Breathe Deep--On the First Day After

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abby,

Sorry, I most definitely took a different assignment. I wrote this idea because I remember vividly different specific times in my life that I've felt a new level of consciousness or human awareness. What I've written is an attempt to catch one of these realizations in the act, so to speak...or to describe the feeling I guess...

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I awoke shortly there after, intently gazing down at my own hands. As I
repeatedly clenched and relaxed the muscles in my fingers, the physical
peculiarity of the human hand impressed itself upon me. We have arms, hands, and fingers to be the most loyal of slaves in our manipulation of the world. And through this ability to clutch and modify the world flows most of our human meaning. As I looked at my hands, the thought formed that this is a weapon. These pull triggers and conduct firing squads, these make bombs, and pave wetlands. And these hands are a most magical wand. They feed the hungry, make beautiful music, and heal the sick. I find it most difficult to express with adequate force that flash that shiver, that impact of passionate recognition. At first it scared me. But it was then that I became the most powerful, most liberated man on earth. It was at this point that I realized that I was 20 feet tall, that I was god, that I was genius, that I was Alive.

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This gives me the imagery of a human hatching itself out of an egg. Or a man emerging from the bottom of the ocean, splitting the water’s surface, and taking his first breath of air. Everyday people are constantly searching for meaning in this world—taking bits and pieces of their human experiences, abstractly stringing them together and trying to harness and comprehend their subjective realities. Some try to objectify their realities, making their world black and white, simplistic, dogmatic, and often self defeating (this is what can make bigots and murderers). I think that most of our human meaning comes not from recognizing and understanding our own personal subjectivity (although I find this incredibly important), but rather realizing and embracing our inherent, innate, intrinsic potentials and freedoms. I think it’s both tremendously liberating and tremendously terrifying to think of the implications of this human reality.

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p.s. I stole this sentence from nobokov, "I find it most difficult to express with adequate force that flash that shiver, that impact of passionate
recognition"