Dreams of Motion
A dusting of snow lies outside, framed in frosted-over panes of glass.
A shiver of hallways empty, a home echoing in stillness, waking from slumber.
Pacing; rustling the bristles of rug underfoot,
Pacing through the movements in my head.
Bodies in motion, limbs in suspension, kinesthesia alight like electricity about
Bodies with no body: abstracted; digital; imagined.
In an undefined gap between school and eventual work, I found myself
In an empty home, unsure where next steps would take me.
An attraction to medicine, to prosthesis, to an augmented reality gave way to
An uncharted longing for a virtual one instead.
Limits unbound, chains of flesh and blood freed by
Limits of the mind; a body’s capabilities made digital.
What is it to fly, without wings but a limitless sky?
What is it to fall, without a sufficient challenge to fail?
Wondering these questions, I found myself wandering hallways
Wondering at the possibilities between bouts of self-imposed work.
Setting aside mornings into afternoons, slowly building with lines of code;
Setting myself up for demise. Because outside of randomness, only gods create life.
And I, at best, was no god; just a child dreaming of motion.
Similar sensations, the rush of snow or water or wind against skin.
Similar electricity sparking fire in veins, embers of muscle gasping at breath to bellow their roar.
Conveying pain made pleasure
Conveying growth made progress
Trying to emulate these things digitally, the sensation lost to memory.
Trying to capture what felt missing, harder to recall with each passing day.
Where was I now? Deigned to a cycle of sedentry and isolation
Where I compromised for a chance to experiment. But at what cost?
Diet of movement; of stress and work replaced by a
Diet of intrinsic self-exploration; of dreams part realized, part out of reach.
Led on by starvation of interaction and collaboration
Led to depression and a shattering of productivity, a descent into madness.
Until finally, for the sake of research, I convinced myself to move
Until I was breathless.
Brought me to the ring of steel, the dance of blades, the camaraderie of violence, the deference of student-hood.
Brought me to a realization:
The folly of dreaming of motion,
while standing still.
If you enjoyed what I wrote, leave some claps! Otherwise, you can roast me for grammatical or logical errors, or just because you’re feeling spicy today. I can take it!
I wanted to try a more concise, shorter format to process the year-or-so that I spent working entirely creatively, but in complete isolation.
I still have an intense passion for body mechanics and virtual reality, and if that’s something you’re into too, part of what inspired me to write this was some of the things Stress Level Zero is doing with Boneworks.
Thanks for reading!
