5 years of consciousness

It’s been five years since that wonderful experience December 3, 2002, when I woke up in life and realized the meaning and purpose behind it all: to experience it.

It’s been 1826 days since I stopped sleeping through my existence; instead, I decided to approach everything consciously as if the moment of the experience meant more than anything ever had before.

It’s been quite the ride, they say. For few people my age probably have been burdened by this knowledge, a wisdom I am quite thankful to have received, about what my existence means. Some find religion, or a god; some find happiness through a person; some find travels or careers, poetry or music; some find food, copious amounts of thirst-quenching drinks and glorious conversations with friends. I found the enlightenment of this life that is the experience.

oh yes, I do mean to be so pretentious in the former paragraph, for that shock you have now felt is exactly what I’m talking about. So often we sit and don’t interact. So often we are the pacified babies of this world, the cultural castaways, those deemed too irresponsive to contemplate what is going on around us. Too often fake emotional attachment to icons and all that pretentious shit you see on television guides us. But there’s nothing wrong with that, you see. consider this, friend. I am not wise, I am not knowledgeable, and I have nothing to actually say. I’m more content with merely trying to experience anything at all.

I’ve had the ups and downs that are regular in an existence, and only with reflection does one appreciate those moments. If anything, I’m now entering – already – chapter 9 of this life. Most of them have been written post-December 3, 2002, for the very reason that sleeping through one’s existence doesn’t write too many interesting chapters in the clichéd book of life. To think of what 2007 alone has brought shocks even me, that man who claims to seldom be shocked, at how far I’ve come.

I love the path. I am dabbling in the arts of enjoying and savouring it. Sometimes I hasten the pace and others critique that exact act; other times I am slow and sloth-like, lingering over the flavours that tantalize all senses. It is precisely in this lingering, and this hastened pace, that one gains these experiences. All are positive for their mere existence; even the negative moments bring clarity and its interpretation as the breath of wisdom.

Things to remember, Kyall:

• the woman who smoked while guarding my passport in Taormina, as I hiked to the top of the city for no other reason than exploring what I had in me to hike to a city easily accessible by public transit. The reward was a luxurious view over the depths of a sea who seldom left me alone.

• the walking towards the pub that lovely summer evening, dressed in brown and white, aiming to meet friends after work, only to stumble into the back of Sarah Slean. In passing, I said, “thank you for coming again.” And she knew who I was. of course she did. I’ve left her two collections of poetry and ample meeting opportunities to confirm that event of December 3, 2002, when I reached consciousness at her show.

• the flags of peace that hung in the trees along the shore of Palermo. That secret moment that I savoured only for myself, and shared with no one until now. The very notion that community members would purchase, and then leave, a flag of peace to show all dwellers and visitors alike their commitment to a world of the future where pain and suffering would be alleviated.

• the bus ride, just this morning, when the Aboriginal man said to the excruciatingly impatient bus driver who chided him for “single handedly holding up my day” that patience for passengers was part of his job, nothing more.

• those moments of sheer hatred for the circumstances of living in that cold basement, the fear of being alone after the toxic cocktail of those evil prescriptions in my blood awoke daemons I had no idea had existed on my left and right sides of the brain until then, and the huddling I did into that lovely and hideous couch until I was rescued by those who love me.

• The screaming and yelling and shouting and sheer joys and hatred and ecstasy of all of that music and pain and love that I’ve felt solely because I needed to.

• Those lonely dog eyes, sitting patiently by their poor owner, who kept them roped up to the bus stop as no other home would be found. Those eyes called out to me and said, “We know, you could help. We want the help, but we are bound and determined, quite literally, to our owner. We do not wish for any other circumstance but to feel warmth and nutrition right now.”

• The intensity of exuberance I continued to feel as I discuss the fictitious works I would be able to churn out as the years have rolled along. Some of them have churned; others have not.

• the love with which I coloured in that map to finishing the first book of fiction of my life.

• The unquantifiable amounts of fortune I felt when I left my home in search of a new life, the largest and most intense experience yet. To say an atom would be lonely in an ocean would be an understated and convoluted analogy of how incredibly lucky I felt at that moment when I left the ground and flew away from all those wonderful relationships I was graced with, mostly in these last five years.

• The awkward and intense curiosity I had to be in a church service with a friend, sharing a moment of incredible coordination and falsified conviction to a god I don’t believe in, and yet the high-definition pulsating graphics on the large temporary screen impassioned in me to try to believe.

• The blowing fan that shook my preconceived notions of what friends would do at a bar when surrounded by loving others and incapacitated by alcohol.

• The love that is ingrained when those who are closest have hurt me and still I wish nothing but cleansing of that temporary fixation on revenge.

As you can see, friend, or Kyall, it’s been quite a five years. Quite a moment to reflect, and only in this moment, lost between articles and papers due writing and all these emotions of how to celebrate tomorrow by standing in the relative cold to see an idol, do I feel even more gratitude for this gift of this awareness.

My consciousness is a gift, and if I could bring anything to the world, to the conversation table where we work out all the differences that eons have created, and we solve the problems that only we have left to be debated, it is this. It is the fact that, no, I may not know all of Gramsci’s writings, and no, I may not know exactly why I lack the fortitude to prepare healthier meals, and no, I may not know my path forward starting even in one minute, but that I am aware of my existence right now, and that my ability to experience it is worth my life alone.

Five years. Time for a celebration, because in celebration we may experience that exactly.