Dancing on a boat

You awake. Somewhere.

Where that is, you’re not exactly sure. While it’s true you have gained consciousness, your eyes are slow to open. Or maybe, they already have opened and you just haven’t recognized it. Coupled with that is the fact that imperceptible darkness could very well surround you. Heck, you may even be blind. Both sound about right because, well, you don’t even know what you are.

Or even worse, who you are.

You think, and it’s not that you don’t know. You had to know. Everyone knows something sometime. Maybe they don’t know everything, but surely something. A rock knows it’s a rock. A mountain, a mountain. A human, a human. Often, they just pretend to be something they are not. A rock pretends it is a symbol of tranquility in a zen garden. A mountain acts as though it was a challenge to be defeated. A human thinks it is a god.

So, you are sure there was a time when you did know who and what you were. There had to be. As you know, or knew, or whatever, there is a time for everything, memories included.

And yet.

The little gears of time continue onward, ever-persistently, ever-indomitably. Where they go, you’re not sure. With no watch, you can’t be sure time ticks anywhere. Instead, you just feel something crawling underneath what you think could be skin, and an echo in what you think could be your lungs, and a constant melody of nature somewhere off in the distance. It sings, drip, drop, drip, drop, drip. It is beautiful, or at least as beautiful as any sound can be. For it tries its hardest to drop and drip and to drop again. If that’s not beauty, then you know nothing.

But considering the circumstances, that very well may be possible. In fact, it’s more than likely. Time ticks and tocks. Nature drips and drops. You breathe and stop. This is how life works. This is how your life works. This is how all lives, young and old, smart and stupid, trivial and important, will always work.

Because in life, when you don’t know where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing, you are left with the ambiguity of everything. There is no time, only space. A warped fourth dimension, so to speak. Perhaps even a testament of how warped life really is.

Maybe, though, you are time. Father time. That’d be nice. Controlling all, even yourself. Everything would follow you because you made the concept of a schedule. Your schedule, one comprised of seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years, and so on and so forth. It would take an eon just to list your measurements, something you, as a musing candidate for Father Time, do not have time for.

If you are Father Time, then you realize that there are also consequences. Because of you, everything wanes, wilts, and fades away forevermore. Because of you, everything is so busy, busy, busy making the most of the time they get. Every second counts because every second only comes once. A flawed design of impending failure. For that, you are sorry.

On the other hand, when thinking about it, you come to the conclusion you can’t be Father Time. You were never one for decisions or making decisions for that matter. Instead, you just existed. Unknown. Unquestioning. Thinking; and nothing more. Just like you are now. Just like you will always be.

Plus, you weren’t sexist. You were inclusive. At least you figured out that you had to be for you were part of everything as a little bit of anything. While nature continued to drip it’s orchestra, it all came to you: something came from everything, and you were something. Darkness helped you understand this, because when you looked down, or didn’t look down, or didn’t look at all, you realized you were part of darkness. You were part of everything.

And so, you couldn’t be sexist, and couldn’t be Father Time. Maybe a hybrid of Father Time and Mother Nature. Guess that would make you a human.

Considering that you can’t remember, though, you decide that a human isn’t quite right. Something doesn’t quite settle with the title, for to be human, is to be evil. While it is true that human beings wish to live in happiness, they do anything but that. Rich as the earth is, greed swallows humanity whole. It has barricaded all in hate, steeped everything in misery and bloodshed. Knowledge has made intelligence, intelligence has bred pessimism and calculated cynicism. The endless green pastures that can house life instead host wars. The symphonies that can ring throughout the world are replaced by an instrumental of bullets and bodies hitting the floor in harmony. As far as you know, humanity is lost.

You are not lost. You are here. You just don’t know where that is. It is cold. It is dark. But at least, it is somewhere; and that’s a start. With a start, comes a decision. Either you do something, or you don’t. The racer takes a step, or it doesn’t. So, you understand that you are granted the decision of choice: to choose what you are and aren’t. With that in mind, you decide to be accepting, and in turn, everything that is and isn’t becomes you.

You like that. Accepting. Neither name nor identity, but instead, you are a trait. It is simple. It is understood. It is what you are.

From there, nothing else matters. Where you are, how’d you get there, or even why you were there. You accept it all. From not knowing to an insatiable desire to know to the cold that climbs higher and higher on what you assume to be a body, it is all accepted.

In the darkness – or maybe it was light, you didn’t want to rule out any options just in case that’d be considered denying an option – you pull off what could be a smile. It feels like one. If you had lips, they’d be curved in an undeniable bridge of happiness and contentment.

You think that this could be what heaven feels like, but then you remember, somehow, suddenly, that there was a time when you were on a boat, and you were dancing, and you were swaying with the waves, and you tipped over, and you said you weren’t scared, and you swam, and you laughed. Oh, how you laughed.

Happiness feels like swimming, not heaven. On heaven, there is only boredom, waiting, and an idea of superiority. When swimming, though, one is free. To sink. To float. To be happy.

But happiness only lasts long enough to be swallowed whole by sadness. You memory shifts to the fact that you can’t swim. You never could. So you sang like a rock chained to a cement block all linked together with an anchor of iron. You kicked. You pushed. You sloshed around like a fish caught on land, or a land caught on fish.

Then you arose, dark, in a cave, met only with your breath, cold, and an echo of a laugh. It wasn’t the same laugh though. It was a laugh about the fact that you went on a boat and didn’t know how to swim. What did you expect? What can you expect?

Nothing. Nothing at all.

Even though this memory describes your current location, you realize it probably isn’t true. You have to accept that, because as an accepting being, you cannot accept something without failing to accept everything. So, you can’t laugh, sway, or dance on a boat. You can’t be in a cave. You can’t fail to swim. If you did any of those things, you wouldn’t be doing other things which equally call for your acceptance. If you did, you’d be showing favour. That is not acceptance. That is bias. To accept, you can’t do anything at all.

You can only stay where you are, unknown, unquestioning, and in darkness.

Forever.

*

Then, you die.

Forever.