Words
My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night
But ah, my foes
and oh, my friends
It gives a lovely light
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Sometimes I think words are barriers to fully enjoying stuff. As humans some of us feel the need to compartmentalise stuff, its clean and makes the confusion and complexity of reality easier to comprehend – that’s a bat, that’s a dog, it’s an apple, the peach tastes sweet. They don’t convey the experience. Things become symbols and code which eventually become meaningless shapes that when connected in a particular pattern can be decrypted via lightwaves that bounce off our retinas transforming to electrons that stimulate a chemical reaction inside our heads. Words are the magic ’spells’ that orchestrate our perception but the simplification of reality to simple shapes and sounds can prevent us from really seeing what’s out there. Some people see beyond these barriers. My mate Adam did.
By ‘limitation’ I mean that a word creates a defined barrier around something, that something starts and something stops. The label compromises the thing, if we want to truly observe ‘it’. Take the word ‘Sun’. The accepted definition is of that big hot yellow ball in the sky that spits out light and heat. But where does the sun start and where does it stop? Is it at the edge of the fire? the edge of the the heat? the edge of the light? If its the light then there is no boundary – this definition is too huge to fully comprehend but I think its the right one. We are inside the sun right now.
Where do people stop? Is it where their body exists in space? Do we occupy finite space or is the edge of us where the light that reflects off our physical form stops? I think we are endless. The ideas we impart, the noises we make, the impressions we make on cmos chips that are converted to binary strings embedded on to magnetic discs, the memories that we conspire in creating, the genetic code in our offspring and the love we create and share.
Adam Theokritoff, a true friend of mine died suddenly at the weekend and I am deeply sad for myself, his family and everyone who loved him that we will not be able to conspire in creating beautiful new memories with him – there were so many left to be created. There is a part of me that feels hollow but I choose to fill it with the joy that I got from being in his radiant bold generous fearless hysterically funny and inspiring company.
The characteristics that impress us of people we admire and love imprint on us and are woven in to our own patterns of behaviour thinking and character. The things he touched, created, and crafted impeccably, the memories created, the battles fought, and the love he generously shared are all things that radiated from Adam – those things still exist. He had an indelible character and made an impression on everyone that knew him.
People that think that the light goes out choose to live in the shade. Love is as endless as the light of the sun burning through space in to infinity.
