To Be Perfectly Still

Sometimes I’ll be sitting at a cafe, lying on my living room couch, standing resolutely still on the top of my hill, like a statue, or a god. I’ll appear perfectly quiet. Undisturbed. Like a small stream behind some brush. And it’s not like I’m at peace or serene, I’m just…there. If a scientist was jotting down observations in a little yellow pad, he’d say, “Subject not moving. At rest.” Sometimes I’ll blink, but other than that, I’m like an age-old boulder jutting out into sea, letting the waves crash hard against my solid form, breaking again and again and again.

They’re funny, these moments.

Because really I can feel myself moving. My toes are tingling, and when I blink I see myself throwing the cafe table up into the air and running fast, fast, fast down the hill until I come crashing down and break every bone in my body, even the tiny, forgettable ones in places like my pinky and ear. I lie on the couch and my body screams at me to move move move. My heart starts racing and a twitch develops in my legs and my eyes swivel round the room. Round and round. Move move move. Out out out. Go go go.

And I just lie there and I think, this is a miner trapped beneath a mile of earth. This is a blind man stumbling in a cave. This a bird banging into the wires of its cage, banging again and again, bursting to be free.

And it actually brings tears to my eyes, wondering how that boulder out at sea manages it. To feel the blinding, rushing fury of the ocean all around you, and to sit there quietly, with the appearance of someone who couldn’t care less.

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