March Fourteenth: What Is Real and Really Is Not

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MARCH FOURTEENTH WHAT IS REAL AND REALLY IS NOT

BY
RYAN SIROIS
Eyes closed. The sound of Indian flute music
threads through the air like a plastic bag caught
in a breeze. A fish free floating, inhale,
exhale. Its eyes large, direct. This goldfish of
sound circles and fades till it is gone. Breathe
in. Breathe Out. In. And out. I sit now where
the room feels white. Where the lightness of pure
air rests as an invisible threshold, resting
center of the room. Not above. Not below. Not
above ground. Not below ground. Balanced. And I
sit.On a pillow.But not a pillow.A cloud. But
really, in actuality, I sit on a couch.
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But the cloud, the pillow, it is a delicate
cushion beneath me. Beneath my folded legs.
Crossed to sit Indian. Back upright. When truly
I am always hunched.A product of always needing
to hide. From kids at school. Because I was so,
so scared of them. Of me. Of who I might be. My
head held down, always. Always down. With an
oversized flannel to hide my body. An oversized
hoodie to hide my face. It made me feel
invisible. Protected. Everyday walking in to a
school, into a battleground of the mind. Everyday
walking forward, into one more day of fear. Of
the unknown. No eye contact. No attention drawn.
No attention.Invisible. Safety in
nothingness.Back upright. Now.On this pillow.
On some cloud.In some room that is not
real.Because this is all in my head.When really
I sit with a computer on my lap.Eyes now half
open. Fully open. Tummy out.Candle lit.
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Indian flutes from another time. Another life.
From hawks above, terracotta dust below. From my
tribe. The ochre under my eye. With only the
faintest of wind dusting my brown leather skin.
Eyes squinted. In another life. When I was him.
When I was the trunk of a tree. When I was the
wind. When everything flowed around me, me
anchored where I sit. Unmoving. Unwavering.
Solid. I am the earth. Fingers rooted below.I
remember that man. Maybe I was that man. Today
he rests closer than before. As I sit on my
cloud, beneath the transparent threshold of
balance, rising,  rising until my crown so softly
penetrates through. Floating somewhere in the
middle. At peace. I imagine personal growth
depicted on a human evolution chart. Where monkey
becomes man, one image after another. Over
millions of years from primate to primal. Those
hunched little apes begin to stand upright, one
rendering after another. Until the most generic
white man is illustrated as our current
representative. And I can see my infant self at
the beginning of this chart. Then the bubbling
little boy learning to walk. To the hunched kid
in school. To the insecure one. The addicted one.
The awakened one. The growing up one. To whatever
I am now. The standing upright one. And maybe
its that simple. One long illustrated timeline
of your life, moving from one period to the next
to the next until there is nothing left.
Extinction.
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Then who knows. A rotting corpse six feet
underground. A pile of ashes scattered across the
ocean. Donated organs thriving in some other
human, maybe. Maybe a heart beating. A lung
breathing. Maybe exhaled energy rising above the
threshold, above the clouds, above the stars,
back into the void. To come back as an Indian
shaman. To come back as a writer. Or maybe
nothing.Maybe absolutely nothing. But with the
adventure of it all, the abstract words, the
stumbling through life. With the adventure of it
all, some of those breadcrumbs are kept. While
some are left to find in another time. Another
life. Always, always, always the need to feel
real. Whole. To find something new everyday and
lose something in the process. Because none of it
is really mine. None of it. It is
ours.Theirs.A product of breadcrumbs. Of
primates and invisible kids.
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For the first time in this life, my heart feels
genuinely warm. Right now. I can feel my heart
and it feels full. With each breath I feel it
stronger. I smile as these words write
themselves, despite the cramp in my neck, it is
all so easy at this time. Right now. With a
snowball of a cat asleep next to me, a husband
cuddled with two dogs in the other room, a family
growing, a tribe forming. Some stuff gets
old.The drugs get old.The excuses get old.The
self-pity gets old.Isolation gets
old.Discontent gets old.Wishing I was something
else gets old. Once the shackles break off,
slowly, one by one, a new perspective begins to
take shape. A liberation. A sort of spiritual
sovereignty takes hold of life and lifts you
above the fold into something not worth trying to
describe with words. Or maybe it doesnt.And
Im just swept away by Indian flute
music.Feeling breezy today.
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Because there is an ebb and flow to it. To life.
Sometimes it seems so right, so breathtakingly
right. And sometimes that overflowing heart is
filled with boiling blood pumping through your
veins, ripping your insides apart. But if I can
get to that place, that place right in the
middle. That invisible threshold.Sitting on my
little cloud. Or pillow.But really on this
couch.Where I can close my eyes and float.Not
really.But close my eyes and just try to clear
my head.For a few minutes. Sometimes I get a
taste of that balance and a riptide of words I
swear I didnt write, flood out of me. And then
Im back to earth.Back to ground-level. Where I
stumble. Where I say shit I shouldnt have. Where
I can be a bull in a China shop or an Indian
shaman somewhere in the desert. Because Im
human. It gets better. It gets a little easier.
Over time.Over time it gets a little bit
easier.Over time I seem to like me a little bit
more.
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I breathe in. I breathe out. In. And out.Until
something inside tells me to stop.Or until I
realize I have to feed the dogs.Stop.Smile.Stop
. The end.