Vapor Shaper
Messing with the best of intentions and always falling just short of the ever-inflating expectations of myself.
I follow the smoky finger beckoning me like a floating cartoon towards the scent of some kind of steamy primordial vapor, freshly leaking from the Earth’s crusty oven, hypnotically illusive, and made with love.
Yet while I dip and dive through this mystic haze with eyes half-closed in olfactory ecstasy, I remain oblivious to the reality that there is no magic window pie. There is no hoarded gold straining to hold the majesty of multi-colored arches in the air. And when I finally close my nose and descend again into hunchbacked commonality and reside myself to the trivial life of a pixel among the static, I can see the smoke over our heads forcing us into reluctantly counting cracks in the concrete and keeping us from standing up straight. Keeping us from peaking over the plumes of oppressive stench and realizing the enchanting smell we so adored before that knocked our feet from the floor wasn’t anything so esoteric and alien, but simply a few healthy gulps of fresh air.
How then do we stay above the fray?
Elevate from grey until no strain remains?
Can we float forever towards a freshly baked animated mirage?
Seems sketchy, but I want to believe I’m not salivating in vain.
I want to understand the secret to the sorcery that seems to keep so many sailing. The eternally airborne. Those who chose to follow their nose.
Is it so simple, to flip north and south?
Just breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth?
I’ll follow the scent with my head on the hunt,
but it’s a habit to grab at the saplings that sprout.
They may seem so sturdy, strong with true root,
but they still act as anchors to the airhead balloon.
Like I’m holding onto the branches of the little plants I’ve managed to grow, yet my ass is in the air, string around my waist attached to an inflated spirit trying to pull me forward, holding me floating just above the drab cushion of cumulus that keeps so many cloistered and coughing. If I let go I’m leaving behind the work and toil of tribal connection and cultivated personal identity just to float wherever the wind fells like blowing me, but, if instead I cut the cord to what keeps me in the clouds, I risk losing those electric impulses to defy gravity entirely, of forgetting the art of throwing myself at the ground and missing.
I suppose the illustration of it all will have to suffice as substitute for revelation for now. As usual, a temporary salve. Fresh dressing over the forever bleeding wound separating heart and mind.
Perhaps, if they could switch places for a day, they could better understand the others predicament.
Perhaps, if we all made a similar trade with our neighbors, our souls could do the same.
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