I i, I

Who am I?

I start everything with that, whether I leave a space for it or not, but that's where it all begins. From there stems reinforcement and building blocks of some structure I would not mess with, lest I feel afraid to press backspace and erase all evidence of the mistakes I've made. So, before I give the answer, let me leave another world and come back more courageous.

Seeing for the First Time

I've left the ghost behind
at the entrance to the void.
Now
I amble away
from the park bench
to the moon,
which I can reach because
I don't believe in distance.
The moon is here,
wherever I am.
Isn't that wonderful?

I always refer to myself as a capital letter, that's how I was taught English. But I reckon I'm actually an i, not an I. An I is a colonnade, holding up what is above, stories from rooms and roomfuls of semantics. An I is a vertical bridge to heaven, crossed by a little work of art that no one really knows by name, nor by author, but by distant recognition. An I is the world of safekeeping, but a bar in the windowless prison of mind, behind which all secrets are stashed away. An I is the shadow of a larger I, which is the shadow of an even larger I, big in presence. The I is the pole around which sense turns and imitates. Yet this isn't me, because although language believes I am capable of being capital, majestic, purposeful, I am incomplete as of yet, an i.

i am the symbolic gesture of a man who's looking across a gap to something of his kindred that is out of his reach though not out of his consciousness. i am the pedestal upon which floats some crystal ball of meaning. i am the angel grounded with the halo suspended in the air above him, lighting his surroundings as a sun, as yet untouchable. i am that which appears in situations and in warriors and in kisses and in rain. i am forgiving, willing to see beyond the space that seems to separate what has been believed lost from what appears to struggle to keep together. i am writing something somewhere here, sometime, with my purpose imagined, though inexplicably seized as reality. i am nobody, touching the eternal. i am everybody. i am somebody, too, a pez dispenser, a severed giant, a slope ready to welcome a boulder. i am even, these words.

Language may have taken a leap to signpost reality. I is inclusive. i am not, as evidenced by the gap. I is higher, dominant; i, incomplete. Line and a dot, more code, more secrets. I is representative of wholeness, identity with all. i but pretends, aspires, yet is nothing. Language has given me the impression that I is the embodiment of totality, while i am fragmented. According to the rules, i am I though. So I have come masked in this existence, standing tall, the bearer of responsibility. But really, i am frailer, unsure, supposedly something that is, as yet, unfinished. But I am to assume the completed form, to show my invulnerability, immutability, the self that stands centered around which sentences orbit and semantics gravitate.

I am all, so then i must be in there somewhere too. Now there are two of me, the me of now, and the me of anything but now: past, future, all other tenses but the present. Everything to i is relative then, because what occurs is never the whole picture, just details, pixels, morsels, bits. But I has everything, together, connected in all ways, full, wholesome. With this known, the realisation dawns on me, that i don't know who i am. i could be whoever, whatever, because I am everything. As such, i have a double-identity, the I and i, though one is inclusive of the other. The question of who am I thus ought to refer to the i, because I already know the answer. The i represents something, has some place, occupies some space. I was wondering what its meaning would be, but now I am not so worried, having already the answer to everything in me. Perhaps the i just is one path, this path taken now, to the discovery of everything. i am concerned with what will be and what has happened before, where i will go, but I only experience it as now, and now, here, all is known. So all problems, fears, come from the i trying to be I, a next to nothing trying to be everything and failing, being limited. Yet I can never fail, and so i find my purpose when i meet with I now.

Just stay here, now, I tell i.
i respond to I. I i, I.