27.11.12

These nights (written 12/10/2011)


I’ve had heavy nights where I fell the gravity pull my soul down into my body condensing it thick at the bottom of my heart until it spills out into my lungs and I’m coughing myself up. These nights my thoughts escape the dungeons of my brain brandishing swords made of ghosts screaming of nightmare memories, surrounding me, capturing my peace and replacing my blood with questions I thought I once had answers to but that I lost in the translation of becoming a man.

I shake and convulse as I fall through the floor and forget the space I’m in trying to grasp on to the little bit of strength I have but canyons form beneath me running rich with rivers of trials. Desperate to swallow me like a ship in a storm the ocean pounding like my heart. I can hear my grandmother in the river telling me she will beat her cancer so she can hold my children in her arms. Her eyes there and gone, innocent and simple like Christmas lights on a tree. So beautiful that they need only exist to know the secrets of the universe. I can feel the road escaping me beneath the wheels of my car where inside I take home a friend. The night so wrong, his house no longer his home, his mom no longer his mother. I still know exactly what it is like when my chest collapses and my bones surrender. The way my heart crawled into itself where it cried knowing that I had let my love down. Every muscle that it took for her to frown condemning me to a black box where words and light have never existed because there was never anything worth hearing, never anything worth seeing in that darkness I’ve filled with these empty thoughts of divorce, damnation and death. I don’t feel these pasts, I remember them. Their life was cut away from them, a knife slicing through the middle removing any words from my mouth any sound from my ears. 

It is these nights that beauty is taken hostage and men can become mortal again. Where dreams most die and the world spins slightly slower to let you catch up to it. These nights when I see the world through my brain, cold, systematical, and alone in a flawed and dystopian life. It’s these nights when I decide I want to spend the rest of my life seeing through my heart.

The graduation

Two years ago I wasn't who I am. The days have come and gone and come and gone again and I'm still not sure I'm even on the same map I sat staring at when I began the journey. It's not all wrong, but I don't think I ever knew which way was right.

 I can't pause life, but I could pause this blog. Pause my thoughts and ramblings. I could leave you suspended as if though that could interrupt my present when all it has done is changed the theme. Am I better now? Absolutely. I'm not alone. In location or spirit, I have guides and hands and hearts in my head. They join my voice singing the anthem of not-quite-teens and unyet-adults. So many areas were explored, ideas that never came to be. But the variety that came of it was astounding. How many times I've commented on the vastness of our planet.

Mirroring these words line by line my life unfolds. Unsure of the direction of this rant I stumble forward. Currently in a fore-word in the novel sure to take place. I will find exactly where I need to be because I know where I want to be. She is where I am, that's all I need. Where we will be, that's what I want.

My feet step forward. The days keep on. The nights remain aloof. She smiles at me. It's these things that will keep me going. I will remember the things I've lost or left behind and keep dear the things I can hold. Tangible or not, my future is where I'm going and I'll be damned if it isn't everything I've always wanted. 

-Taylor J. Pridgen
-Forward-Bound

Mr. E (An unpublished post from years ago)

Dear Mr.E,
What selfish internal reason allows you to keep things to yourself in the way that you do? What kind of self arrogant bastard isn't willing to share among fellow humans, the answers that plague them among a continuous cycle of questioning. In a system so ultimately pointless and futile that the fulfillment of understanding is crucial to a meaning of life; and you're the one who knows it all. Do you feel self important? Are you proud of yourself for keeping steadfast to your privileges? A mock opression that looks down upon us all because for some cosmic reason (which I'm sure only you know) you were selected to be the one with the answers and as such became more worthy than your weight in gold. The world has eyes on you, waiting on you, waiting on your screw ups but expecting your solutions. The heroic Atlas. And I hope throughout your infinite wisdom that you'll eventual remove yourself from this quasi-pedistal you appear to live on and join our level of utter chaos and confusion, because ultimately I am the jealous, selfish one of you knowing the obvious solutions to the complex problems. I want to be you. I want your talents, your knowledge, your background. And yet, I hate you for all of it.
-Sincerely,
Taylor J. Pridgen

ps- Do you ever miss asking questions?