[ maybe i know better than `` to read . . . what's { t h e r e : }

"Heavy Feet" by Local Natives

Who pitched assumptions or predicted outcomes for the future?

Who convinced everyone that time was not as malleable as each breath we intake?

2 0 1 3 .

Year two-thousand and thirteen since our traditional society reoriented itself and its calendar.

There are some technicalities from sources I do not presently have but can vouch for [ as it makes total sense ] that, with all the leap years and Daylights Savings Time adjustments and whatnot, we've passed our calendar date.

2013 has come and gone.

In our minds and in reality.

Woah.

This song. I haven't looked at the lyrics once, I haven't listened to it wholeheartedly, but everything about it meshes so well. It's been rekindled, my flame.

  

I hold it in two hands. Before it was dwindling. A small tear, barely capable of fighting for the open oxygen all about it. What was worse was that I had my hands cupped about it, shutting off even more air to feed it. It held a slight sliver of light, just about ready to collapse in on itself, but there was something in the dark that kept it going.

Something that was unseen.

A hand came to open my hands. It did not come prying, it did not try to squeeze its way in.

It offered a palm and granted assurance, comfort knowing that the flame would be kept safe.

My hands are now cupped beneath a fire which waves joyously, righteously. I can see myself in the billowing of the bright, lively flames, and it glows with warmth, not searing of danger.

This new year's start felt like another day to my mother. It felt like another day to my brother.

It felt like a week backwards to my sisters, and probably a day upside-down for my father.

It wasn't anything but a moment for my nephew and was merely non-existent for my cousins and aunts.

To me, it was a new beginning.

"And in a place where oil always takes precedence over life, I find myself sitting on a bus, watching a little boy trickling down from the sky like fresh water, carrying a book I used to - asking if I want to see what he sees if only for a little while, and I do. And then asks if I want to give to him what I see if only for a little while, and I read to him.

And then he says to me that he's going to show me the world."

Anis Mogjani, "For Those Who Can Still Ride in Airplanes"

The hand touches my fingertips and leans forth, feeding the bowl of fire in my hands with something I cannot feel nor see, but can make total sense of.

"This one is for the heart of men who want to love, but know that it won't come. For the ones who are forgotten; for the ones who the amendments do not stand up for; for the ones who are told, 'Speak only when you are spoken to.'

And then are never spoken to.

Speak, every time you stand so you do not forget yourself. Do not let one moment go by, that doesn't remind you that your heart, it beats 900 times every single day, and there are enough gallons of blood to make everyone of you oceans.

Do not settle for letting the waves settle.

And for the dust to settle in your veins."

Anis Mojgani, "Shake the Dust"

My hands grow heavier for a moment, and the flames build, but everything returns to as it once did. The hand gains an opposite from a place unseen and they both rest underneath my own.

To support this growing flame that has been so little for so long. As if it already knew that I would need the stability in order to, ultimately, hold it on my own - and above my head.

Simplicity makes everything fathomable for everyone else.

A mind too cluttered to unravel its turmoils needs a simple look and a simple unknotting.

2013 Jar 

And in the brightness of the flames, I can see.

"I Remember"

The time

When everything I saw was the same,

I remember.

The sight of a cloth in one hand and wooden pail in the other -

Stained with its use of retaining water,

Stained with its use of absolving shame,

The pail was weighted by its pure passenger.

The cloth held a tacit governing,

Judging and begrudging to its existence.

Patches would not solve,

But nothing else would solve

The dilemma they presented.

A sign.

"No Shoes.
No Socks.
No Service."

What they failed to include,

Was one criteria that settled better than anything else:

"No Specialties."

The sock was lonesome,

Dinged and dimmed of its glamour and suit,

Yet holier than space and time.

On the rag tired hands wrung,

Tainting the pure passenger brown,

And leaving nothing innocent behind.

The world would whisper what was,

And what would be,

But it never looked to see,

The things unseen.

As the hand rose from the bucket,

The water that clung fell to the mandates of gravity,

And lost their hope of escaping the murk,

Only to crash back down.
"The worlds to explore,"
They said,
"Were merely at the next door."
"No Shoes.
No Socks."
The sock had dried and slipped onto the slim leg,
A fastened shoe quick to follow.
"No Service.
No Specialties."
And they merely stood at the entrance,
To be deferred by another sign.
I remember the time I saw things unseen.

<3 ~ Monty.

=]