Advertisement for the Mountain by Christina Davis
I think I am starting to accept who I really am. I know I have said that before. Long ago. Days ago. What I mean: I am starting to accept that I am changing. Constantly. Often. Who I was yesterday might not be who I am today, and yet, it is still me. It is as if I am a book: you turn a page, and then another, and the story continues. Yesterday I am page 42. Today I am page 76. Tomorrow I am an Introduction, the next day I might be the last paragraph, on the last page. Or: I am another book entirely. But the story is the same. Does that make sense to you?
The thing is, I am always in the middle of changing, in the thick of it, that’s why maybe I don’t notice, or I forget. I often frown upon the world, and life, because why must it be so unpredictable, and difficult, and fleeting? Lately though I realise that that is also me. I wonder now if I will ever catch up, or if I should. I worry when I feel I’m being left behind, that I start running and running, but until when? And at what cost? And by doing that am I also not losing things, giving up things, for this?
Advertisement for the Mountain
Christina DavisThere are two versions of every life.
In the first one, you get a mother, a father,
your very own room.You learn to walk, which is only done by walking.
You learn the past tense of have, which is hunger.You learn to ask almost anything
is to ask it to be over,
as when the lover asks the other“Are you sleeping? Are you beginning
to go away?”(And whether or not you learn it, life does not penetrate
more than five miles above the earth
or reach more than three miles beneath the sea.Life is eight miles long.
You could walk it, and be there before sundown.
Or swim it, or fall it, or crawl it.)The second is told from the point
of view of the sky.
k.l.r
Your blog is beautiful. Thank you for writing.
Carole Anne
I read this as a sort of personal reflection.
The fluidity of thought is pleasing to read.
I will share share this with a close friend too.
Have you shared something personal, you wish to share openly?
Keep writing, I’ll be a gentle reader.
Bill
I have been reading your blog for less than a year and there have been so many moments when what you write or the poem you post parallels so closely with my own life that I wonder if you live inside my head. And yet our actual lives appear to be very, very different. Are these universal human emotions and reactions you capture so perfectly, or merely those of a certain type of person? Why are we not content? Why do we believe that it is okay for life to change when everything around us tells us to settle and be happy with what we have been told we should expect from life? And yet we still suffer this internal doubt about this belief.
Sylvia
Thank you for this site. I discovered it recently and have found much beauty and peace here. Your heartfelt emotions and your courage to capture them in words move me deeply. I appreciate and admire your sensitivity and openness.
I love the self as book analogy. Might we then think of the people we encounter as readers engaged with the pages of our lives, constantly shaping and reshaping one another?