Beyond the confines of language

Once, fifteen years ago, meandering down a dirt path during a sunset filled moment in a foreign country, after days of solitude and reflection, and with nothing to occupy my mind but my mind itself (rare these days, in our always-connected world), I looked up at the blossoming sky and drew a fast breath.

The sky was an indescribably shade. There were layers of colors in that spectacle that to my limited eye could only be called "blazing sunset," but on canvas, even with the most succulent of oils or sophisticated of cameras, I knew could never be replicated. My soul said aloud, of its own accord (to the crickets and Howler monkeys should they have been listening, though surely not, as I think we were all busy watching in awe):

"There is no name for that color."

I have thought of these words many times since, and repeated them ad nauseum as an intimate and personal mantra, my secret magic with the Universe, whenever nature's bounty catches me visually off guard. In fact these words are more of a stand-in now, a proxy for when something is far too much, far more than a human could possibly know or experience; some inferior fraction of larger whole.

When I think back to its origins though, that exact, nameless hue, on that specific night, scorched forever to memory, that maybe only me and the butterflies could see, or those with a truly present and transcendent state of mind, I stood in a stupor until the color had finally dissolved into a quite spectacular, if ordinary, pinkish orange. Changed, I went on my way.

Swim

First, a cruel push into the unknown, his small lizard brain shutting down breath as he plunged below the surface, surviving or perhaps remembering, thrust once from, and then into, a liquid world. Wide-eyed and sputtering he emerged, and this is when knowing began.

Then it was explored, this stuff that makes wet, a way to wash, comfortable at home. A game too, dunking mouth and nose, kicking one foot and then two. Surprise! There are more kinds of water, big ones and blue ones, puddle ones, salty ones. Floating seats and arm floats, the battling of noodles and balls. Holding and clinging first to momma, then to the side wall, like a quivering mouse, like a sucker fish. Kicking revisited, with purpose now: get mommy wet, faster like running, behind you like Superman. Blowing bubbles, a master skill all its own, practiced above and below, blowing like the wind, out like a birthday candle, ho hum, hum, hum. Laying back, relaxing, head on mommy's shoulder like a pillow now, looking up at beams and clouds. Then work, two tasks at once, blowing while kicking, walking not falling, motorboat faster and faster. Dunking by accident, then on purpose, jumping. Circles with arms. Overconfident, scolded, no running. Paddle like a dog, like a beaver. Diving.

Small and granular tasks—unique but meaningfully related, like grains of sand on a beach—a boy learns to swim.

At the end of a journey: a riddle

At the end of a long travel experience we often say we need a vacation from our vacation. You know those trips: disrupted sleep schedules, uncomfortable quarters, too-crammed schedules, the inevitable overindulgence in rich foods and booze. You come back heavy, exhausted, spent, dreading the day you have to do it all again. What is it about a trip that sucks the juice right out of you?

Then there are those rare and enriching journeys, so often from our youth, that do the opposite: you sleep and then sleep some more, you move your body in new ways, you eat weird stuff, you hike it all off in nature. You have time to journal. You eat exotic fruits. Refreshed, tanned to the color your skin was meant to be, you come back brimming with tales and plans to do it all again soon.

What's the difference between the two? What changed between then and now? What brought about this quantum leap?

I'll leave this puzzle open, ready for the solving, a one word answer, for the all-too-knowing to complete.

Spoken, and unspoken hunger

This political season, I hunger only for this: that the 2016 election and its resulting nomination of Donald J. Trump for president brings about such an outcry, such a flood of distemper, that the uprising against hate and oppression and the demand for love, tolerance, and bi-partisanship builds into an unavoidable, leveling tsunami of change. Rest assured the levies will break; we are simply feeling the gathering pressure.

Of course, the above is a sentiment that is mostly unspeakable. It's too optimistic, too whimsical, too far off in the distance. Much damage can be done while we await some kind of revolution, for this is a restless, boiling sea. But on the other hand, it might well be the opposite: this tempest is upon us, the storm too close to see. We are in a dustless cyclone of mutiny, bound for Oz, passing through a dark cloud we won't recognize until we pop out the other side.

A hard freeze

It was an aching cold. The boy wanted to go out and see about the traps, but there was a cardinal sitting on the branch, staring at him—no way was he going to disturb it. The color was striking, the moment silent, breaking the spell seemed impossible. Who would move first?

After three frozen seconds, the bird quivered its feathers and startled the boy from his reverie. Shaking his head clear, the boy realized he'd just felt an entire three months go by, in that exact spot, as if their fates were sealed forever.

Three minutes of contemplating this vision, and tired from setting traps that failed to yield, the boy relaxed and rested there, considering carefully this bright and luminous creature, this bird who failed to fly south, who remained, rigid, considering him back, still as a frozen pond.

Three hours later and then three days of a hard freeze, both boy and bird sat silently, neither moving to breathe. In fact neither drew a breath at all, for the frost had set in quickly; the boy had fallen asleep, and the bird had finally starved in place.

Three months later, after that hard freeze thawed, the sun warmed and melted the ice that covered them both. Who would move first?  The spell, refusing to break, let nature take its intended course.

The dream

They were hiring a new nanny. The day started as a series of interviews and turned a into a day long marathon of endurance: unforeseen antics and distractions meant there was only a position for the last competent man-or-woman standing. Dangerous challenges included a tree falling on their house, their crafty toddler darting away and getting lost in a crowd, and the children—there were more of them by then—starving in an apocalyptic desert. This bizarre casting call for a new childcare provider began to to unfold much like an episode of Survivor, replete with a love interest (her handsome neighbor) revealing his distrust for certain characters, confessional style, in a gesture of strategy and solidarity. To which she got to repay him with white hot looks of gratitude, and the promise of a potential future make-out, in the off camera of her mind.

Relics of a distant past

There was a time when I believed, quite strongly, that one's memories are made up entirely of the physical objects one leaves behind. Mementos from your travels trigger you like a trip cord; a dusty box of relics spill out memories like old coins. Photos especially, printed on paper, are real imprints of your experiences. Evidence of you, there, with that tree, that outfit, that expression you hated at the time, but now, just now, it's the only expression you ever made on that day and thank god for it. I think about this as the world changes, so that photos are now but wisps of cloud, VR replaces physicality, and souvenirs, trinkets, and objects, whose sole purpose are memory and place, have become passé. With more ways to document and remember, there is so little to touch and hold. Will the lines of memory and experience blur so it'll be easy to relive our pasts? Or will memory get buried like a newsfeed, like an ancient city encased in dust, layer upon layer of of new encounters building up until there's no way to chisel in?