A Mouthful of Thoughts, a Mindful of Flavors

So you hold an apple and intend to eat it. You feel the apple's skin and round shape with your fingers. It is somewhat odorless, until the moment you penetrate its skin with your teeth. Then your nostrils fill with its mild scent and its juice finds your tongue, sending the sensation of sweetness to your brain. Every time you take a bite, you hear a satisfying crunch and your jaws feel like they are doing something. Eating an apple is an experience. Having finished the apple, you still have pieces of its skin wedged tight between your teeth where your tongue cannot reach them. The annoyance is great, will be with you for the rest of your day and is also part of the experience.

On the Taste of Words

Writing anything beneath the title of this blog is a challenge. With such a meaningful name and so strong personal attachment to the idea behind the name, I am left thinking that the words that follow must also have meaning and thought behind them. An idea lurks into my mind and I set out to spill it into letters, only to stop moments later, the original thought replaced by the question of whether it is worthy of this name.

Horas Lucidas...

I've never studied Latin, but it has always given me goosebumps. A language, dead, but still so alive. It is strange that a language can exist to such an extent within our daily lives without us giving it more thought. We all know hundreds and thousands of words that have at least their roots in it. It feels like it is a language of meaning. That's why I used it.

My original thought for the name was "Realization of moments". The way everyone has a subjective way of living through a moment, experiencing it, putting the experiences together in their personal context and maybe bothering to translate the result into words that other people might read or hear and make their own connections and conclusions from that.

I asked a friend who had studied Latin if he had any ideas for a translation. He came up with a bunch, each with a slightly different meaning as well as a different taste and sound. We know quite well which one I chose. Horas Lucidas. Lucid Hours. But not just that, for an hour is just a measure for a moments length and lucid can mean so many things. For me it is not just clarity. It is being truly present in a moment, feeling it and existing in it, aware of it and conscious of it. Those moments are the ones worth translating into words and writing down or saying out loud. In those moments, we know the beauty of being alive.

Just saying the name sends shivers down my spine. It has a taste of meaning, even though the concept of meaning is an illusion in itself.

Rainy morning

It is cloudy and the birds are singing. The sky is bleeding tiny droplets that fracture the small pools that have formed on the asphalt. Only birdsong shatters the silence, only the living pools of water break the still.

I have been awake through the night. I watched the sun set from a clear sky, where the blue turned to red only to fade to black. With the black came the clouds and the rain and for a time all that was heard was the steady beat of raindrops on the roof. Then the clouds turned lighter, the gray blanket on the horizon came alive with different hues and the sounds of rain fell second to the winged ones. The sky is gray, the wet asphalt is black and all the rest is green.

When I step outside, I can smell and taste the rain. And the summer.

For many nights I have thought how I might begin this new record of moments. Apparently it is best to start with a moment and an introduction.

I am a human being, a person, and at least semi-conscious. As a member of the human race, I have their traits and their abilities. I enjoy my senses, for they allow me to experience the beauties of this world. I have a mind that prefers to think rationally, but is occasionally distracted by emotions. At times like these, I like to sit still and let my thoughts fly, triggered by sensory input from the world around me.

I take slow, deep breaths and I try to translate my thoughts into sentences. There is no easy way to express many of my thoughts, but since they must be brought out, I need to try. For if this record is to continue, more must be known about me.

I see many things in this world as wrong. My race is the source of all things wrong. I am not sure if these wrongs can be fixed, as the causes for them are in human traits. Selfishness, greed, ignorance, impatience and many more. These disgust me. And they are found in every human being, myself included. I am disgusted by my own race. It is not exactly misantrophy, for I don't hate humans, as is literally meant by the word. It is more like a constant grief for the burden that has been placed upon me, this consciousness of the wrongs within. By being aware of them I can try to lessen their influence on the decisions I make. Yet I am still human, weak and fallible, capable of error.

The morning grows lighter by the minute and it becomes increasingly difficult to concentrate on such dark thoughts. Not everything we create is wrong. If the works of our hands and minds were colours, they would cover the entire spectrum. Therein lies so much beauty as well.

The rain is subsiding. The drops are so small and few that they are barely able to disturb the surfaces of puddles. So much remains to be said, so many moments to be experienced, thought of, and translated.

"All moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain."

A line that frequently comes to my mind at times like these. Lucid hours that I try to capture, language as my tool, only in vain.