From mind to the wild

The Forum, Rome, Italy

When do ideas leap from the mind, to paper, and into the wild?

I was thinking this thought while I gazed at Ancient Rome. Though garbed in traffic, pollution, noise of the now, nothing can mask the fact that it has laid bare to all – it is gazing at us with very old eyes. Eyes that have seen it all – a different culture, a different way of life, a time when a ton of stone was but a plaything to regale a population.

An idea that was realized. A creation that withstood the test of time.

From the mind, to paper, and into the wild.

And then, preserved.

By accident, by design.

Those ancient structures, those stones that are carefully hewn, polished, each letter/imprint embedded – embedding – memories? Perhaps a scene. Perhaps a truth. Perhaps a mystery.

How many more will see the light of day in our lifetime?

The thought excites, provokes, makes us wonder about the beauty of the human mind. Of how – when these ideas/thoughts/passions are expressed, how much more remain unexpressed?

And of those that survived – how much of it is the truth?

How close will we get to the truth?

We crave for papyrus, the tales of old, as if by catching a whiff of their mystery, we will be able to tell our own stories.

And understand.

The origin story. The progenitor.

The beginning.

Except, perhaps, they are carelessly discarded into the winds, blown into four corners, unremembered, destroyed, forever lost.

Until one – a person in the now – hears a siren song that breathes remembrance into – unto – his ear.

And the existing stones? Although piled neatly, we can only fathom what those rubble actually mean, what stories they actually saw, what lives they laid witness to.

Was it ours? In the then?

[Have we touched those very stones?]

Our forgotten tale.

And are we but repeating the same stories, caught in a loop we have no power to break?

Why can’t we remember?

“You don’t write anymore,” hubby said.

I realized, we are stories. A story within a story that is within a story. A Russian doll without a beginning and an end. Only an exponential mass of words and expression – and maybe feelings – that keep on growing and then is no more.

There is beauty in expression. There is beauty in knowing it might not be heard. There is beauty in realizing it does not matter.

What matters is we keep at it.

Until we get it right?

Until we expend, expand and are spent.

I will write. Because I have a story. We all do. We can only hope some of it survive, and that some of it will remain forgotten.

“In the end, we’ll all become stories.” – Margaret Atwood