In the Collective: My Mind Apart

With my little pencil I occasionally jab at the corpse of a tree with perforated edges. The words are written sloppily, even carelessly:

Tonight I ponder the effects of gravity

On my body, heart, and soul.

It is a wonder that such things I can still see

With eyes burning like red coal.

I make simple stabs at profundity as I watch my beloved paint heart-shaped stars. The beautiful willow trees sway with winds like the pull-and-push of the ocean. We’re laying in the grass in the backyard with the afternoon sun setting on us. I feel over-whelmed like I always do.

I wonder aloud, “It cannot just be me right?”

Of course, thinking she has the wit of Cheshire Cat, she replies, “Of course it can silly. Everything can just be you if you try hard enough.”

The wind rustles her autumnal hair into such a picture it stills my heart, if only for a moment. Astounding at a minimum, as always. But I must reply in kind, “But that’s to say anyone’s paranoia about their singularity in the universe could be made real if they only feel strongly enough about it. That’s absolutely terrifying to me. I couldn’t stand to be so utterly right about being alone.”

“But that’s just it isn’t it? A person can be alone. Inside your mind there’s a whole world left mostly unexplored; even when you are close to death you leave questions unanswered to yourself. You’re only not alone if you realize that you’re not, or that you do not have to be alone.”

I think for a moment. It’s not that she’s said anything I haven’t heard before, I just want to find an answer for once.

“So, in reality a person is not alone, no matter what they do? But really, anyone can be alone if that’s what they really think they are. And what if, just for example, I thought that no matter what anyone did, I would always be endlessly trapped in my own mind? What if it felt like a cage, restraining me, rather than helping me break free and find contentment in life?”

She looks at me kind of funny just then-I guess she knows what I am getting at- and says, “Do you feel that way, really?”

I drop my eyes for a moment, just to escape the guilt I feel at admitting my biggest pitfall. I feel evil. “Sometimes,” I mutter so much like a five-year-old caught doing something wrong.