Old Belongings

Old belongings lay scattered like memories and the boxes that held them are empty.

These objects, once imbued with such power, lie dormant on the floor. They have been reduced to their base components, stripped of memory and context such things become as plastic, metal and paper of no use to anyone at all.

Pick something up and hold it. How does it make you feel? Do the memories come surging, even now? Do you breathe life into this object as the witch doctor and his fetish?

No. Today there are no memories. Today there is only the sound of blood rushing in your ears like the ocean. You are alive and yet you are not the same life. You are the result of a constant shedding, not merely of skin and cell, but also memory and emotion and ideas.

You are a juxtaposition of every mistake you have made and every victory you have celebrated. You are sawdust-shavings of everyone you have lost. You are the very wind itself, the surging storm of memory, all the sadness and the hate and the mistakes–yes, again, the mistakes–and the victories; again, the victories.

You are a box, emptied. You are the belongings, scattered across the floor. You are none of those things.

You are the thought that perceives these words. You are a vibrant living thread, even now forging towards a future that is yours alone.

Again, you will make mistakes. Again, you will be victorious.