keep breathing

A point is that which has no part, a line is breadthless length. There is a theoretical thought where parallel lines meet, and the angle of a circle to the perpendicular of its diameter is less than a right angle and greater than everything else. Nature is an intrinsic principle of motion, and luck an accidental cause. Gilgamesh is the first epic story we have record of, and mankind was already grappling with glory and death, already keenly aware that we are and are not something more than dust on the wind. God wrote the world word by shining word but every step we make is mortal choice.

Sometimes I walk out my door in the morning and the sky is a pale blue-purple poem from somewhere out of time. I could define the four causes for you, but not where I’m going or if I’ll get there. When I say keep breathing, when I write it in my planner, on your hand, in my sketchbook, on the wall, keepbreathingkeepbreathingkeepbreathing, I’m not talking about how when you’re this tired every breath catches (they do) or how sometimes when you cough too hard your lungs forget their function (they do). I mean: slow down. I mean: your chest was never meant to hold the cosmos, only to open onto infinity. I mean: everything will still be out there – unclench your fists, relax your shoulders, take a breath. Take a breath. Take a breath. Let the world narrow back down, just for a moment, to the stubborn beat of your heart and the nothing/everything moment of Now.

There is a bird that eats bones, and a deer the size of a mouse, and beasts with throats that are teeth all the way down; there are still Things in the ocean that we’ve never seen but we do have a picture of a black hole now. The act of writing changes our brains on a fundamental level and as the tools we make keep getting smarter we lose track of the ways they’re changing us. When I say keep breathing I mean: it all matters and it always will, but it’s okay to close your eyes for a moment and trace the spirals on the back of your eyelids. Virtue is a mean, and I never was any good at tightropes. Complete trust in God, but not presumption. Revile every sin with heart and soul, but fall not into scrupulosity. Get up every morning to fight this battle like it’s the only thing that matters, but walk in peace and disturb not your heart.

When I say keep breathing I mean: drop to your knees and close your eyes. I mean: don’t get so tangled in the knots of your own mind that you can’t take the next step, say the next kind word, say the next single simple Hail Mary. I mean: take a long, slow breath and let it out even slower. I mean: if you can’t finish Euclid and write that email and do the laundry and read for Humanities, then don’t. Keep breathing. Matter is definably indefinable and motion is the actualization of potential as potential and you will never stop caring about All of it –

keep breathing

keep breathing

keep breathing.