Leaving the Cave

Many of my days pass in a blur of classrooms, computer screens and a few harried glances out of my car window (mainly navigational glances). I have become a computer which functions; a robot that accomplishes one thing after another without taking the time to relax and enjoy the things I have created. Only the night belongs to me. And even that is often taken away.

But today, stepping outside into the bright sunny day, it was impossible to ignore my own mortality. Not mortality with a connotation of death, but rather one of life. The colors around me were so bright, so alive. Everything around me seemed to glow in technicolor- I was Dorothy stepping into the land of OZ. Or maybe it was the opposite experience, I was stepping back into the visceral world around me after a long foray that kept me trapped within my own mind, in the world that society constructed for me.

The sunlight was so bright that even the leaves on the bushes reflected and sparkled their approval at my arrival. I walked toward the looming bell tower that threatened to eclipse my luxurious sun, but even its large stature could only make shadow puppets on the diamond dust that whirled and swirled on the surface of the pond.

Emerging from the shadow of the giant clock tower and into the warm relief of such a beautiful after the first frigid days of winter, I am forced to avert my eyes from the fluorescent glare of the sidewalk under my feet. It is like a cat-walk lit with the glow of thousands of light-bulbs and I am a tired and weak model strutting down it with a barely noticeable wobble of exhaustion. I am alone on this colorful runway, the glare obscures the other humans sharing my experience. But the isolation that this glare brings is my redemption, not the isolation of a life obsession with appearance and illusion.

I attempt to look at the sun, but all I can do is discern the sun's position. It is nothing more than a glowing light source. It remains mysterious, I cannot know the details of its existence without pain. It is a god, it is keeping my whole world together and yet I cannot look directly into its depths. I cannot probe its mysteries. Only the purity of the surrounding blue sky can look upon this burning planet. I look to the radiance of the sunlight reflected off the lazy, fluffy clouds. My mortal eyes are allowed to feast upon their icy whiteness, and only there can I see the brilliance of the sun. Their snowy shade does not seem to match the warmth of the day, a dichotomy which arrests my attention for some time.

The bell-tower, that loathsome reminder of my unending rush to beat the devil's time clock, begins to chime. I wrench myself away from the saturated images of real life before me and retreat back into the dark recesses of my mind. I begin to think about what I need to accomplish today and what can be put off until tomorrow. I remember a test I forgot to study for.  I decide that I will not have time for sleep tonight. I pull open the door to the building which houses my next class. I push away my wild thoughts of running away in the freedom of the day. The door clangs shut behind me and a faded fluorescent light replaces the liquid quicksilver I had been walking through moments earlier.