“Don’t fill your plate to the edge if you know you won’t be able to finish it” – Sister
“Don’t carry all the grocery bags up the stairs. We’ll go and come in rounds.” -Mom
“You’re holding onto too much. You need to let things go.” – Dad
“Still?”- Friends
drag
Blunt in one hand and camera in another, I remember thinking how I wished I had more hands. Just a few more. Three, maybe. Or four.
Four seems ideal. I’m more fond of even numbers, anyway.
But, yes. More hands.
More hands to hold more things.
Like my sandwich that’s probably getting cold on the sand.
I wonder how soggy it got with all of this beach humidity eating into it. It’ll probably look like heaven at bay, come the last drag. Even though it has tomatoes in it, and I hate tomatoes. Double the damn sog.
And my phone that’s probably going off in my bag. So many goddamn texts I still need to answer. How long has it been now, anyway? Four, maybe five weeks?
The anxiety of all the thumb action I’ll have to do is starting to settle.
drag
There’s supposed to be a full moon tonight. I refuse to leave until I’ve captured a decent enough photo to gloat about between me and myself while editing.
The tides were getting high, and my jeans were already wet to the middle of my thighs. I was starting to feel heavy from the waist down and air-head light from the belly button up. Sitting down never felt more relaxing.
I grabbed my phone and scrolled through the list for someone who I knew wouldn’t respond back immediately.
I laughed at how annoyed my thumbs felt. Stiff and refusing
drag
Whatever.
I just wish I had more hands.
More hands to hold more things.
Usually my mind’d be running through cheese rings of fire by now; but, here I am, three (or four) drags later and the same stupid thought.
I couldn’t bring myself to think of a solid enough reason aside from knowing how difficult I find letting go can be. Or how uncomfortable feeling weightless enough to not have thoughts racing through my mind makes me. Sort of like having to constantly feel burdened because anything else feels a bit too foreign for my liking. That need to over-analyze is, in a way, what grounds me.
Or perhaps it’s because I find it difficult to be, without having.
Because I find it difficult to feel anything less than plural.
Singular.
drag
Single.
drag
So often, we restrict our sense of singularity and it’s ability of happening only to when we’re reintroduced to ourselves as “single”.
s i n g l e.
A term we’ve somehow managed to pair with “alone”.
And the more lonesome the definition of “single” gets, the longer we allow our minds to rummage in the perception of needing to pass through a blinding darkness to find an equally or less blinding light, while synonymizing (that’s not a word) “dark” with “misery” and “light” with “joy”.
In doing so, we strip the terms “dark” and “light” of their own individual freedoms to exist beyond what we allow them to be. To exceed far beyond our mere human limitations.
To stand, on their own accord, with a pair of eyes that can make visible what we choose to deny ourselves of because of the standards we’ve been made to live up to.
We forget that the most liberating of shades exist between both spectrums. Both solids.
We introduce them to ourselves and others with and through the limiting definitions that we often do, because we’ve constantly been told that “black means black” and “white means white”, and all of what’s held in between isn’t as necessary. It doesn’t hold as true to value. And in the process, we neglect all that came before them. The in betweens that allow both ends to meet. The world that exists despite and because of both differences.
We deny black of its need to mix and mold and trial and error with other colors to reach the intensity we’ve come to know it as, today; just as we deny white of its once darkened roots. Black into grey, which in and of itself is endless in its shades, to black, again, which is already an array of colors all on its own.
drag
Holy shit.
And so maybe this is why we don’t realize that both us, and them — our others — have the full and whole capacity of coexisting together, as well as beyond one another. We often mistake that being “in love” and immersing ourselves and investing our time and sharing our being with another means giving up our sense to “discover” and “wander” and “seek to find”.
And if we’re lucky enough to understand that love doesn’t mean the lack of all of the above, we limit ourselves to the notion that we must discover and wander and find with and through them, and often times, only them.
And I think that there and then, is where and when, our understanding of singularity begins to diminish.
When we rely on others to feel whole. When love becomes synonymous with one person, and one person becomes synonymous with a lifetime.
Why is it that we don’t we give ourselves much room to expand beyond this little circle?
This idea of “oneness”.
We forget that feeling single, and feeling self, and feeling You, never lasts for more than just a single moment. Just a single moment. Two, if we’re lucky enough to hold onto it for that long.
Because moments were created with one job.
With a single characteristic: fleeting.
What lasts are the impressions that moments tend to leave, as well as how we choose to carry them out.
It’ll always be a matter of what you allow it to make out of you. And you, of it.
This “moment” doesn’t have a set standard; nor does it have a set time.
It can be found during times that are as simple as hiking a mountain and finally reaching its peak: victory.
Or looking into the ocean and realizing how little you are in the midst of everything: contentment.
Or looking at a full moon and remembering Yourself: fullness.
These are your moments.
Moments that give way to your singularity.
Moments that define your being.
I wish we saw our greatness.
I wish we understood how exceptionally singular we are.
Shit, my sandwich.
Triple the sog.
– Israa Ismaeil
Conception 