It took me decades to finally write in English, in a way that could be understood. And I wonder if it will take just a few more years for me to lose that skill?
Not sure how this will work. Or not.
And I also wonder if any more languages will decide to pass through me, before I stop expressing myself using any language at all.
As we travel through the world, the world travels through us. As we paddle through language, it flows through us as well. The people we encounter, encounter us.
Sometimes those we do not encounter, encounter us though. The language we do not speak, changes us. And the world we do not visit also has the power to shape us profoundly.
Here under a ceiling made of heavy wooden beams. The trees that left this wood behind were alive for decades. And they might have been dead for centuries. And before that they were the winners of an incredibly hard to win lottery. Trillions of seeds, deployed into the air, with the hope to sprout and take root and then eventually play that game again.
Same with us all. Winners of lotteries with increasingly diminishing odds? One cell needs to meet another cell, in a system that contains an indescribable amount of possibilities to fail. But not infinite. So after billions of years, here we are.
And I can write this with a few fingertips into the air and then perhaps somehow, by some miracle, another set of eyes will eventually get to read this.
And if these eyes happen to be connected to a brain that can somehow decipher what thoughts are encoded here, then perhaps we will have a brief moment of alignment.
Or I might also just cause an eye-roll.
How mighty of a power is that?
I use my fingertips, touching plastic keys and then, years later, someone rolls their eyes? Miraculous stuff.
It is a beautifully sunny day outside. I am in a dark, cool room, looking at the screen, and then behind it is a slightly open shade. When I close my eyes there is a set of afterimages. Not one bright line though. Several.
As I write this, and my eyes follow the words on the screen, they also record the sunshine as a moving line. Even though we are all somehow still.
Well, the sun isn’t really still, of course and neither is the planet I am on. But to me it feels as if we were.
How many more illusions like this exist? Places I do not see, because I do not have the receptors for them? People I do not understand because, even if we speak the same language, we do not. Words I fail to register. Breaths I skip. Sounds that do not make it to my ears.
Everything is a lottery with indescribably slim odds. And we also have that bias for winners. We remember certain moments because something or someone aligned. But that means nothing about their importance to the world perhaps.
Which were the most beautiful years in the lives of the trees that now make the beams of this ceiling here. And which one were the happiest years since these trees were chopped down, left to dry, cut to size, brought here to hold up a floor, painted with something that slows down rot.
I might need to have some water. Yesterday’s wedding celebration is still pounding in my head. What a wonderful time to be with friends. The weather so perfect. And even when it rained, it seemed to be for the sole reason to get everyone together under the canopy with buffet and bar.
Outside of the window someone speaks Italian. It seems to be very important. But not to me.
Might need to close my eyes and wait for the bright lines to eventually disappear into the calm red shadows under my eyelids, or somewhere there.