The Lost City of We

After Anne Lamott 😉

“For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.” - Bird by Bird

these small, flat, rigid squares of paper

may never amount

to so much as a dollar

may never appreciate

to the level of economic fiction

that conscripts everyone under the sound of my voice

to agree

that money is green

No.

these small, flat, rigid squares of paper are different

more like some sort of social contract

scribbled and scratched to ourselves in moments of solitude

that only become binding

upon being shared

a different kind of currency

this circulation of loose leaf lessons that leave us bonded

practitioners of this age old tradition

of accounting for one another

in verbs

reading. writing.

listening. languaging.

pouring our problems into pages

one bible at a time

like some sort of patchwork prayer chain

this endlessly cumulative remission

of missives                 our compulsive littering

of letters across present

and presently non-existent landscapes

the audacity with which we pile

the breadcrumbs of these gently creased

buried treasure maps

is nothing short of astonishing

this cult of curiosity

well known for its breathtaking innocence

and sometimes self-destructive vulnerability

with the nerve to try and write the thing

that our 9 year-old selves needed to read

to cure us of this relentlessly cyclical affliction

with the human condition

perhaps even put us in our place

in history

and so we write

like it’s going out of style

and it is

however,

our demand for documenting and designing the human experience

will never die

it’s in our very DNA to be read

a room full of messenger RNA

on the hunt for the perfect set of vowels

desperately trying to string ourselves together

taut as a fishing wire of broken codes

taking turns publishing these ransom notes for the soul

in ruby red lipstick

on the other side of a looking glass

facing a 15 year-old we may never ever know

this gift

an ability to publish portals

to dimensions that exist

just beyond the spine of the spread

petroglyphs to the past

reminded we have so much more to give up

than just our ghosts

these small, flat, rigid squares of paper

adding black and white detail to god’s green earth

shadows y todo

attempting to offer substantive edits

to this next chapter of the divine

our medium is flesh and bone

our canvas

stardust, synapse and soul

for better or for worse

part riddle, part parable

occasionally attempting to unerase

the parts of humankind

that we are most ashamed of

these small, flat, rigid squares of paper

a rebellion to apathy

furiously documenting the conflict inside us

at our best a proliferation of selflessness

an emptying ourselves into one another

waging our imagination

as the engine of our creation

and treating everything

done with love

as a sacrament

these small, flat, rigid squares of paper

that find us

underneath your kitchen table

that routinely doubles as a writing nook

eavesdropping to the mixtape of one another’s pulse

as it pumps voluminous through our pens

producing future histories

where all our agents are angels

where our cups overfloweth with ink

where we unmurder our women

and find an appropriate place to put all this light that fills us.

where our superpower

is the ability to write around ourselves

instead of about ourselves

and through all the uncooperative obstacles in our lives

where we see one another through microscopes

instead of telescopes

as celestial bodies on a cellular level

and leave something that will outlast us

unlike these earthly friendships

these small, flat, rigid squares of paper

a full on migration

beyond the borders of the unimaginable

desperately trying to communicate the parts of our lives

that are impossible to publish

the blank page staring back at us

daring us to become

is still on record as the hardest thing

that we’ve ever done

but we practice

hurricane whisperers throwing ourselves at any wall that will listen

in an attempt to conquer the intimacy of our innate isolation

so instead we build build bridges

out of books

shroud ourselves in letters

because we’d rather render ourselves nude

than transparent before the masses

obliterating the limits of what we previously allowed ourselves to perceive

a generation of writers

who wrote their way out of closets

in which our children are now forced to read

but we

will continue to fill this apothecary of care

with these prodigal prescriptions

less mortar than pencil

an ancestral magic of crowd-sourced memory making

every ISBN an entry in this

cookbook encyclopedia

of spell

crowdfunding the collective imagination

that makes this invocation of self barely plausible

this bearing of witness to one another

that is an affront to the very notion

that we are simply born with a pre-ordained budget

of birthdays, breaths and heartbeats

that surely quicken our demise when expended irresponsibly

rather we find hope

in the ordinariness of “we”

the same we

who will spend an embarrassing amount of words

on the ones we love

with prodigal extravagance

wordsmithing worlds

where we are known to make it rain

or not…

spending time bending time

in half

in the futile hope

that we can string together

that unique sequence of consonants and vowels

to unscramble the launch code of ourselves

diffused… by these

small, flat, rigid squares of paper

in peace.

© Hakim Bellamy May 19, 2024