You will disappoint your mother

I felt that glory should enter through the hallways of ether — the same hallways I imagined God used to listen to our pain. I felt mine should have been heard by now and the alarm caused by my pain should have been rushed through whatever bureaucracy they had over there. I thought I had earned glory or more importantly; freedom from the shackles of the musts of this world. I was 20 at the time and had all the energy in the world and it was being vortexed into a cycle of self realization and self disappointment. I was trying to grow but I had no roots; my soil was as hard as a rock and the only thing that could grow on it was moss and moss doesn’t sell. 

I used to think about the hallways and the echoes on long walks from the technical institute home. I used to go through the lectures of the day or the exams of tomorrow, stop by parks, buy coffee and cigarettes and take detours through streets I liked because of their smell or because of their shops or most likely because of their lack of people. I didn’t dislike people but I disliked being faced with other faces; other dilemmas, other pains. I had mine and I wanted it to wallpaper all my rooms and cover all my windows with the dramatic light of the evening sun being set for the imagined last time but it always rose — the pain always rose and it grew day by day and the only relief was the sun setting and the greater the sun the greater the relief.  

That was the way decisions grew within me. They grew with pain as their pesticide. Their seeds popped like the tentacles of a butterfly and I tested their wings against imaginary conversations — against the fathers and mothers and against future selves. You will face poverty and I knew too little of life to be afraid of poverty. 

You will see only the luminescence of the alms of those who made it. What will you do? Write about it? I didn’t know how to break free — I only knew I had to or else I would drown. But I didn’t break free. I drowned and I never even wrote about drowning for who wants to read about lack of air? People like to read about growth and I am done with that now. Or so I thought. There will be no more growth. Or so I felt. The season is over. I will be a radio, tuning into the frequencies of the bizarre wavelengths. I will channel dying, the hertz of pain. 

I couldn’t really go back in time and find another more pivotal moment than when he came to give me the talk. I had attempted to break free and I was still 20 at the time. I had managed to bring up the courage to quit university but I wouldn’t say it was about courage but rather desperation. I had managed to let desperation talk some sense into me. But I wouldn’t say it was desperation either. I had brought up the courage to let these little seeds of doubt grow, and grow well. For seeds of doubt are in fact seeds of something new. Doubt only grows in the shadow of something else. Who was I kidding? I wasn’t kidding him who was in love with my mother and that was for sure. 

I wonder how it works that in order to keep your life floating you need to keep everyone else in place. I wonder how it works indeed when you figure out what place one belongs to? I wonder how it works when love becomes so entangled with control that it isn’t allowed to roam and let roam freely. I still wonder how it works. I am 60 now and I am dying and have been dying since before that day. What does that make me? A coward if nothing else. If I could go back in time, oh how wonderfully I would have grown by now. What a marvelous plant I would have been. And now — looking into a mirror — I see this face facing inwards. I see this rotten ache. I see this whitewashed pale figure filled with disgrace. It isn’t that bad, is it? 

You don’t stop growing just because you decide to stop. You can’t stop. There is no stopping until you return to the soil and even then it continues and even then it wills itself into the roots of others, into new seeds, into new life. I breath therefore I grow. I breath, oh yes I breath and the pale sun touches the corner of my eye as I hear the words:

"You will disappoint your mother."

I remember watching Blade Runner during those days. I remember Leon Kovalski saying: “My mother? Let me tell you about my mother.” I remember thinking that he did good Leon and that I should have done the same but I hadn’t. I wasn’t a replicant. I was soft and I let go. I went back to university. I didn’t choose life that day. Some days we don’t. Some days we ignore the whispers of the seeds, ignore the popping sound of the butterfly breaking free for we hear something else calling. Some other life, some other room. We comb the streets of this planet with some other broom and we think that if we clean this house, maybe we can inhabit it and within it let our soul grow naked; stark naked like a gigantic sun of some alien planet. 

I can hear the rebels moan. The warships set sail. I am dying but I am not dead. I am not yet naked but I will be when I am. I will grow for I am breathing. War is everywhere and so is growth and regeneration. We can’t have one without the other and as I stand by her graveyard I wonder if she is disappointed. I know she isn’t. I know she never was and will never will be. That was the seed. That was the first seed amongst others growing in the garden of my life. And what disturbed beautiful plants they have turned into. Magical under the night sky; it’s luminescence playing right above the moss right above the rock right above this soil on which everything grows and dies.