsmala Escape
GoFundMe to Help Aya and Her Family
Operation Olive Branch: One-Click Email Campaign
"Abortion Everyday" by Jessica Valenti