Haibun: The Stories
As my mind wanders beyond my own experiences and into the stories of others, I never feel the edges of my mental terrain. Drifting along, I stay with the stories of consciousness.
There’s little to no thought given to the salt bed of the Southwest giving away to unveil all these interesting canyons and arches. For me, it is so much easier to imagine different people coming upon these wonders and taking it all in. And to be honest, it’s even easier to imagine what it was like to uncover it as an imperialist there to profit from it because that’s still the backbone of our culture and of the outdoor brands. Imperialism has almost become the neurosystem of my brain.
It becomes harder to think of these red rocks just being what they are without identifiers like color or shape or style, but instead, as things that just exist.
I take the blame for this. I spend all day helping categorizing and rearranging my world. I do it for work and leisurely do it with my podcast app or picking Netflix shows to watch. Always ordering and picking, finding a better order. No just being.
Yet if I just kept being, no hold on the thoughts that passed my mind, no ordering, prioritizing, then maybe my ability to draft past stories rooted in consciousness might open up and be free.
before we could say, “that’s red”
spring just melts away
