Once when I was older, much older than today, sorry Beatles, I could classify and simplify everything I knew or thought I knew. Now that I am younger, I know no such thing, as everything is unique and completely marvelously complex in itself. There are no valid classifications except as encapsulations of our own misunderstandings. The only simple thing is my ignorance. Unlike the Apostle Paul, I will never set aside childish things. For in the wonder of play is true understanding discovered. I breathe deep and once again taste cabbage, candy and dirt anew.
I live in a one bedroom apartment on the outer border of Old Las Cruces, in an area of the flood arroyo named after the goats once kept here. El Camino Real sways aside to pass its forgotten wagons safely across the washed sands. It is all the world I need at the moment.
I have roamed the country and parts of the world from before I can remember. When I was ten, I was born again in a not-Christian revival sense, but as a newborn child, with an empty, wiped slate waiting for the record of life to be chalked on it. I had been in the mid-Pacific, on the Hawaiian Islands, Alaska, California, Minnesota, Nebraska, and North Dakota before then and in Florida, too. But I do not remember.
After the ten years I remember California, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, New Mexico, Texas, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, British Columbia, North Dakota, Washington, Kansas, Illinois, Colorado, Iowa, Indiana, Wyoming, Utah, New York, Virginia, West Virginia and Ohio. I seen Korea and bits of Burma and Thailand. A piece of desert village is all the world I need today.
Remembering the places I can remember fills my heart and my eyes so they spill over. The is sadness and great joy in the places and in me. Tears fall.
When I was much smaller, my senses were sharp, my mind a photographic lens and microphone to capture colors, sounds and smells. I forgot nothing and could compare every fish and bird with every fish and bird I had so far seen. I knew the tone, the range of every voice and planes of every face. I did not have to classify or categorize. Everything was always in reach and closer even than that really. An extra small scale on a lateral line, a tangle along the barb of the eleventh pinion feather in a left wing; I saw the differences, small and large in my Daddy's creation. I rejoiced in the differences and basked in the similarities. I was sister to the world.
But predators in the human family were afraid of my memory so they tied me down and erased it. They killed the girl that held the world in her hands. I remember tiny bits of her memories, a few stayed with me when I was reborn at ten. I knew just enough to be afraid of every human. I grew up as quickly as I could, using categories and I learned my place.
For years I worked at being, reaching and seeking connection with others, I learned the blues of being alone. But after years, decades, I grew younger. I do not have that young girl's memories. I cannot compare two crows in real time, three coins, and a pear instantly within my mind. But I compare them slowly until my heart says, these are family. I am so much younger now.
I live in a one bedroom apartment on the outer border of Old Las Cruces, in an area of the flood arroyo named after the goats once kept here. El Camino Real sways aside to pass its forgotten wagons safely across the washed sands. It is all the world I need at the moment.
I have roamed the country and parts of the world from before I can remember. When I was ten, I was born again in a not-Christian revival sense, but as a newborn child, with an empty, wiped slate waiting for the record of life to be chalked on it. I had been in the mid-Pacific, on the Hawaiian Islands, Alaska, California, Minnesota, Nebraska, and North Dakota before then and in Florida, too. But I do not remember.
After the ten years I remember California, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, New Mexico, Texas, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, British Columbia, North Dakota, Washington, Kansas, Illinois, Colorado, Iowa, Indiana, Wyoming, Utah, New York, Virginia, West Virginia and Ohio. I seen Korea and bits of Burma and Thailand. A piece of desert village is all the world I need today.
Remembering the places I can remember fills my heart and my eyes so they spill over. The is sadness and great joy in the places and in me. Tears fall.
When I was much smaller, my senses were sharp, my mind a photographic lens and microphone to capture colors, sounds and smells. I forgot nothing and could compare every fish and bird with every fish and bird I had so far seen. I knew the tone, the range of every voice and planes of every face. I did not have to classify or categorize. Everything was always in reach and closer even than that really. An extra small scale on a lateral line, a tangle along the barb of the eleventh pinion feather in a left wing; I saw the differences, small and large in my Daddy's creation. I rejoiced in the differences and basked in the similarities. I was sister to the world.
But predators in the human family were afraid of my memory so they tied me down and erased it. They killed the girl that held the world in her hands. I remember tiny bits of her memories, a few stayed with me when I was reborn at ten. I knew just enough to be afraid of every human. I grew up as quickly as I could, using categories and I learned my place.
For years I worked at being, reaching and seeking connection with others, I learned the blues of being alone. But after years, decades, I grew younger. I do not have that young girl's memories. I cannot compare two crows in real time, three coins, and a pear instantly within my mind. But I compare them slowly until my heart says, these are family. I am so much younger now.
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