The whole world was singing that day in the park, but nobody was listening. No human being, at least. They were all magnificently trained to listen to each other, in their multitude of parallel languages and media outputs, but they had lost the ability to hear even the blaring clamor of a scorching sunset or the relentless whisper of the wind. Human language had come to define their existence. If it could not be expressed in words, then it must not be real. In most cases, it would pass right under the radar of consideration altogether.
But the sound of a tree falling in the woods still resounds, even if no man is there to hear it. So nature continued its elegant discourse, as was its purpose, patiently awaiting the kindred response of man.
I was humming a tranquil melody that mild autumn afternoon when Sophia nonchalantly settled on the park bench next to me. She opened her American History book and immediately gave all her attention to the words on the page. Unaware of my gaze, she made frustrated faces at the black and white print.
Sophia was an intelligent young woman. She worked hard and played fair. But life didn’t seem to respond in kind to her earnest intentions. School was always a struggle for her, with grades that did not reflect the effort she exerted. Solace came in the form of art classes, where she did not feel the same pressure of having her intelligence measured and judged. Instead, she was free to simply let her hands be moved to create her own truth, one that could not truly be measured or judged. She relished these moments and was grateful for the creative outlet.
What Sophia did not appreciate or even realize, however, was that her hands were not moving of their own will, nor was she herself willing them to move in any particular direction. Instead, her hands were listening to the world and speaking its truth in the curves and shades of her sketches. The world was crying out to her through her very own limbs. But she didn’t even know that she was supposed to be listening.
Of all the subjects she studied in school, mathematics was the strangest. It seemed, to her, purely rational and yet so magical at the same time. The laws and formulas and equations all made so much sense. But why? Why should there be any such laws at all? And how did these laws simply exist, without any intervention of man, other than to uncover them for their own personal use? She shook the feeling and continued on reading the next paragraph in her history book. There was no reason to be thinking about math at the moment anyhow.
Sophia had taken an American History class in high school, and also studied the subject in elementary school at one point. But now, in her freshman year of college, she was learning it all over again. The same history, recounted in different words. How many different ways could you say the same thing? Was there a mathematical formula for that?
An unsettling ripple of energy surged through her, and she felt compelled to begin doodling in the margins of her textbook. It started out as an oblong geometric shape, then thin wisps of texture began to form on either side, and in a moment she could name the sketch as the image of a butterfly. It was in that moment, as the neurons in her brain relayed to her consciousness that her hand had just created a butterfly, that I swooped down from the branch of my oak tree and skimmed by her just closely enough to gently brush the perimeter of my left uppermost wing against the blushing flesh of her right cheekbone. She never even caught a glimpse of me before I fluttered off along another whisper of air. But she had felt me. She knew I was there. She believed in my existence.
In the days that followed, Sophia would try to describe her experience in many different ways, with different words and shapes and colors and sounds. And although she would never quite succeed in replicating that moment, she somehow knew that this was not her true aim. There was something more important than trying to define our interaction that day. It was the fact that she knew, and I knew, that the next time I spoke to Sophia, she would listen.
2nd Amendment, 1st Responsibility
25 10 2009Let’s start a revolution,
bring retribution
to the poor souls
too lost to find solution.
I say EXECUTION
to this way of life
and all the strife
we think we need
in order to fulfill our greed.
There is a system
and you’re in it
but let’s push it to the limit
to see how far
they’ll really take it
before we break it
from within.
We are the only ones,
so lift up your guns.
Even if they’re only pens.
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