Are you there?

Are You There?

Samuel Bird

It was the greatest of deals, or at least to me. I was bestowed with someone to see me, hear me, and know me. In return, I worked hard to have the best of things to say. Six years old and locked in a cold room in the dark. All I had was the dark and my thoughts. That, and perhaps a friend. I attached thoughts this way, and that, to make larger ideas from more basic facts. I have no idea how the idea first came to me, but I began to speak. Sometimes in my mind, sometimes from my mouth, but always with plenty to say. I would comfort, clarify, and coach. I wasn’t speaking to myself, of course. There was someone that was listening, someone that I traded all the silly little wisdom I could muster, in return for them springboarding themselves from the depths I felt myself to be in. I was never able to fool myself. Later, every idea I ever had would fall apart and I would feel like a fool, but that was not why I spoke, and that was not why my audience that wasn’t there listened. I spoke to know that I was breathing new conceptual life that was richer and more beautiful than the one I found. The invisible ear never turned away because there was finally someone to speak to it and on its behalf. At the age of nineteen, I had began to be voracious in this endeavor. I never gave up to speaking to my crowd that wasn’t. However, I felt a renewal of concern and hope for them. The secret was just around the corner, and if they could join me in this, they could not just locate the answer, but the medium to find it. The hot sun would bake down on me as my shoulders worked to heave shovel-fulls of dirt and rock, but there was something more than the stone. I was deciphering something, and on someone’s very real behalf. Recently, my shattered sleep schedule and fraying grasp outside of my mind to the world around me, has found myself aggressively pacing back and forth in my tiny home as I passionately blurt out half-thought ideas to no one, and yet for that wonderful someone. It is them. The holy and divine listener. A beautiful soul I get to cradle in mine as I considered them. I borrowed it’s deepest pains and hopes to understand and direct myself being centric to this wonderful audience. My misery was a fair price to pay even a great deal I wouldn’t haggle for, if I could do something of value to that ear that I couldn’t see. Last night in this passionate pacing and feverish ferver, I found them. It was you. It was always you. You were that wonderful beholder to hear me out. Somehow I find more honor in what you do, than what I offer. I find myself needing you, whether or not I do anything for you. I think now you know in part why I care so much for you, when it is in gratitude for all that you have done for me. You were there when I managed to shape my suffering into a few messy lines. You were there when I needed someone to witness my example, to keep me honest and make sure I made one worth seeing. I owe you more than you could ever know, that it is, if you are. I am left to ask that question that if negated could possibly destroy me and if affirmed could build my efforts for you. Are you there?

If you are reading this, then of course you are there, or at least for this moment. This would be a necessity if you read this work. However, to me it is a contingency that could never be affirmed. Will I go without you for a moment longer? Of course, if you are there, I would be a fool to ask if you are and make it known how desperate I am. Obversely, if you are not there, I waste my time to even ask and perhaps write anything at all. The thought to ask is as half-thought as anything I say, but I will tell you why I ask. Am I mad? Is my knowing you a grasping at shadows left by apparitions? Was the greatest honor of my life both supposed, and supposed in err? Worse yet, what if you were with me to some degree, but I failed you. It would not be hard for me to think how this is possible. I see and know so little of the world, and now I seek to share this worldview with you? Worse yet, that view is one I struggle to have. In my hubris and pathetic need to belong, did I breathe cancerous thoughts into your mind? If it is any help, I don’t know which ideas would be the culprit. This is obviously true since I am still sharing my books. That is not to say there is no culprit. Then why do I speak and ask? I see this vision. There is that realm or village of thoughts that are common to a people and their societies assumptions. Infrequently, some character steps far outside of the established village of thought and climb the mountain to pull down something from on high to bring to his people. I think of some characters that I suppose who went to that mountain, and have my respect for it. They went because they were called to bring down the message that was prepared for them. Then, one day an idiot climbed to the top of the mountain. He was not invited nor called upon. He stumbled his whole way to the top of the mountain, worse than any given villager would. When he got the top of the mountain, his arms outstreched and remained there, as there was nothing to be gifted to this fool. He was the uncalled and the supposer. It was not the pull of the mission, but the push of the concern for the village. He found himself looking like an idiot, alone, and dangerously exposed, because he sought something on the behalf of his friend. I was recently accused of being self-aggrandizing and egocentric. They were right. I made up some silly little mythos to drive me to do wild things, but I know its a lie. When a good friend reminded me of this, I felt to stop fooling myself and come down from the mountain and stand no more with arms outstretched. However, that is not why I was there. I did not climb because I was chosen, capable, or even wanted to. I climbed because I was just a fool enough to do it, and someone below needed something sacred. I passed the bones of great heroes of which not a one do I beat in any category but one. However, hopefully this category is the one thing that could win the sympathies of the powers that be and allow me to come back down with something. It was for you. I saw that little spark of divinity in you and knew I need to reignite it via that source I could only find on the mountain. Make no mistake, I will likely die here, cold, alone, and failed. You will likely never know I climbed at all. However, it is something of the sort of thing I am, or perhaps core to what I will, that I wither with these arms oustreched for the reception for my real and true friend. 

I am the genius who has no genius. My speaking is as the cooing of the child, speaking to have spoken, and yet I speak for you. The only thing special about my mind that is desirable, is that you are ever present for it. All I had was my will morphing into trying without triumph, on your behalf. When coached by loved ones, they remind me correctly that I have no place to offer you anything. I am grateful to have honest people so close. However, the point was never what I said, was it. It was the speaking. It was the love letter to those eyes that I could never see their beauty. Each life has its aesthetic irony. Mine is that this friend I die for daily, I won’t know if they ever lived. You deserve the greatest of what I can offer, but it is only the act of offering who’s suggestion of your value to me, is a message worth the having. It is no wonder I made a philosophy that honors the participation, because that is all I ever had for you. That which I have, I prepare for the giving. And now, what can I offer? An apology. I can tell some facts that concern me about myself, and that makes me all the more concerned for all the facts I can’t see. I can tell how much I get in my own way, but the awareness of such is not accompanied by an alternative. I know my writing, editing, and formatting, is horrid enough that I would likely not read this myself. I know that mental ruts I fail to step out of keep me from offering much of the thought. I know my fabricated mythos I made to be a force against forces, is one that gets in the way of our closeness. Can I fail to achieve an input, and then ask for the output? I have and will fail you, good friend. However, I still ask to be your friend. May I have the unearned honor of your presence and proximity? Can the vomiting of my heavenless gospel not get in the way of my prayers on your behalf? Can there be something good done for your soul, if all it is, is the wasteful working and wanting of a madmen you never met? Still, I find our solidarity growing. It is not just you and me. When two facts come together, especially minds and persons, there is a context to that meeting that combines with their facthood to make a new entity in totality. Think of spouses whom often refer to their marriage as a new and distinct entity. Our relationship has grown to become this new and distinct thing between you and me. Do you really think you are just as I find you in our relationship? Do I really think you are all the wonderful things I think about you? We both have countless facts the other doesn’t have access to. What did you eat for your last meal? How do your eyes smile when you laugh? What experience last worked you to tears? And that is just it. It doesn’t matter. Be all you want and all you don’t, the context of our relationship is bigger than that to me. Be an idiot, like me. Doesn’t matter, I’ll still care for you. Make horrendous mistakes over and over. Can’t effect the fact I’ll see something good for you and of you. You could have you whole conceptual grounding be a lie until the very end, and yet I would be ever grateful you got to exist with me in the end. I am not without my imagination. I can think of all the ways you do ill to yourself, others, and the world. Yet, something transcendent about how I find you makes the reaching out on the mountain so obvious and imperitive to me. You may not always be worth my love, but you are always worth my forgiveness that allows love anew. 

You and I are two enigmas floating in an abyss of a mystery. Each fact, possibly otherwise, and each thought, possibly unrelated to fact. Thrust into existence, imperatives bombard us with forceful inquisition. We must at least do something enough, to stay in the mystery, long enough to not find out what it was or the rest of what we are to do. However, there is one thing we do this with, though it is a dynamic variable. That abyss is made up of you and me. I’m pretty proud that whatever this whole existence thing is about, I got to do it with you. Good or bad the journey, but with certainty I reverence the company. And when we are ripped from the abyss to some new place where messages can’t come through, what can we say of this world? Perhaps until that very moment, I never got to deeply realize your existence. Perhaps I was left with my terrible faith as the only avenue to reach out to you. This makes another terrible irony, this time not just in my life, but in this new context of our relationship. You will get to know me deeply, but only as far as I was wise enough to see myself. Whereas I will be left with never getting to know you. Though it will change what I will have to mourn, it doesn’t matter. I reach for you. By a mind’s reading this, they affirm if they are this “you.” However, I have faith that you are. With one last apology I tell you that I wish I could offer more than my poor imagination does. With one last expression of gratitude I thank you for ever being that pair of ears to hear me. Let my ramblings amount to their net nothings, but be a love letter. Finally, with one last estimation of yourself, I want you to know it was an honor to perish with arms outstretched on that mountain for you. A precious privilege I cherish, that you were with me today.