A week ago I gutturally admitted to myself, that I don’t know myself. I have been in a hazy floaty state of indirection, sort of awaiting a catalyst to root me back in the earth. I have begun interrogating experiences in a new way, seeking some form of honesty in articulation.
I love the hue of old blue prints.
The Question: When given a second opportunity to erect the architecture of the self, what methodology do you begin with?
I have chosen for the moment.
Investigation.
Yesterday afternoon a 5 year old boy got in an accident on the street and had to be rushed off by an ambulance. Watching him be carried into the ambulance I heard this truth scream itself from my heart. ‘I never want to see a kid hurt.’
As I cried, I stood in the street, directing traffic around the accident. My arms got tired very quickly and upon reflection I’ll admit I was over gesticulating. Their is a certain sort of power in directing cars that I’ve never really experienced till that moment. It felt like voguing. The pleasure also derived from being able to be useful in a situation where I was entirely useless.
‘I never want to see a kid hurt.’ that’s true… I don’t… upon reflection I was also not entirely useless, I was just not integral to helping the kid. anyone could have directed traffic. but in not walking off I got to sit in that emotion, that place, and let the experience unfold around me, as a semi-detached observer.
It feels odd to have found something in the trauma of this kid and his family. (When he left it appeared he would be okay, might I add) I don’t want to admit that the reality of it shocked me awake, because that seems both a mixture of cliche and narcissistic. It also did not make me realize in a yoga inspired hallmark card, to remember to count my blessings. It was just a weighty embodied reality that last for a duration of time.
I never want to see a kid get hurt.
(POLITICAL SIDE NOTE
That kid should be taken care of because he’s a kid. his family does not need medical bills, or insurance claims, they just need to help their kid recover. Much like no one should be debt ridden by an accident or illness. Vote for Bernie Sanders and let’s continue moving towards a more socialist system.
POLITICAL SIDE NOTE OVER)
I never want to see a kid get hurt, is a sentence, what was the thought behind it….
FEELING: My body felt like a shell, my bones and many inner organs turned to air, while my skin had the texture of thin diamonds. My mind let itself empty through my ears and on the wind, while my tears decided to run as if to acknowledge the trauma by proxy without having to be directly involved in it. My heart, which was the only organ I could sense, was a mixture of honey and stasis, as if ready to beat for some one else. the world collapsed in complexity. It was an easy calm in part because the father and the medic moved with such clarity it was infectious. the weight of their intense focus seemed to still the movements of everyone on the street. Time was certainly slower, but if it was bending, it was not adrenaline on my part, but the sure force of those men, pulling every second from the air in the interest of helping the kid/patient.
As I mentioned before. my arm grew tired. their were no bones, no muscles really animating it, it was mostly mental. a compulsive desire making me windmill my arms. I don’t feel as if i was not in my body, i just don’t feel as if I was particularly in control of it.
LINGUISTIC The expression ‘I never want to a see a kid get hurt’, is, i’ll admit, a poorly articulated feeling. My initial thought was not, I don’t want kids to get hurt ever. It was that I never want to SEE it. Catching the internal phrasing seems important. I never want to SEE a kid get hurt…
Which does not mean I want kids to get hurt as long as I don’t see it, obviously. It’s just interesting that it acknowledges the injustices of this world which is that kids are constantly being hurt.
I: It underscores a pretty human reality of out of sight out of mind. I, the I at the beginning of that thought. I don’t want to see. I, primacy, me. Rooting everything in the self. Not within a collective.
NEVER: The never. Admitting that I would like to remain ignorant about the pain of children. I mean to be a better person I probably need to understand the desires and needs of ‘kids’ in the abstract. But for now I can also under the never as a word that erupts to protect the fragile I.
WANT: The want is all desire. its basic, its directional. its pointed at the never. it’s a want for a lack of understanding, an intentional, void of understanding erected to protect the I, from the reality of pain.
SEE: “Old English seon “to see, look, behold; observe, perceive, understand; experience, visit, inspect” Used in Middle English to mean “behold in the imagination or in a dream” (c. 1200), “to recognize the force of (a demonstration),” also c. 1200. Sense of “escort” (as in to see (someone) home) first recorded 1607 in Shakespeare. Meaning “to receive as a visitor” is attested from c. 1500.”
to live in the eyes, to evacuate the body, to connect eyes to mind, to un-filter the process and be connected with the object in order to hold it internally and inspect it.
KID: gender neutral term for youth.
HURT: pain…..
Anyway. Happy Easter. I’m gonna go make a mirror and stare at myself in it. and then reflect more on this and perhaps write more.
cupcake tales 