8.1
December 2, 2011

Slow Down My Beaten Heart.

A tired manifesto.

I’d like to have time to kneel and smell the flowers, get pollen all over my face and have bees chase me around for being nosy.

I’d like to remember the smell of an early morning; get up with the sun and be the first Eve who ever walked on Earth, naked. Does anybody know what dew is?

I’d like to be a cat when I stretch, feel my cells multiply as I reach the other side of a yawn; decaffeinate my heartbeats, green up my tea.

I’d like to reach a higher scale in my shower symphony, compose an opera piece on the spot and splash the bathroom walls with notes. Wash all my sins away with organic soap.

I’d like to sit still until all fear starves itself and silence is ok; breathe deeply in some universal chest like a healthy organ. And then be born and curious about the world again, pointing at things with chubby fingers, because they are so fresh and new, they haven’t been named yet.

I’d like to answer all my phone calls and mean the how-are-yous and not save my honesty until all the good-byes have been sentenced over my wireless head.

I’d like to be a friend of insects and men. Not be afraid of mirrors. Not even scream at spiders.

I’d like to yogalize my poses, buddhalize my prayers, jesusize my love and hindulize my smile.

I’d like to whisper to only a few people under a blanket instead of shouting at hundreds over the internet rooftops.

I’d like to put a heart in every word even if it ends up so beaten that I run out of all my seven lives before my grave is finished.

I’d like to love you out loud, not only in the dark cave of my mind, with bats hanging out of my eyes, in the opposite direction.

I’d like to speak in complete sentences, instead of SMSing  E-people with LOL-lives always in !!!!! demand for + Facebook #Likes. I’d like to kiss with my lips instead of XO with my keyboard.

I’d like to love my neighbor even when his f***ing TV drives me so f***ing crazy I could reach across the f***ing wall and pull out the morning-show f**ks through the TV screen and get them another f***ing job that doesn’t degrade humanity.

I’d like to be 100% recyclable, untraceable, not remembered, only perceived, non-violent, transparent, like water; donate all my organs, leave only footsteps on a beach, not carbon footprints on my future children’s faces.

I’d like to take naps, lots of naps, preferably in a swing or by a fireplace, preferably in the sun, with a dog drooling over my feet; and never have to hear the sound of another alarm clock again.

I’d like to write letters – at least once a month, with real ink on thick, recycled paper, and seal them with my ring on candle wax; send them away with a carrier pigeon and then wait patiently for the answer, looking down from a castle window. Not type up anxious atoms on a screen, click, double-click to open, close and open, close again, why-won’t-you-load, brainless, annoying piece of s**t?

I’d like to have some faith, just any faith that I can walk on water and not drown; and even if I didn’t have that faith, jump off the boat with no lifesaver, anyway; especially during Shark Week.

I’d like to hear some real birds chirp over my shoulder, not blue, dead birds tweet hashtags with my fingers.

I’d like to finish all the books I start. Review the universal story through every pair of glasses. And after all is said and done, be even more certain that I know nothing yet.

I’d like to love and lose and love again, and lose and love and lose again, because what else is there to do.

I’d like to get up once a week with no other agenda than laziness in bed, just touching feet and feet, and eating breakfast for dinner, off a blanket. And stay alive like that in bed. 24 hours.

I’d like to sit with old people and understand why they’re not in a hurry, rest for a few minutes at the shade of their deep and heavy, bulldog wrinkles; and listen to the stories they tell from when the world didn’t use to end.

I’d like to flush my Blackberry down the toilet and make it seem like an accident.

I’d like to believe that we’re not just numbers plus minutes plus blood, but human issues glued together and dangerously alive; and like all great short stories, we sound familiar, but haven’t really happened any place or time before.

I’d like to have kids so they can remind me of all the things I used to know when I arrived into the world. And when my kids forget, I’d like grandchildren.

I’d like to be more than a word, a sentence or a paragraph. I’d like to be an entire chapter, or better yet, a novel. Be written in detail. Survive the darkness. Rephrase the light.

I’d like to think with no thoughts that the heart is its own country, in which I am allowed without a passport, or any kind of name.

And write with no fingers on that flickering life that passes as we write, incessantly, about how life is passing through our fingers.

 

If you, like me, have overplayed this song for the past ten years, now is not the time to stop.
And if you haven’t, close your eyes and… breathe? 

 

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