ON DIFFERENT KINDS OF MORNINGS

I awoke one morning and felt that it was a morning different from the other mornings. The act of waking felt much like it might feel to be pulled violently from the womb, if the womb could exist within the belly of a bird, emerging through skin and through feathers and into blinding brightness. There was nothing pleasant about it, but once birthed I knew that the process of finding my way back into the womb would be much more difficult than the birthing had been, especially since my birthing had rendered the womb still and the bird cold. In waking, I had destroyed not only my initial protection, that early nest of a womb, but also the very being that was meant to protect me as I grew accustomed to the world and as I dried. She was the one who was supposed to wash me clean. 

The choice between womb and world was not mine to make. It was something else that took me from sleep a hand or some other angry force and I had no choice but to accustom myself to the new world in which I found myself. That I had awoken thousands of times before was of little importance to me. So new I felt, and so disposable the past. I had no qualms with leaving it be. It might rot or be disposed of by another, and I would not object. It felt so disconnected to me, and because of this I felt no loyalty to it, and felt in no way responsible for the removal of its waste. It itself was waste. I was no more eager to associate with garbage than I was to associate with my memory itself. And so I chose to reject it, as if it were not mine, and as if its bestowal upon me only insulted me and made a fool of whatever callous soul saw it fit to do such bestowing. 

And so there were four casualties honored at the wake: a bird, a womb, a past, and a goddess. Her name was Muse, and she reigned over the memory. I took it upon myself to kill her and reassign her. I endeavored to create a new kind of inspiration that would not rely on the foul solace of the past (for such reliance would only be attempted by a weak soul), but which would take advantage of the disassociated irrelevance of the future. I would inspire or create art that spoke only to the present, and not the past, and that would disregard all manner of connotation or history. I made this choice, but I made it by default, for there was no second option. I had killed my history and I had destroyed my tolerance of connotation, and so there was one route and one route alone that I might be at liberty to take.

How many, privy to the superiority of the dream world, submit to its lucrative arms for an eternity? This would have been I, Had I not been pulled in such a way by such a force. How would such eternal sleep look on the outside? Would it look like death, or like unending sleep? The body and mind both forget the need for food and nourishment when sleep is the master at play. What if this need does not exist in the dream world? What if it is only in waking that we fool our souls into thinking that they must take a body and take care of this body? What if it is only in allowing our minds to wake into the realms of our bodies that we allow our souls to eventually die with these bodies? If I could sleep forever, I am convinced that my soul would live on somewhere else and perhaps not even notice the decline of my bodys ability to function, or even its eventual death. 

Perhaps the wombed bird was asleep when I was born. Perhaps the force pulling me from its womb was a result of its will; and of its desire to keep its soul living and set it free from the confines of body, wing, and talon.

(July 2006)