Burst and Burst

It all began with a burst.

A symphony of light, colors, texture. The breath of your mother on your skin, the way your father held you to his chest.

You often wept when you fell, but your mother always picked you back up. Despite the tears and the pain, she always patched you up with a smile, the skin around her eyes creasing.

Love.

And from this, you learned that this scary, expansive world has pockets of refuge. You learned that the human essence is good.

Passion, love, and bravery. You, undoubtedly, were free.

Consciousness is a fickle friend indeed! As you grew older, you became aware of the impermanence of the world around you. The realization that, one day, you and everything you loved will return from nothing to nothing.

We may only describe this as vertigo. A free fall towards nothing.

Beauty, career, love, legacy. Anything to make sense of this imposed descent, anything to find stable footing on the foundation of nothing.

And so maybe you dedicated seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, and years into your career. Meaning! Legacy! In the sinking towards nothing, you temporarily became something.

Can you imagine how liberating the illusion of stability is to a perpetually diving man? Breath to a suffocating man.

In many ways, this is beautiful. From what was once a grayscale painting, there now is a burst of colors. A burst of unyielding life.

Meaning. The anesthetic for the soul. A suspended, narrow state.

Liberation!

But can we truly describe someone whose existence depends on an illusion to be liberated?

Can a painting of just a sliver of this life portray the full scope of what it means to be alive?

I know, to be aware of the free fall is disorientating. It is crushing to the spirit, to the soul that is the foundation of this contigent "I" that composes us. This vertigo is the most visceral thing, a rare state of being that affects the observer rather than our "I".

Terrifying, painful, and wrenching. This is how we can describe this fall.

But in the moments when you stop clawing the walls of the abyss, trying to catch your fall, the moments when you surrender in reverence, something incredible happens: shaking, trembling, disturbed peace.

It is to realize that what you are will cede to be, what you wish to be may never happen, and that you are merely a guest for a short stay. And, somehow, all shall be well.

What once disturbed the mind is now quiet. It is a wonder beyond reason, and you often will find yourself shaking and sobbing, even in the worst moments.

Not in despair; rather, unfiltered, existential awe.

In giving up the desire to be anything, you become capable of withstanding anything.

The burst of color seeps out of the painting. And before you know it, the world is vibrant with color. The smallest moments touch the soul, and you recognize the fear we all share.

The trees scream green, the chain link fence torches your skin on touch, and you bleed life.

You become a refuge from this world for the weary.

Just like in childhood, the people you love most will weep from their fall. But now, their fear will be patched through the electric connection of being witnessed in totality, in sincerity.

In the final moment before they finish their descent, they will tell themselves: "One person in this life truly understood me. I'm not alone, I never was, and I never will be."

In this, you and those witnessed by you become undeniably free.

Through this, it all ends with a burst.

A radiant, wondrous, transcendent burst.

—-

A note from the author:

I wrote this in 35 minutes, sobbing and shivering. I trembled, my scalp was overwhelmed with a tingling sensation. Through this, I offered whatever it was that was inside of me.

This was constructed to Kishi Bashi.