The Wicker Tome

Adorning the bumper stickers across the world and representing a pride in the counterculture or the celebration of abstract thought. What does that really mean to us in these modern days?

A celebration of discontent and disruption of the placating repetition of monotony and satiation. What it means is a state of constant discomfort and hunger. It can be miserable, but some days that is the cost of freedom. It can also be breathtaking and bring you to tears. The good tears, the tears of a heart that is full and brimming over. The world has a great need for the freaks. The ones who challenge everything, especially conventional thought and process. The rules in place for contentment don’t apply here, because they come to a dead end and a blocked path. If one were to observe the actions of the freak, they’d find that they would rather climb the wall of the maze or knock it down longing for the thing that exists outside of it. The thing that can never be obtained, but merely witnessed. And that is enough. To witness.

Chasing heaven like we all are, but some realize we are already in it. With its love and anger, fear and excitement, we are amidst the stars and the galaxies floating around us and within us. Carbon and nitrogen and heavy metals. We are it, we came from it, and we will become it. We can feel that. We just don’t have the words to describe it, and we probably never will. It’s a feeling without description, and it’s ever out of our grasp. In return, the freaks write poetry. They dance and they whirl colors across canvas because these things transcend language and serve as a representation of that feeling that they can’t describe or grasp and hold tangibly. Some things don’t require words to know their meaning. They don’t need a dictionary, they need a pair of eyes and an open heart. Those butterflies in our stomach are like combining synonymous tones against our eardrums and causing a reverberation. It’s the soul speaking when it’s in harmony with it all.

The freaks know this. They know what holds them back from the magic and they rebel against it by existing on the fringe. Like the tassels or the ragged edges at the end of a well loved blanket or coat, they dance in the wind and hold on for dear life on this wild ride. The fringe is for the freaks. Next time you see someone acting in a way that embarrasses you even though you’re not the one committing the action, go and shake their hand or hug them tight. They are poetry in motion and life on display.

Indeed, God bless the freaks. They know.