Life in Colours by Shanna Wilson

I used to live as the wild things did, the trees and the spirits that roamed the woods day and night. Let us not forget the time when the life force was felt between every wall, inside every colour. I did not wait for daybreak to go exploring, any time and everywhere was my place, my friend. There was no feeling of lonely in the woods.

This has been my first season living away from that place. I am living in a town now, going to college. My walks through the wilderness have been replaced by a new wilderness of traffic and the lives of other people. In the time that I have been here, my mind has expanded to include knowledge I had not yet considered. I have been thrown into internal conflict between the characters in my head, have had to look inside for a way to resolve it. I’ve learned about the pain of necessity, and the survival that consumes the lives of adults. I have observed the delectably tragic lives of others, and seen them smiling as well, beautifully unencumbered with any worry in that moment. I have learned different perspectives here, expanded myself with the lives of others. 

I have absorbed a whole other world in this town. I have changed, and I haven’t. Still, my adventurous wildness remains. Last night I went outside in the midnight snow to run up the road to where the trees are. I remembered the wild feeling.

Home holds a special place in the depth of us. Reading what I have written back then ignites the memory. With that memory, I can follow these paths in my mind to a place I once was, a place included in the present, but sometimes forgotten in our attention. We must remember who we are, and I know that those nights when I was moving with nature, those days when alone wasn’t a concept, are here.

Right now, I am sitting alone in a basement in town, the TV echoes its voice above me. I remember the boundless night back home. The universe that reaches forever. The stars that speak their truth to us. I remember the awe of life when I looked at a beetle climbing up a tree. I remember running wild, leaping over fallen logs, weaving between the trees on a hill slope. I remember writing and entering a world of image, dreams, entering that world, and leaving, my mind having the feeling of just waking up from bed and going outside.

Tonight, I read an old note-book that I wrote in my last summer living in the forest and re-enter that world.

I came to love life in a fall meadow where the sun melts the skin,

the waves of electricity, the thought tunnels that seem to flow interdependently but emerge from the underground vents of the landscape, bleeding with the message of the leaf, the symmetrical lines flowing through a raindrop, the assured destruction of the frost, the assured rejuvenation of the spring

for these animals who like mirrors and question why they exist, the answer closest to their eyes lies in the way the seasons pulse,

unchanging

Taste the joys of nature. Be an alchemist of the senses,

be an observer, audience, and actor

and with each breath the animal will live

The floodgates have opened, 

thinking one looks into the reaches of space, opens up mazes in the eyes

forgets the eyes

gets lost in endless possibilities

Let’s take the clocks off the wall and revel in the nakedness, we’ll stop for a while in the hollow space between activities and write a verse into the void

The godling said, “I wish to have feet”.

Abrus said, “here, you may inhabit this beast,

he is warm and hungry.”

Only when the beast died did the godling revel in his non-form. For without hunger, cold, flesh, the need to mate, the desire for entertainment and things to be ‘good’,

he could travel anywhere

Just gotta let the curtain roll on through to the next hallway

Much like the dream, the thoughts we had that day will come back with new invisible robes

yet I let go of the entrance now

The ripples of emotion, the times that turn into new tides

were waving towards my blue skin and

light eyes

from within it was shivering, from without it was moving elements

remember the life we share with the flesh

I want to taste all of your details

steep a while in the bridge at dawn

curtain of light,

look to the far shore as the music played in the lofts of a blue photograph

inserted by a dream

the monument we crave

it was all going to happen when the music played

and tomorrow would be anywhere

Taste every fruit

lit up every blood

the last of the night juice

the first of the night blood

let us all speak as one,

let us know we absorb the sun

Foreshadowing night

times burning bright,

I love the way the sight feels and the night feels

fallow the road up a bank and be free,

forever sailing

we fly among the birds at the top of the wire

the crows

held by the noon

the soaring eagles

immersed in their wide eyes

air

life

Ride it to the sea,

flaming wings burn and rejuvenize the next day

fall flips his course hands to build flowers

We must trust in the form,

ride the waves of thought,

I won’t resist you

I could not say what life is like

yet words, poetry, light up the pathways and senses in our minds

through reading we will think differently

and so I say paint with the colours of life

I close the blue-covered book, tired now since it is late and the cursive scrawls are fading into each other. I read one line that talks about writing, it says “let go of perception.” I have wandered into a new society, but this is where I came from. A world inside nature, combining with the nature of myself. Reading of this world, I am reminded to let go, to travel and be in love with the boundless world of dreams. In the day world also, there is nothing separating the dreamer and the dream.