Pencils
I stood by a crosscut of one of the cables that hinder the Golden Gate Bridge from embracing a watery doom in the Bay. They give the illusion of a unified piece; yet they are 27,572 unique strands, all the diameter of a pencil. If you calculate each strand as a day in a life, it’s 75 years of cable suspending one half of the Golden Gate, and they would decorate the circumference of the earth thrice.
When I imagine my existence as 27,572 days, I am 18,705 particular strings at the moment. It’s when the strands caught my attention that I began to sort them out.
I parsed these filaments apart even as each day added its new corporeality, 51 years long now and of the uniform girth, grit, and weight of 24 hours. I sought the individual components that may have served me once but harmed me of late.
Self-Esteem was a string so black, so thick with thorns, that it cut even the strongest threads; it eviscerated some, even though it was of equal size to the rest.
I next rooted out Self-Worth. It was sticky, like cast iron that had been shot with aerosol cooking oil and abandoned in an oven that never would have warmed it enough to develop anything but an acrid cloak.
Next came Fear; I knew it by its odor of moldy water and cigarette smoke, and its choking gray shone through.
Perfectionism lurked in its lowest form — green and crawling ivy-like, it was strangling the tangerine of Creativity at the six-year mark and forward to this present infinity. Its constant campaigns to regain its position reign relentless, compelling me into an ever-present fight to keep its tendrils tamed. I coupled it with Compassion which I knew by its velvet more than its value on the wheel.
And Judgement worked its way through the density of days to put itself on display as my savior and my scamp. I deemed it worthy to stay everywhere it lay.
So many strands were stained Melancholy blue. I arranged them by their depth and saturation of hue, and the perfume of my grandfather’s tobacco and oily hair lingered on my fingertips.
I tugged on a sunflower yellow specimen I didn’t recognize, and Joy breathed a sigh of great relief, fragments spraying out their glitter across the span. Only then the deep peony pink of Empathy could pulse through. She reminded me as she bloomed she was a gift from my father, even as the scents of his whisky-soaked childhood wafted forth. It was only among the last few strands I found the deep red of true Safety; nonetheless, throughout the array was the vibrant purple Strength underpinning my every move.
It’s with this collection of pencils in front of me that the minutiae of my life stymies me. I’m not at the ready to unleash a barbaric yawp, nor is the roller of big cigars present just yet. I’ve traveled to the edges of this vast landscape looking for the phoenix rising in a magnificent burst of creation to find only a match, an aggregation of feathers, and a sign proclaiming, “Begin, creature.”
Photo credit Markus Spiske, Unsplash.com
