These days. I listen to Gregg Allman sing these words. “I’ve been out walking, don’t do that much talkin’ - these days.” And so it goes. My mind a running collective of imagery. Like I’ve lived a thousand years. Genetic memory and so on. A flash of yesterday breathless and beating like my heart. Steady and unrelenting. As a kid I was alone for seven years till sister came along. The reason cousins meant everything. The brothers and sisters of my heart wanting. But at home I was alone. Mama worked and someone came to keep me. Often my grandmother but if not a trusted woman. Me being my Mama’s treasure. In these years alone was a regular state of being. Hours upon hours, days upon days. Maybe that’s why now alone doesn’t drive me crazy. Alone sits like an old, comfortable friend and says, What to do? And at two, three, four - I found something to capture me, take me riding. My imagination the engine that fueled my play. I had a few ‘toys’ if you will but at this moment I can only remember a few. One was a simple tube that when held to the light and turned rendered some of the most amazing patterns turning, changing, collapsing.
Colors rising and falling into infinity. I never tired of this power, this shifting codex of perception, this gate to alternate realities. It taught me something at a level I could only intuit but not fully understand. Perception depends on the lens, the view, the history, the channels of the mind. My life has been much like this- rising and falling, collapsing like shattered glass into pain and pleasure. Rising and falling. Again and again and again. And, still, I look from a distance, from up close, and underneath to see. I have learned to look at life from different angles. Through a different shade of desire. Not like rose-colored glasses- they never passed those out to me. Raised by people who were always depressed. Who stated the Great depression did nothin’ to them they hadn’t already felt. Just leveled the playing ground. Tougher than dirt, bleeding sacrifice. And these days sigh, shift, sort themselves into a million moments of colors running, running, running forward.
