To be.

Word Doc: Unknown by SK

Unknown

By Sofia Khiskiadze

“Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.”

–       Plato

 

The blood rushes,

The breathing hardens,

The head feels light;

It’s a smoking gun.

 

“Where do thoughts go?”  He asked.

Nowhere. They disappear into thin air.

 

They seep through my hands,

They lead the way;

They keep me back.

 

I surrender. I close my eyes.

I am blinded; I am kidnapped.

Only darkness from here on out, as if there was any light to begin with.

The only color I see is black. The only color I see is red.

White spots. Blue spots.

No spots. I am trapped.

 

“Where do thoughts go?” He asks.

They are within us. They prove we exist.

 “I think, therefore I am.” said Descartes.

Where would I be without thoughts? Who would I be?

Would I exist without your thoughts there to interpret me?

 

The eyes distort reality, so we can interpret what we see. They turn the image upside down, and then right side up; that’s how you are able to see me.  What you see, therefore is not who I am. Who I am is not what you see.

–

I don’t scream. I don’t yell for help. I don’t walk around with my hands tied behind my back. I don’t have an apple stuck in my mouth to stop me from talking. The apple is bitten and it sits idle next to where I sleep. The apple is false, my knowledge transient, my knowledge limited, your knowledge nonexistent, my knowledge pointless, yours meaningful.

“Where do thoughts go? “ He asked

They are a part of us. They prove we exist. To make sure you know that I exist, I must relay some of my thoughts to you, and you must do the same for me. Existence established; knowledge shared. Your thoughts are now my thoughts, my thoughts your thoughts. Some of them anyway.

Socrates once said, “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” People before us thought the sun revolved around the earth. That was true then, that was fact. Just like they thought the world was flat. Today, the earth revolves around the sun, moving 66,500 miles per hour.

Today I am true, I am fact. Tomorrow, my body will be food for nourishment, my bones shelter, a body in a box that no one dreams about. Tomorrow, I was dead.

Because I could not stop for Death,

He kindly stopped for me;[1]

 

“Where do thoughts go?” He asked.

They are within us. They make us who we are. They activate the windows to the mind. They become the silent windows to the soul. They prove we exist.

I am. I am. I am.[2] Thought the woman in the sea. She whispered it to herself, to prove that she is flesh, to prove that she is here. To prove that she is sane.

 

But the gas seeps through the cracks,

Engulfs the body.

Drowns out the daemons.

Stops the thoughts. Escapes the prison.

 

You find yourself yelling I am! I am! I am! Until you no longer are. The noise is gone. The thoughts strangled, the soul released. Your body left next to your bitten apple.

–

I am not who I think I am. My thoughts distort the past, the memory. My mirror distorts my figure, the perception. My body yells out limitations- distorted. My thoughts quickly jot them down – estranged.  I am twisted; I am upside down; I am inside out; I am shattered. Yet you see me whole. The damage is done. The damage  unseen. The damage is real. The damage is in my head. My head is damage. I am damage, damage is me.

 

The bitten apple is rotting next to my empty body.

 

I dreamt of a life with more sun than rain. More beauty than pain. More life than death. More land than graves. I dreamt of thoughts out of this realm, as if they could be true. As if I could capture happiness while I am a slave to my thoughts. As if the darkness will somehow disappear and the neglected cold window looking out into the world will be grazed by the warmth of the sun. As if somehow the part of me full of ditches would one day be full of flowers. As if this room in my head is not real; as if this person I have created is a façade. As if all is unknown, my knowledge zeroed out. On my bed lay a body without me in it, my eyes closed, my apple full of worms.

 

(The apple was never there. I was never there.)

 

The woman in the sea said I am. I am. I am.

The woman in the dream said. I will. I will. I will.

One day I will be.

 

“Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?”

– Edgar Allan Poe

 

Cover Letter

Dear Reader,

My goal is to confuse, to make you feel like I took you on a journey, but that you can’t figure out where the destination is. I want you as a reader to have the urge to read it twice. I want this piece to be a mirror into the conscious/ subconscious. The way I framed the essay, there is some repetition (that is intentional because we have reoccurring thoughts), there are very short sentences (reflective of fragment thoughts), there is an abundant use of quotes (the thoughts we have which stem from others) and then there is the apple and the body, which I kind of try to zoom out the image so that you can see the body laying, but it is not the part of the thought, it is the fact; its there and not there (so in my head that is what I am trying to make ‘the reality’).

I had created a draft before I wrote my proposal, then I wrote another draft after I wrote the proposal, and then I wrote one after Ely Shipley came to our class. This idea of feeling like someone but not seeing it in the mirror; this idea of memory not being stable; this idea of how others see us and how they interpret who we are. I was thinking all of this before, but I didn’t know how to format it, and after this class, it just sort of somehow clicked. My issue with this essay as it is the consistency. I am not sure if my intention is carried out through the piece, and if my reader is able to follow along. Yes my intention is to confuse, but it is also to make you understand this idea that nothing is real, our thoughts create and our thoughts destroy. We give things words like this is death and this is life and this is a thought, our language creates what we see and how we see it, and by it we are limited. There is a great quote by George Orwell from 1984, “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

In terms of format, I am not sure of the format that I have undertaken. I am not sure if I am using too many quotes, or frankly if this is even lucid enough to be read. I think I need to make sure that everything is where it needs to be and that there is consistency within this piece. This is sort of an outline of where I want this to go. The tools in terms of structure, I used really short sentences in some parts, because I wanted it to be read very quickly (i.e the damage part of the essay), there is also one part where I put a sentence within parentheses and set it off on its own. There are parts of the poem (Ie the beginning) that is structured like a poem, and it reappears in some parts. It does not necessarily rhyme, but it flows I think- it might need some work. I have not mastered any of these tools yet, but I think these tools are essential for my essay.

“Tomorrow I was dead.” Is the sentence I am most proud of. I actually googled it to see if anyone had already thought of writing that. (It was influenced by George Orwell’s 1984 where he writes, “We are the dead”.) I can’t explain exactly why I like it, but that it simply stands out in my mind because it challenges the instinct of crossing out the ‘was’ and replacing it with ‘will be’ which would be the correct tense to replace it with; this goes back to the last part of my essay where I write “I will. I will. I will. One day I will be”.

 

Questions:

1. What was your initial gut feeling after you read this essay? (ie: Hate it/ like it/ confused/ whatever)
2. Is there something you wish was different, or something you think needs to be improved on, or something that confused you?

Sincerely,

Sofia