I need something real. A dandelion or a hummingbird. I need a sunset and a simple song, the kind that doesn’t care if it’s been heard before. I need the kind of good clean happiness that comes from watching a caterpillar crawl and imagining the world from its perspective. It has nobody to impress, nothing to prove and nothing to live up to. Maybe it’s hungry or maybe not. It doesn’t know that it’s in a parking lot. It moves forward through time and space like a planet along its orbit, for no reason whatsoever, but it doesn’t care about that. The caterpillar is absolutely honest. It makes the endless stone expanse of the parking lot seem alright.
Outside of that snapshot of time, the caterpillar is doomed. It’s heading deeper into danger unless it turns around, but it doesn’t know that. I could be heading deeper too, in the scheme of things I don’t know where I am any more than the caterpillar and given enough time I’m doomed. Give it more time and the parking lot is doomed, then the forests and the water, the mountains and the Earth and the stars. With or without us time will change everything. Like kicking a block castle, no evidence of what was will remain except for a jumbled up pile of stuff. But we move forward, for no reason whatsoever. We don’t care about that.
I honestly think it’s beautiful. I refuse to believe that the universe has hard feelings towards us or any other creature or structure in general. I believe that if there is a higher power it has no favorites and no bones to pick. The passage of time, whatever its result, is beautiful when taken as a whole. I like that we change and grow old, that seasons pass and we forget all but the most memorable stuff. That we grow feeble, because it forces us to take a new perspective all the time. I like that we don’t have a reason and that everything is temporary, because it’s beautiful that we keep trying anyway. Your personal experience and your reasons for continuing are wholly your own, and that sanctuary of feeling is the only special thing about you. A moment with complete calm is the greatest gift we can hope for in life and it’s the hardest thing to find. But in those rare moments when I can feel everything, when I’m planted to the earth and my head is six feet off the ground, I feel heaven. Even in a parking lot.
I call out, trying to find some peace of mind.
I’m starting to lose control and I don’t seem to know what’s right.
Don’t know how I could turn this vision around,
Just wanna roll the dice and find out how this life plays out.
-Found You There, OCULA & Nathan Ball