The Gorge

Is there such a thing as too much awe? Has too much observation and appreciation and feeling on nature caused some sort of hormonal flux akin to depression? Flashes of the river and pebbles and the sky come to me and to my tears. A creative high that is unsustainable and tranquilizes the heart and mind? It is still life affirming but it is as if every one of my pores sieves a different shade of pain and this circulates with every beat of my heart, as if I can hear the cries from every corner of the world, the unrealized dreams of people reincarnated as trees, the rage of the ocean as it laps the shore, the trauma of a mountain eroded into a gorge and the autobiographies of stars we will only hear long after they die or, if we hear, for which we must die. It is too much. I am too weary to strip, to weary to look up, to get up when I sink to my knees. All I can do with half-closed eyes is write. What pain to be a writer. A fighter and athlete risk themselves to physical injury and so are commensurately paid. An artist to prayer and observation and reliving and rendering of emotional pain, without the pay. This is the price of beauty. I grow so intensely, so quickly that every time you see me, you have to get to know me again.