“She writes things with her movements that I for the life of me could never write with a pen.”– Christopher Poindexter
In every facet of human interaction and art you communicate your lived experiences as backdrop to the words you speak and choices you make. Whether you write, paint, dance or listen to the breath of a loved one, you do so within the limits of life as you breathe it. A life that has been shaped by years of forming and nurturing the thoughts, ideas, emotions and expressions that all come together to become us.
Sometimes you align with the circumstances and the ideas you encounter. You play, you laugh and you dance with them, and when the lines blur you ask yourself ‘who is in control? Am I the shaper or the shaped? My very being somehow diverted from the image I was destined to become [1], warped by the exploits and trials I have endured.’
Other times you define yourself in opposition. You spit and you curse and you rage at the world for grievances perceived and cruelties real, but no matter how you seethe and growl you can never break free. You are bound by the role you’ve given yourself and there’s nothing more dangerous than a wounded animal.
You take to the stage, recite your lines or improvise; but everything remains the same. Forever bound by the preconceptions that constitutes you. And when life “commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice to our own lips” [2] you’re but a puppet on a string to the paradigm you have created.
You are the prime moved, not the mover [3]. Your preconceptions breathe, they writhe and they shape you, or you them- if you can tell the difference? You’re a farmer in the field sowing mind and heart, reaping all that you sow in kind [4]. As you pass the bread and wine it is yourself that you eat [5] and as your perceptions move, you sway. You are both being and becoming all that you are and will be.
Are you the choreographer or the dancer? Are you the designer or the design? You are a slave. “Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison you cannot taste or see or touch.” [6] The gift is choice, but not like in the movies. There is no magic pill to take you down the rabbit-hole [7], only the daily grind of yes and no’s and maybes.
In everything you do you interpret your preconceptions and you build upon them [8]. Pebble by pebble, stone by stone you build yourself a monument that no one will remember when you are gone. You live, and for a brief moment you interpret the world around you before you sink back into the unknown to let your heart be weighed. [9]
“So God created man in His own image” [10] and we created Him in ours. Does that make us creator or the created? You are given a candle and told to carry it into the darkness. Where do you shine your light? Do you tread the road to Celestial City? [11] Will you be kissed by the sun like Icarus? [12] You fill the void somehow. How deep can one stare into the abyss before it consume you? What do you gauge it to? Do you drink your life from a measuring glass?
You weep for your cries they are no longer those of a newborn, but the deep, hulking wails of a widower. You drape yourself in the mantle that is you, the inescapable sum of your preconceptions. You’re waiting between worlds, one foot in each grave. Filling the void between the stars with more of the same.
And then it happens, you find yourself in the eyes of another. In the heart that he speaks and the passion that she breathes.
She whispers new life into the dust and the circle is drawn anew. [13]
Words fail you as she writes herself on your soul by the way that she moves.
– D.
Quotes and Otherwise Related Reading:
[1] Imago, Carl Gustav Jung.
[2] MacBeth, Act 1, Scene 7.
[3] Metaphysics, the unmoved mover.
[4] Luke 8:4-15.
[5] Luke 22:19-20.
[6] Film, The Matrix.
[7] Red Pill, Blue Pill.
[8] The Hermeneutical Circle.
[9] Egyptian mythology, Anubis.
[10] Imago Dei
[11] The Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan.
[12] Icarus
[13] Genesis 3:19