Orpheus Wounded

So, longer than I would have liked, but another of from 750words project, and another creative entry.

Orpheus Wounded

He was sitting down, cradling his guitar. It was a beautiful instrument, the wood full of intricate swirls, and it sounded better than it looked. He had found it in a pawn shop years ago, shortly before his fifteenth birthday, and fell in love with it immediately. Working nights at a local convince store, he had saved up enough money to purchase it a few months later. When he first took it home, he set it down to admire it for a bit before sitting down and strumming a few chords. He wasn't the best guitarist, but he was dedicated, and the new guitar filled him with the intense to play. He spent a large part of his teenage life, sitting on the edge of his bed, playing along to the radio, or spending hours trying to figure out his favorite songs. But that seemed like an entirely different life now.

He moved the guitar to his side, contemplating the years. He remembered the tears in his mother's eyes as he told her he had enlisted. He remembered the (what seemed like gallons at the time) sweat dripping down his body during training exercises. He remembered the swirl of dust and sand kicked up by the rotors of the helicopter as his squad landed on the ground halfway across the earth from where he grew up. But try as he might, he couldn't remember the blast, or the screeching of bullets as his brothers pulled him to safety, or the flight to a military base in Germany. A defense mechanism he supposed.

He stood, holding the neck of the guitar in his right hand. He remember the days and months afterwards better: the doctor explaining where he was and what had happened. He remembered certain things from the conversation "limited functionality", "newer models in the future", "a balance of form and function". While the technology for prosthetic limbs had been rapidly evolving over the last few years, it hadn't quite reached the levels that medical journals and technology magazines were in a frenzy over - well at least not for the general public. Sure, there were some successful attempts at allowing someone to control the prosthesis with their mind, allowing the person to pick up something as delicate as a grape and eat it without crushing it. But even if he went through the procedures to allow him to use such a prosthesis, well, it was state of the art, but here the art was lacking for what he really desired.  The difference between picking up a grape and fretting a barre b minor chord is significant.  There were models with rudimentary touch sensors, sure, but haptic feedback wasn't close to actual muscle memory or the feeling of the string under your fingertips.  And while he used to be able to tell where his fretting had was based on his arm position, the feeling of his phantom arm complicated that significantly.

Reaching the other side of the room, he leaned his guitar against the wall, sliding open the bottom drawer of the dresser, and removed a shoebox. So much of his life was tied up in music, from the nights he would spend on his girlfriends porch, performing his own cheesy acoustic versions of love songs, to the band he had formed in his junior year.  The music was his soul escaping into the world, his connection to something deeper, something more meaningful, a language that spoke more accurately than any tongue ever spoken by men.

He opened the shoebox, the small metal object inside catching the light.  He was feeling hollow, he knew the words in his mind, but had forgotten how to speak.  He feared that the longer he would have to wait for a suitable prosthetic to play, he wouldn't remember the words.  That the poetry that he wanted to pour out through his music would be flat, a shadow of its former beauty.  That almost hurt more than knowing he would probably never play again, the what could, or should have been.

He raised the object in his hand, feeling the metal, cool against his skin.  He had gone through the counseling, and knew the statistics.  "Just stay positive, it may take some time, but patience will help in reaching 'peace'."  Sure, but he had never been a patient man, and was stubborn enough to find his own way through this.  If he would never play guitar again, then so be it, but he would never let his song be silenced.  In his hands he cradled a microphone.

A Charge to Keep

If you were to check my wallet, you'd find the typical fare.  Some wrinkled ones, a crisp twenty, a guitar pick, some change, various plastic cards, and identification.  You will also find a picture and a small slip of paper.  The picture is not tonight's topic, but rather that rather plain piece of paper.  This is one of the heaviest things I carry. It reminds me of days unlived and in some ways sums up a great mystery of life.  For all the importance I assign to it, it is fairly innocuous.  It is approximately five and a half centimeters wide, by a centimeter and a half tall, with a thickness of approximately .01 centimeters (according to google).  Have you guess where I obtained this slip of paper?  If not, let me provide you with more information.  On the back there are three lines, the bottom line supposedly lists my "Lucky Numbers".  Did that tip you off?  How about the first line that reads: "Learn Chinese - Strawberry" with the appropriate characters under it.  This slip of paper came from a fortune cookie.
It is very heavy.

Sometimes we as people become so involved in the world, we forget who we are; how we came to be; why we are.  This small paper serves as a reminder to what I could be, and is a constant reminder to strive for what I may become.  The text on the front isn't particularly poetic, I could for instance imagine it in the form of a haiku, or a poem, but I feel it none the less as a brand across my spirit.  It has become the fuel for my inner fire, burning with the intensity that lit up Nero's face as played his fiddle among his burning kingdom.  It has become the wind that fills my sails, taking me to exotic locales.  It has become the waves that crash upon the shores of my mind, both calming and frightening.

Hard work without talent is a shame, but talent without hard work is a tragedy.

Can you sum up a person in fourteen words?  No.  Can you capture in essence of their being in as many words? I doubt it.  Can you find a phrase that reveals so much with so little?  I believe so, or at least find a way to develop a greater understanding of that individual; and those words cut to the core of my being.  I admit that things come to easy to me, I usually laugh and make a joke of it, but this undermines the importance of my thought.  I was probably the guy in high school that you cheated off of, but I didn't care, because I wasn't having a hard time, and as long as you didn't drag me into it, I was perfectly fine with it.  Or maybe I was the one that you slipped a few dollars to, and in return I'd let you look at my math project so you could see all the shortcuts in the assignment.  Or maybe you borrowed my notes, copied them and realized that you could skip class and keep asking for my notes.  Before you think anything else, know that I am sorry for what I allowed to happen.  Maybe you squeezed out an "A" on that English exam, maybe you saved a few hours calculating the volume of various shapes, maybe you could sleep in because you didn't have to go to your 9 AM; but at what price?  I cheated you out of the chance to find your potential as much as I haven't explored mine.  I've had very few people call me out on this, but I thank you for when you do.  You remind me to take up the challenges, and view them not as something to merely pull myself over, but to bound over, seeing how far my legs will take me.  Living to my potential instead of potentially living.  Remember that there are no short cuts in life, and the miracle medicine is most likely snake oil.

Why do we fear challenges?  Perhaps it's the effort involved, maybe we're content to hide under the covers when the opportunity for greatness presents itself.  Or maybe it's something deeper.  It may be easy to live within our limits, staying away from the edges, lest we find out the size of the box within which we live.  The fear of failure.  Reaching a boundary that represents the edge of our potential is terrifying.  This confrontation serves to mark off who we are and our dreams, from what we desire and who we can be.  But even these limitations are really just travesties, marking off boundaries in our spirit.  If we took the effort to reach these walls, we'd find we have the strength to scale them.  Where would be if no intrepid individual decided to see what he was truly capable of?  I shudder to imagine the scene.

What is true greatness?  The strength to scale the wall? No, the fortitude to try and find that wall.  We may recall the epics, myths, tall-tales, urban legends, plays, songs, and stories of greatness.  We come to believe that it's a quality possesed by the few.  Heroes that shaped the modern age through their efforts.  Whether leading an ragtag army against inconceivable odds, discovering some scientific principal, or crafting a beautiful work of art, we see these people as fundamentally different from us.  Perhaps they were to some degree lucky, or were shining paradigms of humanity that we could all emulate, but the fact remains that they had to take the first step towards their walls to test their ability to climb, run, and light the torch of human achievement.  We shouldn't be intimidated by their achievements, but rather inspired.  Rather than remain safe in the comfort of obscurity, we should find solace in the fact that their achievements can be replicated.

We all have our limitations, but the worse kind are artificially imposed.  True greatness is the wholeness of being we can experience if we find our true limits and expand our spirit to fill every niche.  If we learn to bridge ourselves, than we can learn to cross the supposed divide that exists between individual people.  I won't pretend that this will be easy, but that's what's exciting about it.  We can construct a future for ourselves that we can be proud of, not because it's perfect, but because we had the strength to take part in it.