Once upon a time, there was no world at all; there were just boxes and boxes of people under the sky, waiting to be opened. None of them knew each other. None of them really cared. One day they felt a great trembling in the air, so they crawled out of each box and went their separate ways. Some went east and some went west. Some went south and some went north. Some began to cry or laugh for no reason at all. Many fought with each other—over land, over food, over women. A few found love and prospered. Still, some missed their simple life inside the boxes, so they spent the rest of their breathing moments searching for their long, lost homes. When they realized their boxes would never be found, all they could do was curl up and die. And this is the way the world has been ever since.
Those who left their boxes became the wanderers and inherited the In-Between, piling road maps into vans and motor homes, guiding their lives across rest stops and road signs. Their children learned about the world by looking out windows and watching tree tops and birds and telephone poles fly by—blurry, but somehow perfect. They questioned the mysteries of the universe as they peered into the night sky. A telescope gave clarity, but no answers. They watched the solar eclipse for the first time, with its black round hole lit behind by glorious rays and concluded it looks somewhat like a dark, watchful eye.
Eventually some wanderers settled down, gathering in pews or around dinner tables. Their lives were written in windowsill words, thousands of pages written in silence. To the wandering settlers, writing words from the windowsill came just as naturally as bottling up shadows, and this is what many of them did. Some of them broke away and manufactured love, over and over again until it became mechanical pulp, robotic kisses on top of the dog’s head. They wrote the dark poetry, the wrenching back-alley murders. They dug deep within their souls and pulled out balls of grime and wadded hair, dreamed of killing, of avenging blood and tears. They rode the streets on rotting bicycles, crashing into the corners of the world, dreaming of an escape. Dreaming once again of the boxes their ancestors spoke of—the comforting encapsulation. Their pain was channeled into working, so they built more sky-scratchers and spread their wealth into rivers of concrete, glistening with glitter that once came from stars.
To compensate for their feelings of inadequacy and exposure in this wide world, the wanderers put each other into imaginary boxes. You are this and they are that. She is lesser and he is more. Age, color, size, skill, defects: all boxes labeled in imaginary ink. Their wacked-out world was never as simple as lying in grass, as water and hands, as pennies in a can. They knew it was never as simple as crickets chirping, people moving—as paisley patterns and endless beaches. It is never as easy as wandering through mossy forests or singing out loud.
Round and round their earth spun until they turned again to value childhood and the slow rumbling of jet planes in the desert sky. They turned again to capture the taste of watermelon in summertime and to remember the smells of sun block and chlorine from Saturday swims by the pool. The swing set with its squeaky rings was turned into a kingdom, a battleground, a new realm of possibility and imagination for the work lords and their children. In their heads and in the crayon box they scribbled words and endless colors. Tired fingers reached into the candy jar and pulled out lemon drops as big as eyeballs. The earning echo of Bono’s songs played forth on the cassette player as they began to cherish their mother’s smooth, ringed hands, their father’s faces after shaving, and always bed-time prayers under blankets. Warm voices and the strum of guitar strings in the night spread into years ever after, each one harder than the next.
A vague yearning for the boxes remained with the wanderers as they moved through the In-Between. So they surrounded themselves with familiar walls and faces. It took many moons and suns, many tides ebbing and flowing, for them to discover that finding meaning in life is nothing more than finding God and fairies, apples and trees, and jumping in piles of calico leaves in that fragile hour before nightfall. It is calloused palms and growling oceans, the smell of bread baking and crushed flowers. It is wiping dust from shoes and leaving maps unfolded. It is pinning photographs in black and white to a rusted wall or saying goodbye for the very last time. It is watching flags flying, a face crying, but knowing the sun will forever shine. Knowing the moon is the same one seen all around the earth.
Written on the windowsill, etched forever in dark-grain wood are the words, “for all there is to learn, learn it well. Learn it loudly.” The wanderers learn and they make amends—that is all of life. To account for the past and the hope of becoming—that is all of love. Wait impatiently for purpose and live with the understanding that this may take many years. Fall down from the crackled paint windowsill and get back up laughing. Like a gray-tone re-run of I Love Lucy, make a million mistakes; yet end each day knowing that the good always outweighs the bad. Dance the dance of give and take, pick up the pieces and patch them up. Hand over and hold in. Keeping this balance is just as essential as believing everyone suffers. Scream for more giving and less taking. Scream it through red lungs, vacuumed out like a wind tunnel, blasting forth with all raging effort.
Breathe, run, gasp, suffer, grin, fall, embrace, save, believe. Believe. Believe. Believe. Here are the moments—captured memory like flashes of camera film drifting in a bright sea. Yet all these fragments of time constitute so many words, so many images of quailing light and happiness that have carried the wanderers of this world through the years. In the end they are left with words, and that is all they really need.
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