(cue Jawbreaker)
feeling small is important. something about humbleness, about territories, worlds, sizes. something about a belly full of boredom and a highway with the promise of any destination as tall and wide as the occupied territories of the continental US, stretching until it hit the sea - something gray, or something blue, or something green, or something.
feeling small is important. something about humbleness, about territories, worlds, sizes. something about a belly full of boredom and a highway with the promise of any destination as tall and wide as the occupied territories of the continental US, stretching until it hit the sea - something gray, or something blue, or something green, or something.
the sea was where we all started, warm and curled up in a woman's stomach. safe. so we have something in common, after all.
the sea was where it started: an ocean town, heavy fog, overflowing with mist and salt and visitors in the summer. an ocean town where on either end of that one main road their respective "welcome to..." and "come back soon..." signs proudly asserted the little known fact that this ocean town, this ocean town!, was home to the furthest western point at which the land met the Pacific.
this was something terrifying. "doesn't it make you nervous to know this is the furthest west we can go?," everyone became prone to asking, out loud or in silence.
so manifest destiny worked its way backwards, imagined as unraveling histories like a ball of string; it's not that easy, but we can pretend. this is what i mean by feeling small. and this is what kept me alive, not in heart/beat but in something like "HEART", not in blood/stream but in something like "SOUL." abstract, but still there.
skyscrapers and redwoods have the same effect: redwoods that have been tall and growing taller for millions of years, or, skyscrapers created by a million hands and nails and extracted natural resources, both towering over you (and me), both made up of so much more than me (and you). both with history and something hard to believe.
both allow me to feel small, humbled, human, realizing: you can go and go and go and go and go and go and go and still move through the world unnoticed. you could, if you wanted to.
and the ceaseless sound of the city with cars and buses and strangers' voices and not a moment without, and the almost-silence of walking through the woods alone, these things have the same effect of feeling surrounded with the complexity of life beyond ones own.
it's a philosophical life, many academics might say. or a depressing one, others might argue. but my headphones are on and the music is playing and i breathe in and out and keep my hands in my pockets. walking backwards to changing sceneries and weather and intersections.
would it make you nervous to know if this were the furthest west you could go? then start walking backwards, or learn how to swim.
with love,
yours truly
