I’m writing to you from behind an old desk,walled in by large brick in the early hours of the morning, as I stand yet another night watch. These bricks are painted white like the intentions of men are painted white. White like the padded walls where people are put when their mind is more gone than my own. White like the ruins that make up all that is left of the great rulers of Rome and Athens. White like the noise that slowly fades at the end of one’s life. But this isn’t about the end of life because hopefully, for your sake, the end of your life is many moments from now. My words tumble slowly as I write to you of a moment of mine when I was your age.
It is late in the evening and my mom is home from working her minimum wage job. We had just finished dragging our Charlie Brown Christmas tree three miles to our apartment. I’m still wearing my cowboy boots because we live in Texas,for now, and cowboy boots are what a young boy wears in this state. No doubt Mom was exhausted after working at the nursing home, but I was awake, alive with all the energy of a million well-fed leprechauns. I wanted to make spaceships out of anything and everything, stack the couch cushions and jump off, practice my kung fu in the kitchen, hide the experiments I was sure would become great contributions in the world of science(like when I poisoned the milk to be our first and greatest defense against burglars who decided to break into our run-down, second floor apartment *side note, bad idea*) or just play in a puddle of mud. Of course Mom was exhausted and needed sleep, and needed ME to sleep, but I couldn’t and so I would run to the window and point at the Sun that still forced itself into our apartment like an unwelcomed guest as if it was proof enough that I still had time to live. The sun has not gone to sleep yet. Why should I?
Now it’s your turn. The Sun has not gone down yet and you will not sleep, can not sleep, like your old man could not sleep and your mom and dad tell you they love you but that in the Summer the Sun sets later and that you need your rest to fully develop into the handsome, intelligent young man you were born to be, for in the morning we must all wake up early. Like your old man you run to the window, tear back the curtains and let in the truth that had been violently rapping on that window all along, the truth that it is still day and to go to bed now would mean to waste a vital moment in our life that we will never get back. To sleep now would be a crime against being alive. I take you by the shoulders, gently, and affirm your intuition, for this time you are right. This is a moment I won’t get back and I need to share it with you.
But before we all sit in front of the TV and search for something to entertain and occupy our minds, I pause and tilt my ear like hearing a familiar song. It is an idea forgotten, washed away with the constant tide of repetitive necessity. I realize it is time for a road trip. The following morning I take us all for a long drive and we sing to old mix cd’s I made when I was younger. I embed our car deep within the winding roads of the forest and stop at a convenient field. You follow me as I walk from tree to tree, putting my ear on one and listening, knocking on another and looking around. You ask where our destination is but I simply ask you to drink in the beauty of the scenery, the clarity of the sky, the refreshingness of the wind. We walk on. We walk deep into the forest and I end up putting you on my shoulders when we wade across a large creek. I caution you to tread more slowly as we pass deer and not to pluck the petals from the wildflowers. Finally, we reach our destination.
You’ve always known I wasn’t particularly religious. When it comes to strict, superfluous operation systems for life, I consider them too much drama. You also know I don’t admonish you to follow in my footsteps but rather to observe my perceptions and priorities as an example so one day you might make your own without the burden of ignorance weighing you down. So you know when I stop at this particularly large tree, it isn’t because it has religious connotation, but that I am about to share with you something I find important. I ask you to look at this tree. Judging on the width of its trunk it must be a very, very old tree. Being old in tree years means it was here long before I was born, or even before my father’s father was born. I ask you to stand next to the tree and close your eyes. You stand tall and proud, and on your young face your eyes share their spot with a look of honest inquisition. You want to know where this talk of trees will lead and so I take you there. I tell you that even though this tree is so old, it has been standing in the same spot all these years. Sometimes a bird nests in its branches and raises a family. Sometimes the wind blows through the leaves. Every year the autumn comes and takes its leaves and every spring it reaches inside and creates them again, but it stays still, unquestioning of its purpose in the big picture, not needing a purpose at all. I ask you why that is so. By now you understand and you tell me they don’t have brains. They don’t have a consciousness that automatically projects their existence into the world. They don’t think, but they still are, but they don’t think. We humans, on the other hand, do think. Our brains fire billions of sparks a near infinite times a second and so we cannot be still. To be still like the tree would mean to begin to die, really, die, and not just the dying that happens from birth naturally. We speed up that process when we stop using what we were born with. You understand then that we are not like trees, and to behave as trees would mean a waste of life, for the Sun is still shining through their outstretched branches.
Finally, we have made the long trek back to the car and the subsequent drive back home, have had dinner and it is late. I tuck you into bed and give you a goodnight kiss on your forehead but you tell me you have been having trouble falling asleep. I tell you that many people are told to try counting sheep but that people in Oxford discovered it didn’t actually work as well as popular culture has led us to believe. Perhaps the consciousness is not easily able to focus enough on such a mundane idea. At any rate I find it negative to meditate on an idea which so many people have unconsciously submitted their waking worlds to. Or less, that people even find themselves sheep, encumbered by a fence which they don’t care or feel unable to jump over to free themselves. Without attempting to find absolution in supernatural or other dimensional forays, which you know I humor for the sole purpose of exercising my brain and not in attempt to discover tangible proof of ghosts and phantoms(which is an oxy moron anyways) I present to you the idea of counting heroes. Perhaps counting heroes in all their various forms as they bravely walk into the sea that methodically crawls up and down their shore would put and unquiet mind to rest and perhaps, if the conditions are right, you could choose to share their dreams.
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