I tap my toes together, sending my eyes running laps around the view directly in front of my eyes. A small island settled amidst a lagoon of sand and stone, begging me to soak up every last detail like a sponge pulling in water. As I cushion myself to gravity and the constant rotation of the Earth beneath the weight of my clothed body, I can start to sense a feeling. It causes my mind to blank and fills my every sense is an indescribable energy that radiates off of the ground and throughout my limbs, stretching from the tips of my toes to the top of my skull. I imagine the feeling washing over me like an ocean constantly washing upon a shore, sharing it’s excitement with the rest of the world once it reaches landfall.
As if my toes were dipped in the lapping water of the shore, the feeling shoots up from the ground and invades my body through my toes, disregarding the security of my flip flops as I turn myself over to nature and follow the path carved by the breeze as I fall into a dreamlike state. Suddenly, my toes don’t have the constant pressure of new blisters and the ever-present weight of my body holding them down. Wind whistles through the cracks between the toes that for years played the role of 5 little piggies as the feeling spreads throughout the rest of my feet.
A warmth encircles the rest of my feet, my wandering mind counts every beautiful place these two feet have left their footprints. Step after step, my feet led me here. Down this path, to this life. The feeling makes my feet feel new again, forgetting every hard-earned, sweat-stained mile; every dirt-filled puddle my young mind made them endure; every one of the hundred pairs of uncomfortable shoes I squeezed them into. The countless memories of where I have been carried spreads the feeling up past my ankles and throughout my legs as I continue to take in the scene that is the smooth desert in front of me.
The tan gradients, making up a delicate scene behind the green, cold bars, distract my knees from the constant bandaging of countless squats and endless hours striking the pavement with barely my calves and feet as cushion. The feeling that sprouted from my toes moves up my shins, covered in permanent bruises and scars, past my knees to my smooth thighs, hardened and rocky; the exact opposite of the gentile view in front of me, exposing the smooth curves that lie upon the surface of the beached sanctuary.
The paralysis continues throughout my body as my hips begin to feel the immediate gravitational pull, attempting to snap me out of the slouching in my torso yet connecting me with the suffocating black pavement that is constantly storing and releasing heat as I make myself comfortable on the ground, like a seat in a movie-theater. The feeling holds me tight as I let myself cave to the gradual overtaking of my body. My tired torso slips when trying to find a soft spot to lean against and causes my connected arms to flail out and catch me, slamming my lower arms against a thick floor with enough weight to fall through the roof.
The weak sense in my arms is immediately softened and filtered out as I’m urged to reach out and feel the complete beauty of the sanctuary that drowns me in feelings. My shoulders are reminded of the weight they carry on a daily basis, the pounds of books and laptops and paper, strapped onto my back like that of a man headed out on a backpacking trip. The feeling that spreads and expands throughout my weak arms reminds my dazed mind of the years spent laying sick in my living room, praying and hoping that I would shake the dizziness that was a part of my life every single day. I am stretched within myself, attempting to maximise time spent with the feeling hovering within me, dripping from my wrists down through my hands.
My fingers tense as an indescribable warmth spreads over my hands that’s not from the heated pavement beneath my body, causing the grip on my pencil to tighten and constrict my hand from writing with ease. My thin fingers feel everything and nothing as the feeling that has spread through so much of my body already continues by reaching the tips and falling back in again. The five fingers on each hand remind me of the hundreds of rings, attempting to dress each one up in something beautiful yet no luck due to the slender fit of each bony finger. I feel the grip I have on the pavement start to weaken as the clear light of day that shines through the clouds pulls me back to Earth as I collapse to a pile of skin and bones in the middle of a black drive, granting the feeling access from my toes to my neck as I submerge beneath the sea.
My neck is slowly dragged down with the rest of my body, the heavy presence of my necklace constantly reminding me of who I am. The weight of my own head is crushing as I feel my skull rushing down to meet the pavement and my eyes open wide as the sweet horizon calls out to me, pulling me into its realm when my eyes have nowhere else to look but up. The head that is constantly dizzied, my head that holds all the features of my personality, finally shares in the strong feeling that the rest of my body has been attacked in before.
The pierced ears, connected to me at the head, cringe as the air conditioner behind my place on the floor kicks on and the natural sounds of birds and life is brushed under the rug. My usually parched lips taste the sweet feeling of warmth mixed with a subtle island breeze that shakes me to my spine and leaves me hungry for more as I grant access to more and more of my body. My blue eyes drown me in the sea they project as they are the last parts of me to stand beneath the feeling that has overcome the rest of me so easily and quick.
The feeling that I couldn’t describe successfully engulfs my body in a sea and I’m easily able to point out what I struggled with so much before. The feeling was peace. A thick, dreamy, other-worldly sense of peace that can only be described when you’re fully immersed in the nature of the world.
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