How does one record the events of life? Not only for themselves, but the other beings one encounters throughout living? There’s a certain arrogance that must be attained to summarize the scope of a person into a mere flashback. It’s impossible to wrap up the experience of life of another into a hundred books, a thousand snapshots, and countless retelling of stories. Even when I sit down and feel the desire to write, I find myself helpless in even describing myself. This is not exclusive to sentient beings, even the deepest gorge with the coldest water can be stripped soulless of beauty.
 
Of course, some of you are thinking – what in the hell is that little rant about? I don’t know, I can’t tell you. The caution I feel in describing any event, emotion or person is enormous. I often find myself whittling away at my own personal works, tearing jarring sentences apart and eradicating unnecessary remarks. There’s a charge on me, a debt, that I have felt ever since I could hold a pencil. I have within me a voice that is remarkably silent until I take up the task to write. It’s a voice with far more wisdom then I could muster with a thousand years of life. It tempers my fingertips to war ready steel and creates a floor of eggshells as my path. I must tread with utmost care and at the same time, wield my words to pierce on the first strike. There can be no feinting, no lingering battle with an explosive ending. It must be as perfect as it is raw, and my blade must still be hot from the blacksmiths forge. Otherwise, I have animated a corpse. A mere parody of what I truly experienced.
 
Even for my private ramblings, fed to the fire when I am finished recording – that voice is a unrelenting critic. It has the power of a mallet and chisel, continually breaking free my soul from a grotesque stone cage. Everything must count, and nothing must be meaningless. The pain I have suffered in the past only served to sharpen the chisel, and my determination gave power to the mallet. But it is not of my own design what I am becoming, it is at the direction of the voice that has found residence inside me. I do not know if this genderless sound is product of the expectations of my peers, relatives and loves. If this is true, then I assumed the burden of responsibility to my fellow man at too young an age. I do not remember a moment where I was not in contemplation of my relationship to the rest of the world. There are times when I wish I could have had the thoughts and concerns of other inexperienced youths, but that voice has always grabbed me by the ear and told me not to waste time. 
 
I listen, weather and do better. But I cannot help but feel the more that I pursue a life of honor and honesty, that I am distanced even further from those I care for. That is a great loneliness to try and tolerate. This is not to say that I sit on a great judgement throne and scowl contemptuously at those around me. In fact, it is my mercy of intolerable behavior that has brought me the greatest of miseries. I feel separate. An unfinished work in the back of an artists closet, still covered in limestone dust and cloaked in a drop cloth of obscurity. I am, in all truthfulness – becoming and unbecoming. The little things, my style of clothing, the length of my hair, the balance of my walk on the balls of my feet – are all falling away. Their importance lessened and the small amount of pride I carried due to those distinct differences obliterated. I am losing interest in my flesh and the connections therein. Instead, it is the essence within myself that shapes the being that is becoming. I see it reflected in the faces of those who observe me, the unsettlement present in their gazes. The immediate ‘otherness’ I am subjected to and isolated by. I am vulnerable, but not in the way that draws wolves to sheep. With me, nothing does not matter. Every word, every encounter is precious, experienced and recorded.
 
I feel as if I am with others but not among them. And instead of human, I am fragmented glass that throws the watchers soul on examination. My rawness is troublesome and frequently unwanted.
 
And now .. now that I’m sick, I feel like I have been carved down to the barest bones and flesh and that fire inside of me keeps every plate of glass hot and every shelf of rock moldable.