Lost Somewhere in Between the Immediacy of Artificial Heat and the Encouragement of Actual Warmth.

…I have been having these dreams of moving out east. Out beyond the leaves holding recognizable hues, out beyond the highways with recognizable numbers, out beyond all the cities where I recognize those who speak of home. How I long for that feeling of truly being exposed to exactly how lost we are—seeing exactly how minute we are in relation to the atoms that built themselves up in ways we pay others to comprehend. And I imagine it’s similar to the way astronauts reevaluate the meaning of existence once they absorb enough space, or the ways which we pretend to change after seeing the same views on a far less magnified and personal scale. But we are victims of a constant need to feel involved, a constant need to feel as if we are “with it,” while we fail to ever add discernible definition to what “it” is. We seem convinced that it exists, and I suppose that sometimes that is enough. I’m just not convinced that there is strength to be discovered in holding strong to beliefs while failing to apply that same blind faith to ourselves, because weakness can be hidden in ways this dimension has yet to expose us to, and incorrect exposure can remove all details regardless if you’re looking at the light or succumbing to the shadows. But sometimes we must locate the gallows for the sake of recognizing them if we happen to meet in the future. Because the ugliest pictures can be held by the most alluring frames, and the clearest framing can hold the blurriest of imagery.

And it’s always so difficult to continue to begin without feeling forced, without feeling cliché, as though every introduction I speak is composed of the same exact number and make-up of consonants and vowels, leaving me to reorganize a single ideology until a new meaning falls down to alleviate the drought our minds experience when the morning rises a bit quicker than we can. Because the nights are so misleading once the hours spill into the oncoming days and we’re left to battle our senses with the veiled intrigue of a life with the light pulled out. But the light exists beyond the sun, beyond the perception of the sun, beyond the vacant definition of light that narrates the shadows we’ve locked in our closet through the summer months.

And I’m lost again in the way these artificial sources illuminate your collar bones against the skeletal skyline we see but seldom recall with the frequency of more prideful beings. So I begin pulling at inspiration, the reminders of love lost and losses once held revisited for the sake of discovering a rise from the downfall, for the sake of reminding myself that things aren’t nearly as cynical as I made them appear through those frozen months when I buried my feet beneath the earth for the sake of feeling universal motion in an involuntarily localized way. I recall nights bent backwards upon the front step, staring east while my dreams settle along the fractures of a once untamed west, a west pockmarked by human-made steel peaks and mounds made and occupied by the men the peaks were long ago stolen from. They lay beneath the dirt they can barely claim ownership for, a reminder of the death that took down individuals who likely lived in a capacity our minds can hardly fathom. The expanse of land begets an expanse in perspective, and a means of consistent survival revokes a need for unnecessary anxieties to overtake the psyche. Worry seems less significant when such a focus on actually living is a requirement. We’ve become numb to life, committing too distinctly to these supposed realities, failing to truly recognize that reality is nothing more than a word, a self-defined ordering of letters which has only the depth you supply it with, and which will always fall short of the true depth possessed by a world shared objectively, but viewed subjectively, with experience falling somewhere in between.

So I’m revisiting those smoke-filled rooms where we pinned the constellations along the stains that recall the stories we’ll admire for years despite any true admirable qualities existing in the moment. It’s odd the way nostalgia misconstrues our conversations when we allow the present to revoke the past at nearly every occasion. I’m losing my thoughts to the rhythm, as the tempo of the music spills incongruously in relation to the processes my mind relies upon in the early morning hours. And I know how easily I could return to our conversations, to pull lines directly from the blueprints that built connection from communication, but there's some beauty to be found in leaving those ideas where they sit, from knowing there exists in these moments revolutions that only we can recollect.

Because there’s something intriguing about lost art which haunts you to this day despite only a single viewing. There's something alluring about leaving words in the dark for the melody of them being spoken is enough to light our way through dreams pulling teeth from the patterns. These patterns transfix my subconscious on conscious means and I become lost somewhere in between the two realms. It’s as if I lose the defining line that brings cancer in from the tropics, rearranging my perspective like the oncoming front of a storm outlining a weather system I have no firsthand experience with. But if rain is merely water, then perhaps I can swallow enough of the swell to avoid a premature induction to the sea. Perhaps I can combat the rise that comes to fill in the caverns I’ve built in the present to keep the memories from so many nights before beneath the ground I keep pacing into a more submissive pose. And I’m not so convinced I desire this level of submissiveness or simply look to imprint upon the land that which I’ve already imprinted upon myself so many absent years ago with the belief that if I can feel the naivety these breathing buildings represent then maybe I can allow people beyond this self-imposed security to move about my body in a way which leads us to believe that this is all but unnatural. Because these organs don’t play along with my destructive ways, and the destruction seems to birth a greater deterioration at the scene until I’m inhaling past carbon for the sake of feeling alive, for the sake of still feeling combustible, for the sake of keeping my illumination through shorter days, colder thoughts, and nights that we still feel so deeply in our bones.