MEDITATION (one)

Within the trajectory of creative production and cultural creation, where does fiction merge with history? When does truth become myth? How does memory become glazed through the dual prisms of time and distance? I'm afraid of the etchings of time on skin, though eyes remain shiny, black, and powerful. I can see for a thousand miles in every direction, plot the course of an albatross in flight. With an immense wing span, my imagination soars. But down here, limited by my body, down here, my touch extends a couple of feet, at most. And I'm afraid of these lines that remind me of the time I have left to produce and help create a change in this world, believing in the power of artistry and creativity and beliefs and children and pure, pure, pure imagination to transform, to help effect change. Yet I question myself daily about my creations and abilities. How do words flow so succintly, so gloriously from other's mouths, while I struggle daily to create a perfect union with the thoughts in my mind and the words that slowly fill up a page, then two, finally getting to a point where meaning and intent no longer merge. But the words keep coming at a discordant pace from the thought. It's senseless. I wish I had greater mastery of the art of storytelling, but that has been lost in the migrations, the translations, the transitions, even in the genesis of the languages I hold. I'm confronted with legacies of conquests daily. Though speaking many languages, I am not fully comfortable in speaking one; not fluent in any tongue. Sometimes, I become lost in imagining a world where knowing--or is that owning?--language,is as they say, a snap. No, I don't mean to become a fluidic entity, able to move through boundaries and grammar, rules and vocabularies, learned or instinctual (depending on who to believe) response to concepts, and words, words, words with ease of air, or imagination. And I wish that speaking and language and communication and tongues and bodies, did not require so much maintenance, so much resolve.