Empty Spaces

In this guest post, Edward brings us a short prose piece relating to the current social climate. Take a read, take care, and know that we’ll be together again soon. Thank you, Edward, for sharing these beautiful words.

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Empty Spaces

by Edward Ahern

• • •

We define ourselves by the spaces we fill, by our closeness, one to another, to another. The surging floods of faces and bodies reassure us that we’re a snugly fitting part of a larger whole. When our outsides are vacated and we’re boxed away or hidden behind masks, we can’t help but worry.

We’re pack animals with strong loves for group and territory. When both are withheld, we suffer from social vertigo. And worry, not just about today, but tomorrow as well. How will friendship and work companionship be deformed, or worse go missing? Can we return to touching shoulders with strangers in stadiums? Can we still find someone special when the social places, shuttered now, may be changed to dancing six feet apart?

The empty parking lots we drive by on our way to buy food and medicine mean gapingly empty parts of our lives. Can we begin to recover that?

We shouldn’t have to measure closeness with caution, but will for some time to come. And then eventually, as we create tolerance of a new disease, we’ll resume old ways. And the empty spaces will be filled by our needed sense of place, of closeness, one to another, to another.

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Ed Ahern resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He’s had over two hundred fifty stories and poems published so far, and six books. Ed works the other side of writing at Bewildering Stories, where he sits on the review board and manages a posse of six review editors.

Metamorphosis

I’ve recently noticed that social media has evoked a lot of its users to promote being stagnant or unchanging. I want to encourage you to partake in healthy rest and seasons of patient pauses, but to continue in the velocity of internal growth or the pursuit of it. With that, this string of consciousness was born: Metamorphosis.

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You don’t need a sign to awaken and self reflect to want to rebirth from your present self and remain in a state of humility becoming a patiently learning larva that sheds its skin through the consumption of truth to build yourself a hidden chrysalis where you grow without all eyes watching and the world may see you as dormant but you’re growing wings and will emerge with an undeniable transformation and you don’t need a sign to encourage this growth in another or to make this metamorphosis cyclical within yourself

Here.

I wrote this poem this morning, when the family was sleeping beneath comforters in various rooms, and the robins began swooping from barren branch to barren branch. Its title is today’s date, though its theme is the name of this post.

Here. Moving past an adverb, this word is a state of presence that tugs at me to stay within the moment. In a time where anxiety can run rampant, this word reminds me to put it into perspective, and take what’s in front of me. What’s here, and find the light in it.

• • •

April 6, 2019

Today, the Colorado mountains
surround me, lungs treated
with rich oxygen, rejuvenated
from the pines, untouched
by man’s machine.

Tomorrow, I’ll be back home,
where my residence’s finale
in this town has only begun.

Then, I’ll be flying clear
to the other coastline,
soaking in D.C.’s museums
and art, and eat guac from a
once-familiar Mexican restaurant,
I first visited a year back.

From there, I’ll become lost
in thought, 30,000 feet
above the ground; traveling
from Nashville to Atlanta,
allowing an hour to breathe.

And while Colorado is not
my home, I’ll return here
in less than 30 days,
leaning against a white wall
looking out the window
into the thick of pines;
limited cell service,
endless writing.

But for today,
I’m in the Colorado air,
bird’s call almost tangible,
their echo lingering throughout
the valley; I wish my
father well, as he buttons up
his coat and shifts his lunchbox
to the other hand,
admiring the sky.

And I’ll watch the deer graze upon
the land–my mother’s almost
emerging flower plants.

And now I admire the sky,
and how it meets the cities,
on all parts of the earth.

San Francisco in July

Towards the ending weeks of last month, I went out to San Francisco for a work trip; after work hours I wandered on-foot into local bookstores, hiked upon hills, came across community gardens, and watched out onto the city. I was fully entertained, though requesting dinner reservations for one.  

I remember how I use to pull away from solitude, how it was a space to abuse my body and cycle the cognition my mind would stammer about my existence. I didn’t know then what I know now, as time and age often matures into a sweeter standing.

Present day dwellings, solitude is an opportunity to take an unfiltered open-eyed look at my intentions and actions, the habits that my mind instantly acts upon. This is the act in which has enabled me to grow comfortable with being alone, for this practice is one that I try to often pulse. I find enjoyment in analyzing how and why I react to circumstances, and its realignment. 

Since I was away for a little over a week, this ensued as a fluid flow throughout the trip's duration. Several traits that I didn’t know that I had surfaced to eye-level—both the beautiful and the brutal. 

I discovered that I love on others more than I think that I do, and that I always aim to stay in a state of stillness. I also found that I had subconsciously linked the contrast of my life from yesterday to today as a currency to salvation; a fraudulent thought that had been utilized to chip away at forgiveness for myself for the past few months. 

I’m sitting next to myself, a mirror—black kerchief folded and knotted around my neck, brown hair slighting spilling over my shoulders.

My heart is pooling in grace and mercy, forgiveness and favor. I will always be in a state of gratitude, giving thanks for conviction, and the stillness that softly speaks truth. 

• • •

j u l y   2 3

Misson & 18th

I sit among the street vendors
selling soggy dried books and soiled t-shirts, 
we engage in conversation. 

I look out and watch; 
each passerby
engaging in this air, 
traveling towards their next destination. 

The younger man with
baggy jeans, and black sunglasses
tugging at the collar of his shirt. 

The older woman crossing the street,
pushing her daughter in her stroller, 
dodging the street’s cracks and holes. 

The ‘clean fuel bus’ slides across the skyward strings, 
holding several hundred hearts a day, 
their heads jounce in unison
to the awry asphalt. 

The stranger wandering, 
not familiar to a smile, 
though we smile anyways.  

Melted posters paper-mâché 
the sides of the telephone poles, 
and wooden walls are covered
in metal diamond patterns,

akin to all, 
foreign to none.

• • •

j u l y   2 5

Atop a red rocked hill, 
overlooking San Francisco in July, 
where cities and sky intertwine; 
pastel houses stacked, 
buildings climb high. 

The wind is heavy here, 
eager to even take this pen and paper away, 
to have me only captivated by its whirl, 
for it has a jealous mind. 

City shaded, 
fog rolling in, 
dust becomes unsettled. 

Neither weak are the mountains
nor my bones; 
the red rocks
and my blue blood.

• • •

j u l y   2 7

This week has been
gold purified by fire; 
tried and tested— 
results revealing, 
conviction gentle, 
grace abounding.

Nothing on this earth
can touch
or take away
your obedience.

We will always be guided to light, 
as long as we open our eyes.