Pablo Neruda, The Book of Questions
BY JULIE CHEN
Every person’s childhood seems to be marked with a peculiar fear. Whether it be snakes, or subways. Or the scary third grade math teacher who had crooked teeth. Mine was a fear of emptiness. Sometimes I would stand in the garden and cover my eyes, and imagine the endless, void universe. Expanding in perpetuity. No air, no emotion. Just miles and miles of darkness and I would be forever drifting, drifting and when I died, I imagined I would be lying in my coffin, but my mind would remain vigilant. And I would be forced to wander forevermore in the infinite vacuity of death. And there would be no stars because death does not permit any twinkling. The thought made my heart drop and I would picture my body collapsing until it was folded into a piffling speck of dust in an interminable vacuum of nil. The tears would fall. And I would run run run away from where the emptiness was, run into my mother’s arms where I could relish a comforting, tangible hug or run into the market where the throbbing presence of people assured me I was not a solitary asteroid — although the unfathomable concept of infinity would come back to haunt me whenever I shut my eyes. There was a period in time where sleep would seem terrifying. I could not lay my finger on the exact moment in time where I would transcend into a state of oblivion. For all I knew it was a secret I would be forbidden to comprehend. And was not death the same thing, I thought. One would gently slide away, and his being would be buried under the earth, where it would disintegrate and eventually become part of a flower, or a bee, or a sliver of wind. But his identity would be forever lost in the galactic anticenter of time.
No comments:
Post a Comment