A Life Saved, a Soul Redeemed, a Spirit Breathing
Why my friends on Medium mean what they do to me
I’m in a different place now, a different world. I have always known it existed yet I chose to forsake it.
I knew what was behind the door to the room I now frequent most. Yet each time the world was described to me all I could see were gray words. All I could hear were long fields of cracked shale.
I miss my world. The one I was born to. Falling through the skies, climbing the sides of mountains only to run down a cliff with nothing but a rope on my waist so I could do it again. Spelunking down to the edge of the yellow on the pressure gauge feeling my heart want so badly to beat fast yet knowing that if I let it I could lose a minute or more of underwater wonder.
Hoping the dive shop was right when they said that gators don’t do sinkholes.
That’s all gone now. Not the world I was born to, just my ability to live there and that’s the hardest part. I shouted “Hello” when I first arrived here and heard only emails of encouragement from my old world in return. Kind words yet hardly conversation. Loneliness creeps quietly but I knew its gait and it prowled under my feet with a constancy that eventually felt normal. I dropped my vices at the roadside, no amount of alcohol or depression would make anything better. The alcohol tries desperately to hang on, it was the hardest vice to end yet the easiest, for many things feed depression. The alcohol just acts as adrenalin. The depression keeps pace well. It’s not being fed as well as it was but I know it feeds on the scraps left behind from the loneliness that is stuck on my soles and seeps from my soul.
And so I turned and faced this world, the one that screamed cracked grayness at me all these years.
I walked from my vices. I can still hear their snickers as they follow at my back, confident in their ability to hitch a ride on me again like so many parasites.
I took a few steps and picked up some shale, I wished there was a pond to skim it on. Then I heard water.
I thanked the shale, feeling a bit foolish about it, and the shale thanked me back for my kind words. I looked again and saw there was no shale at all.
Rather I was holding the thoughts and words of an amazingly creative artist. An intelligent, empathic wordsmith of an artist. And my heart smiled just a bit but my soul! Oh my soul! My soul woke up and woke my spirit along the way for good measure.
I wanted to pick up all the shale one by one to find more that felt comfortable to me in my new reality.
I was exhilarated. Each writer had their own shale in their own self-designed color. This world wasn’t gray at all! Its colors and forms were only limited by those reading. The best of the artists made sure you made the experience of their words yours as much as theirs. You could cause any dream to become real here.
Indeed, the very next piece of shale mirrored the first save the color, no sharp edges, crazy smart and empathic and way more polite than anyone in my old world would ever believe. I am quite certain it was crafted by a librarian.
The words written in this world were amazing. They didn’t just create visions of landscapes and realities, they swirled together amongst each other turning into dreams that allowed each person who chose to absorb them to interpret them in their own way just as music is beautiful, with meanings often perceived differently by different listeners.
Within another day I had found a third perfect shale. The verbiage was individual in its olde world familiarity yet the art just as creative, beautiful, unique, and inclusive as the others.
I will not try to speak their language, I don’t know how, nor do I ever see myself becoming so fluent. I will however try to learn the aspects of weaving dreams. I not only want to show the peoples of this world the thanks I have for their sharing by helping spread the beauty of their art, I also want to thank them for their unintentional waking of the me that I thought was dead or at the least dying. My old world can still hear my writing should they choose to visit. Even though I can no longer live there I want to give everyone there the chance to see what I have seen, in their own mind’s colors.
No matter how long I am in any world I know I have something I have not had in a very long time, friends. Friends whom I can relate to, who cause my heart to smile, who join me in intelligent conversation. I am sustained by the presence of their sincerity and their artistic mastery of the craft.
Thank you, my friends, thank you for just being you. I am so glad to have met you. From The Fine Rabble to A Smiling World and beyond we are all artists accepting each other’s individuality as we share ours. We are a community of artists that sustain ourselves and each other by breathing with our spirits and speaking with our souls.
And So We Write
~Phil~
The Players in order of appearance:
The first person I met in this particular world. I find a lot of her poems to be both focused and abstract in perfect complement. She is my closest friend on Medium and off. Just a wonderful human being with creativity bursting from her. Great taste in music too. This story was inspired in part by her story
The Librarian Extraordinaire. Writing poems as easily as we smile on a wonderful day. She’s the one who will think “Oh look, a bird struggling to fly in a headwind over the water while a fish swims so easily just below the surface and all the world too busy dropping their heads against the nature of it all to notice. I think I’ll write a poem about it.” And it will be good.
“Conjurer Of Words — Poet of Time — Doctor Of Fun” from her landing page. When she conjures her words and weaves them together with the mysticism of centuries many of her stories prod a gentle essence of Shakespeare that adds an incredible light flavor of times past to her works.
My editor at A Smiling World. Simple to describe. Someone took a vat of sheer adrenaline, froze it solid at zero degrees kelvin, pulled it out, immediately shaved it, formed it into a woman, topped it with a hyper-intelligent, hyper-organized, hyper-thoughtful brain (c’mon she’s pure adrenaline), added the heart of a triathlete grafted with the heart of a saint then slid it all into a comfortable skin. Visit A Smiling World and you’ll get it. Hi Veronica, I am forever grateful for the relaxed thought and guidance you’ve provided as I get started.
He took the time to read one of my stories and comment. I replied and in hindsight, I came off a bit snarky. He replied with the utmost grace and I realized I had just met a truly intelligent gentleman. His comments caused me to realize that I needed to address a point of view in a story that I had not and James I sincerely thank you for replying back. I look forward to your comments and input on the second installment of my homeless stories.
I also promise everyone I will no longer reply to comments or stories when I wake up way too early, am still in bed, and am nowhere near my glasses. Sorry ‘bout that James.
