 |
|
|
Waiting for Sunrise
By Mary Rapach
Click here if you'd like to exchange critiques
Yesterday morning I saw the sun rise, and it was glorious. I had been speaking with Kyla all night, and I couldn’t tear myself away…A selfish woman, I revel in the strains of her voice…speaking, singing, sighing… the breath that washes over me just sitting there…I can’t control myself… I simply have to laugh, to sing, to do anything but just sit…and sleep. There is too much out there for me, and I feel the need to touch it all. I haven’t always felt this way, as the pages prior of this tome can certainly attest to… However, I do now and it is magnificent! There is a world out there to be experienced, and for the first time in my life, I feel myself as a part of it instead of its’ forgotten stepchild.
And so, at 4 am, unable to greet the absurdist nightmares which plague me daily, I decided to experience something new… lucky for me, I got to share the experience with her. I’ve adopted a spot on the Loyola University Campus at the end of Albion where I go to experience the lake - generally in the evenings when the street lights detract from it’s beauty a bit, and I feel more like a trespasser than a transcendentalist. This morning, though, I was there as the fire of the sun pierced the horizon and brought forth another glorious day. As the horizon shifted, I sat there in my driver’s seat gazing over the lake, mesmerized.
How does one adequately describe the pinnacle of ecstasy? I haven’t the words. I’ve thought time and again about how to possibly bring forth on this page the glory of that moment, and yet nothing comes. Watching the navy sky being pushed upwards as a burgundy strip of fire lined the horizon, I thought of the future…and the potency of a single day. Kyla and I talked of the people passing her in their cars, heading out to work and living though not living at all. Almost everyone misses it…the wonder of where this day comes from and how spectacularly lucky we are that we have the power to affect where it goes.
I truly am in love. It is the only way to explain this need to cling to the mysteries. As I watched the pink haze of the sun overtaking the lake, the varied blues of the water fading into each other and the moon stalwartly maintaining its’ position in the sky until the last possible moment, I felt at peace. Experiencing this on my own, I would be euphoric… listening to her voice along with it, I was in heaven. To sit there, if only for a moment, with her would make months worth of sleepless nights bearable, as I would have that to return to. That delightful image, that fantasized “memory” - it haunts me and as a writer, the imagery I create is more potent than any reality and so that vision sustains me. In meditation, frequently one is told to create a “perfect place” to become one with their breath, one with themselves. In my reality, that perfect place has been and will be again, and when meditating, all I do is try to erase the horrifying past realities of this life and replace it with the absolute memory of beaches past from my others.
Our embrace, though not reality, had sustained us in lifetimes past. Love had fueled quick burning fires throughout the millenia for us two - meeting, existing, discovering ourselves and a life outside ourselves, but never completing the journey. Today…this new day which we, though miles apart, had greeted together… I feel as if the journey has begun again…only this time no map is necessary. We two exist merely TO exist, and in that we find that the only way to do so is as the single entity from which we originated.
Some may describe this journey as the way in which I have found my heart - which is true, as she cause my blood to flow warm within me; as she causes me to live and breathe and function. Some may describe it as the way in which I have found my love - which is true, as she causes me to feel…not just her presence but the goodness and light of the world around me… to feel, to sense…to enjoy and to spread my ecstasy throughout the place in which I live in thanksgiving, hopefully to propagate a mere percentage of the love I feel, the love I know. Some may say I’ve found my soul, which is true because in me she sees a life apart from all else - that faction of my being which is protected by all else I’ve created within.
I say I’ve found myself, as I finally know who I am and partially what’s ahead. Forged before the titans, this being which was my original casing has finally been reunified - and it is unstoppable. I curse the gods for causing me to lose that which has taken millenia to recover, but will be forever grateful that they saw fit to help me find my way back.
