Somedays I look forward.
Lots of things, many things, countless things to do, to see, to be?
I stop for a moment, look for a moment, and hold my everlasting breath. The breath that sits in my lungs, wondering where to go, to exude out into the world, into the force, the everything.
Somedays I just sit, wondering, wondering where I will be, wondering who I am?
And some days, I feel just myself, thick in my own skin, in togetherness with the air around me, with the air inside my lungs.
And does that air drive me. It keeps me alive, if I do say so myself. Oxygen is funny that way. It keeps me living even when I wish I wasn’t.
The atmosphere itself holds my bones together, whether I like it, or not. Some days I like it. Somedays I don’t.
It’s a confusing dichotomy. Existence. Air. Atmosphere. Oneself.
Thinking but never remembering. Remembering suddenly, but thinking later, or not at all.
There’s always a mix, a foundational mix to what makes my days appear in my hands. Days either slip between clumsy fingers, or seep into my palms, scarring me, toughening me, for the next day to come.
Because there’s always a next days. Days, they do not stop!
They are always there, even when you think they aren’t. The day is there, even in the night, it is looming in the distance, coming toward you, ready for you to embrace it, to conquer it (or be defeated by it?).
It is your choice, what you choose. To conquer or to be defeated. But somedays, it’s hard to even tell that you have either of those choices.
Some days, I’m floating between conquered and defeated. I conquer through my breaths, and am defeated through my stumbles. But I’m breathing, and stumbling at the same time, seemingly on my feet, but still falling.
Is that the foundation of life? To stumble while breathing, to breath while stumbling?
I suppose it matters which one of those instances come first…the stumbling, or the breathing. Or, are they simply interchangeable, happening at all instances, till one day, you are just breathing.
Because remember: you are always breathing, whether you wish to, or not…but I suppose if you’re more balanced than me, that the stumbling isn’t an always.
By goodness though, do you breath so hard when you stumble! It’s because your heart jumps for a moment, as your feet fall alongside you, and your stomach is in your throat, begging to be free of your failures. You throw your hands forward, waiting for something to snatch you up, into the arms of safety, and then… well.
You fall on your face. And I chuckle to see the blood roll down your forehead as you stagger back to your feet, your labored breaths reminding you that you are still alive.
And by God, are you alive. Alive and bleeding, so beautifully bleeding, with those glistening eyes, and those beads of sweat, and those shaky palms. A brilliant spectacle ,you are, we are, standing still, breathing still, ready for the next day to be conquered (defeated?) no…conquered.
And we stumble again, while breathing, and we breath while stumbling, and that, my dear,
is our dysfunctionally functional foundation.