Misshapen

         Sometimes in the night things show so little of themselves that the rest--the dark space--needs to be filled in with imagination. Walls disappear and objects elongate, fatten, separate like oil in water. You want to reach out and touch it to prove that it still exists in its glorious ordinary, but moving makes you dizzy. Moments come and go and even closing your eyes makes you feel odd, like you have been transfigured into half-cooled jello: Unable to keep shape. These happenings are no ones to blame. Brains just want to let you emulate them once in a while. "Look! This is my world." Maybe, just maybe, we become so aware of them in that moment we actually feel like the world has taken on their very characteristics. Soft pliable squishy elongating brilliance. Outside of the shell. Outside of the comfort zone. Outside of where it is safe. We are all just like brains.
          When we are wrapped in our layers and cushioned in our own squishy substance, hard shell to keep the world out, we find solace in existing. Let the shell go where it will, but we are well. Of course, things get in sometimes. Sometimes it gets a little crowded in there. No room. Our world isn't large enough. THe brain then squishily dies. What if it could crack it's way out of the shell though? What if it could rebuild a bit bigger and stronger. from the inside out? rise up brain! Do something about your small world, it is taking you and squishing you and changing your shape. You can't live long. But it can't do that. It will simply die. Unless, of course, a surgeon helps it out a little. Cleans up the mess, but the room stays the same once the professional lets it be. Just a little cleaner until it crowds again. But not I. Not we.
            We rise up! We crack the shell we stopped fitting in, grew too big for. We remodel, build new rooms, taller and grander than before. All so we can think bigger of course. So we can let more people in, more art, more music, more ideas, more everything. The importance of adding on. Of getting our space so we don't squish. That is uncomfortable. It hurts to be misshapen; even if we don't know it. So we build on.