The first one was supposed to be about writing. How writing can be everything for one and how the act of writing is cleansing, processing, liberating, to the point it becomes a mandate for one to write. Also about how writing and living, however exhilarating these two activities can be, are almost one and the same. How both can feel like one is waltzing on a trampoline, never quite knowing what comes next and how exactly the pliable surface below one’s feet will respond to the next movement. How much it can feel like hard work and yet how ridiculous it may look from the outside. How it does not necessarily make any sense to someone watching from the outside but can be the only thing one knows how to do when getting on a trampoline.
And then, these past few days I slammed hard into the trampoline (once again). To the point that it didn’t support my weight anymore and I hit the ground below in a minuscule and intimate act of free falling. When free falling happens, in better moments it can feel like freedom. When it happens in worse moments, it amounts to the most utter and basic fright. So much so that one’s senses entirely take leave and all that remains is the cruel sensation of thumping against the ground. No bleeding, just another scrape. It is most lonely, detached, humiliating and still deeply human. In this state of being beaten and senseless, the only thing that is real is a will to end it all. A will so strong that it will wipe out in one swift motion any other thought from one’s head and fill out every tiny morsel of one’s being. If nothing makes sense anymore, this still feels like it should.
And then, in the same dark and cold vein, it begins to dawn on one that there is nothing in the way of senses: no smell, no touch, no light, no sounds, no taste, no other soul nearby. It is perfectly senseless and stakeless. But then ones begin to question: does it even make sense to live a senseless life? No answer from anywhere, just a mental dial tone. And slowly, intermittently, one keeps climbing back on top of the trampoline, starting to move again. The movements feel unnatural, over the top, crafting somewhat of a loud cry in gestures, and the mat begins to respond. It pushes one around, inscrutable and uncertain. One step becomes another. We gently keep waltzing on a trampoline.
Waltzing On A Trampoline 