I Beg You: Do Not Read This Trivial Meandering

      
These thoughts that manifest externally as if the sun has plucked them from the creases of my brain and planted them as some bird of prey, bright orange the same color as the bitter mood of yesterday's discomfort, turn. This is too much for me -- the days spent wandering, the racing of possibility. I yearn for the days of blank computer screens with fingers madly typing with nothing but an order to compose. Then, it emerges -- forever emerging -- almost like an archeologist exhuming their fist dinosaur bone, a feeling of discovery yet to be achieved.

A story, possibly about a boy whose own father has left him to be found somewhere among the redwoods -- the only place the boy has called home -- is threatened. It is being torn down like all great trees are, turned into planks and pulp. He digs his way to its roots and plant himself like so many seeds. He's never found. He is killed mindlessly as trees uprooted pierce his heart. Blood spills consecrating this future mall. Haunted, it closes only months later. The boy is left to wander empty hallways more hallow and dispirited than his dead redwoods.

Or is it meant to be something other than a ghost story? Is it meant to be fact uninterpreted and unbiased? Then, these trees are not sacred. Rather they are just trees like so many other things alive that can never speak for itself, know no heart beat, and therefore are just that: things devoid of emotion or feeling. They are just things to be consumed and any thought otherwise is strictly editorial. If it weren't for its sacrifice, I couldn't even write this in my notebook of empty paper. So even as I scribble I am hypocritical. I am western.

I am nearing the end of his tale, and all I do is weep. Facts are sorrow. They never tell the story I need to hear, and simile is a language corrupted by extremism. The sun did not pick my brain, and my bitterness is not orange. Words escape ability to communicate. So why are you reading this frippery? What hope do you have at understanding my significance?

That isn't necessary. The boy is but a circumstance just like the Soviet soldier holding a baby raising his sword to the motherland crushing the swastika. I am fearful that it will run away and find another home; I want it to be mine. I want to own and hold it and destroy it if the fancy strikes me like the passing whim of the child who plucks wings off the dragonfly or captures the firefly until its light goes out. Innocence breeds cruelty. I wonder what that baby will grow up to be.

Again you continue reading. I continue typing at this blank screen imagining you as you stare and eyes dart confused that I am speaking directly to you. It makes you uncomfortable. I can tell even if I will never watch you read. Writers don't speak to readers. They speak of themselves as if they are as important as the moon is to the tides. We are not. You are important. It is your interpretation that compels me to create the boy in the first place' it is why the Soviets built the statue. I am merely a conduit between existential imaginings and adventitious judgment. You judge me. You must judge me. Otherwise it is just a baby in his arms and a crushed symbol beneath his feet.

So what is the meaning of this? How are you synthesizing the possibility? There is so much underneath, between, amongst, above that goes unnoticed, that is still hidden in the blankness. I have only carved out one small undefinable thing; it too has no emotion or feeling. Should it be consumed? Do you claw and scrape and tear it? But it is on your screen and therefore is as intangible as the symbol. Destroying it means destroying a thing of yours. There is beauty. There is meaning. Where does it reside in you? What have you gutted?

The boy lurks. He has grown and is now a man. He is that Soviet soldier who once was the baby in his arms. The woman who weeps -- a whole manicured lawn separating them -- turns away. She cannot watch like you do. Her bravery is compassion despite the razed redwoods. She will not witness the mall. Will you? Will you visit the ghost of her son/spouse/brother/lover/father? Will you let the memory and imagination haunt your hallowed shell? I think not. It is why you read versus type at this blank screen. Does that discomfit you?

I beg you: continue your reading, even this trivial meandering. You made it, and I am desperate for your attentiveness. Don't let me become the boy; I promise I will make you her. She is so much more powerful. She is that blossoming bird of prey picked by the sun from the crevices of our collective acumen. She is orange, green, white, pink, sharp lines, and prickly points. Become her. Embrace the compassionate bravery of turned away glances.

Are you still reading? Turn away. Turn away. Turn away. Turn away. Turn away. Turn away. Turn away. Turn away. Turn away.

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