posted by Paige on Uncategorized

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Sunlight streams through the open window next to me, and the early spring breeze carries a fresh, inviting brightness with it. Reluctantly I turn my body back in toward the classroom, where in contrast the light feels paltry, dim, inadequate.

I focus my attention on my notebook, endeavoring to catch up. The professor speaks in his usual engaging way, and the other students are present and alert.

We’re talking about Wittgenstein, and it’s unbearable. I’m not entirely sure why, but my mind feels pressed down upon by the weight of other people’s thoughts. It’s as if I’ve been trying to carry all of them stacked upon one another like thousands of aging, translucent pages–feeble, fragile, no longer alive with relevance.

My gaze drags back to the day outside, to the bright reflectiveness of the soft blades of grass, the buds on each tree branch urging themselves outward. I ache to join it all. My body is nearly in revolt, refusing the reality of the room I’m in, longing to get out.

I notice how the roots of the trees clench the earth, like fingers digging into it, and have to fight the nearly irresistible urge to leave my chair and go kneel out there. Kneel on the slightly damp dirt and dig my hands into it, the way the roots of the trees cling to the earth but are also just part of it, extensions of it. As am I. Just an extension of all that dirt, that grass, those roots, the buds, the branches, the sunshine.

I want to put my hands in it, to feel the texture of the soil, to smell it, to know what it’s like to get my own roots in there. To dirty myself, to be part of it. Part of the day, part of my own life.

It’s almost erotic, this yearning, and I find myself fidgeting in my chair. I want to engage, and not with thoughts or ideas. I want to engage with the dirt of the place where I live. I want to mix with the life that’s in evidence right out there, just feet away from where I sit.

My mind controls me, keeps me in my seat, but I can’t concentrate. My only thoughts are of what my body wants and needs–to get out as soon as possible.

After class, I go lie in the grass, resting my head on the stack of books inside my bag. As overwhelming as the urge had been to be out here, I can’t just kneel and dig my hands in the dirt. What would the people passing by think?

So I lie still, looking up at the sky between the branches of the trees, imagining what I’ll do with my life once I’ve got the degree and am free of the confines and the ideas and the rules and the way things always have to be just so. Free to dig my hands into whatever I want.

Tags: body, emotions, mind, the 500-word project