Moment, moment

Moment, moment

Samuel Bird

Moment, moment, do you come to a close? Or, do you morph into the next with me? Moment, moment, what do you bring about? Or if I can’t know, can I assume? Days, hours, and years are nothing more than made-up lines to contain you, but you live free of me and my pursuit to name you. Where you go and what you do, I do not know, but it seems to me you march on. To a beat and rhythm fatalistic and final. Does the tempo meet my heartbeat in racing along with seeming increasing vigor, or do I dance to a tempo that won’t wait for me? Are you more than what I think you are? If so, is there any truth behind what you seem to be? I am powerless before you. Moment, moment, I ask like all minds meeting the world, for you to wait. Please wait for me.

It seems when your beat crescendos as far as I am concerned, I will not be here for another stroke of time’s writhing drums. Assuming you ever were before I was, you will ever be after I’m not. I pull a thread in either hand across my face to see a middle and assume this is where you and I meet, but no matter how small my weary eyes focus on the fibers, my arms can never stretch far enough. If you, or at least your kind, had all of time, then everything that I could think, was. Worlds that came out and went without limit and perhaps in the arithmetic of forever, another people and another mind. I wish them no ill will, but did they have a swelling and growing awareness of you moving on past them?

I think of you and your kind before. I pull into my mind, every memory. I sprawl the paper out to see in detail, but in doing so I tear the edges. Old tear stain mark when I looked back before, but now the vision is distorted. I try to see it as it is, but I am not looking at it. I am looking at what my mind has to offer in terms of what you impressed on me then. What was it, what did it mean, and what is to come of it? I run my fingers across the pages and even pull out a pen to mark my thoughts. In passion and fervor, I try to paint the valuelessness of existence with thin strokes first then broader. Over them, I lay out a structure. A tale I get to make and not even you, great moment, could stop me. The facts stand alone and I hold them gently in my hands to not distort as I begin to lay them out in a structure. Like tales told before flickering flames of old, events become sequenced. In this way, you may take all I have and fade it to not, but I defeat you, oh mighty moment. Your parts and portions, as I perceive them, become what this mind of mine uses and building blocks to create. Nothing of the world or its universe tells me I can, but no power is great enough to stop me. Something swells within my sore chest as that thread I wanted to understand you through, is weaved across these memories, oh great moment. Stop me, stop me if you have that power oh powerful moment and you and your fate could win. You can’t and never could. One day, you will claim me. One day, you will take me from being, but you could never keep me from having been. And behind me, oh moment, I leave what neither you, nor matter, nor any other fact of reality could do but the willing, judging, and perceiving mind. I am forming things outside of spatial positionings in a world where I am not safe to be.

The thread stretched across the pages, pinned to points to showcase and demonstrate, it looks over some of your kind and illuminates others. A fear of deceit furrows my brow. If I wanted this story to mean, it would be harmed by some of the facts I lived. Is it fair, to me of older moments, to banish me away because they don’t fit? And what of how I harmed the storytelling of others? What of the antagonists they write me to be and the strong case I gave them to do so? Moment, moment, for me and them, let me fly to them and give them new and better facts. Let the scene and its rich atmosphere do well for them. Don’t let fate stop me, don’t you keep me from being more. In trembling hands, I hold those moments. Their weight pulls on calloused fingers and bony shoulders as my mind races to fit them into this story. Moment, moment, let me be the one who gets to break your rules. Let me be in that moment as if another now, but with the knowledge I now have. Keep the anger, the fear, and the confusion that led to those moments. I shake the pages and wish I could do anything more than scribble over the annals of time. 

Moment, moment, in your fading from one to another, you lock in the now into the was in a way I can't return. When the knowledge is with me and I know what is needed, I am beyond it to act in another moment. In this shameful, bitter regret, I lose what I need to be where I am. Each action of mine, is carved in stone in a permanency that clashes with my desire to carve the world around me. Can’t I create something better? Even my most confused mind could certainly come up with a better scene for the story than the one I read in my life. But I guess it is not so, as I made that mistake and see no end in sight to my failings. Moment, moment, you damn me in eternal nows until alas I am not even a part of those. I run from what is with a hope for what could be, but I find the possible settling down from my mind into the world as actual. Once on the page, I can only distort. I can never make it not have been. Why do I want, need, and value, all to not have my conscientiousness to do otherwise? Moment, moment, why is your materializing of self so concrete and unforgiving? Why must I act on what I do not know, just to find I acted in folly? To me and my kind, you commit great injustice. Marble and stone sieve away our possibilities into impossibly ever otherwise. There is still some that could be and could be anything, but with each moment you steal it from me. You take away what little of you I can be a part of until I never am again. I hope to see that you or your kind will treat my kind well for what I have done, but one day my memory will go across the stage of a mind for the last time, not knowing to bow deep enough and with enough passion for its last, ending, permanent finale. Everything permanent in that I could never make it otherwise, but everything impermanent in that you will keep your pages long after what was as ink fades from parchment and they fall apart.

I think of you and your kind to be. Rather than the cold weariness of what you have been and done, it fuels a fire within me of fear. I turn feverishly over blank pages, not knowing what they will hold, or even if they will hold me. Tell me oh moment, what is that day, hour, and year that I can no longer fight you in accentuating parts of what were, into a story? When will these pages flip, one after the other, with no eyes to see them? For the rest of when I get to be, what will be offered? In the past I was nothing more than a character writing himself in the most random of premises, and what will your settings be? What new plots, characters, and sights will you bring me before those curtains close around me as this stage goes on forever? Who I have written myself to be, will he lend himself well to what will come? Have I erred in my preparation of what will be? 

Moment, moment stop! The flow of all rivers, the planets in their orbits, the beasts in their travel, stop it all! And wait. Wait for me. Wait for me to see whatever it is that undergirds this all. Let me look out into the crowd. Let me see what holds up this stage. Let me find who wrote these premises. Let me know I write myself! It's all I have dear moment, and I need to know it. I need to think, if only a lie, that my will is over this world, not in magnitude, but in rebellious freedom. Let me find this director and rip the script from his clutches. Let me see, if it is on my tongue, the words upon the pages that will be. I would scour and skim its pages until I flipped, hoping to find an end. If I ever went there, I would read the last line of a great play between minds and worlds. But then, oh moment, you leave me with the final horror of all. To weigh in my hands the value or lack, of that final abrupt closing. Was the final note of existence over your beating, oh moment, was it good? Did it bring all the threads of the story together for one last cheer and roses? Is there a portion in that program for the characters in all, to bow before the crowd? To be seen one last time, oh moment. But moment, I am no fool and can see the patterns of what was, culminating in what will be. You have never waited for me or my kind, and you wait no more than you ever have. Your score continues on in never repeating originality as I am kept anticipating each note, but always that same rhythm. Where and when I am, oh moment, I collapse. In defeat, I see your power and my weakness. You will go on and leave me as if I never was, never allowing me to go back or see forward. Or if I am wrong and there is otherwise to come, tell me. Tell me?

No, you nor this world, nor its facts have anything more to say than the silence of you playing your roles and stage, prop, and tempo. You and they have never answered my curious cries in the night. A young mind pressed by the weight of being and all the problems it amounts to, was never given anything more than lifeless facts. Even those facts exist outside of what is knowable. Still on my knees, I rise. I rise to feet that have walked me to no destiny you gave, but one you could never stop me from. You have your power and I bow before it, but I remind you that I am consciouness. I am that mind that sees this world, something it can’t do for itself. I remember not that which I was made to be, but that which I am. I am the shear, horrifying, powerfully, possible. I am what I will into action and the world. So then, what will I will? You and your kind give me nothing to value. You can’t do more than the minds that make stories out of you. I then am your kind oh powerful moment. I shape you into this story. 

Perhaps a director and fellow actors yell out that I have no such authority, but I don’t listen and I certainly don’t heed. I will shape what was into what I want in true authoritative fashion. And for that which is to come, I gird up that hero part of me to embrace the unknown and remind it that it neither knows what is within my mind. As hero and writer of this character, I make it what I will, and you can’t stop me, oh moment. With gritted teeth and looming death, I shape all these facts and moments into something. But what? What will I make it? Whatever I will. With pen, I write what was, into a story of honor that fills me with gratitude to ever have been. And with sword, I bring the edge to the throat of fate and no longer accept only what it has to offer. This fighting and writing, where do I do it? Where do I meet fate and past? Where do I write this character as much as I act it out? Or perhaps when, perhaps now, oh moment, moment. 

The Peaceful Soldier

"Arm always at the ready, but never drawn

His warcry voice belts a hopeful song

Weary eyes smiling at a battle-torn land

Wanting better for others, his heart expands

A heavy story upon his shoulder

There he goes, the peaceful soldier"