![The media file [Christian] is by CallahanFreet.](/artists/christian/christian_head_hu5cef231d8f4180b7a037182f38f41a4e_11594_800x0_resize_q82_h1_box_2.webp)
Unclose your mind. You are not a prisoner. You are a bird in flight, searching the skies for dreams.
Barren. Cold. Lifeless. Bleak. Unwelcoming. My thoughts during our family run on the Homer Spit were simultaneously familiar and foreign.
In the past, feeling the crunch of my footsteps thudding upon the ice sheet punctured many times before me by pedestrians and moose might have influenced the pain in my freezing fingertips. Not today, because I’m a different person trying not to wallow.
![The media file [Knowledge, Part IV] is by CallahanFreet.](/works/52weeks/2021/1225/20211225_hu51a96cd28233a07f93835dcf9a8e964e_263672_800x0_resize_q82_h1_box_2.webp)
I cannot explain how I learned the ideas that I apply to life. It seems as though the definitions were imposed upon me. The world rejects any real interrogation, so I find meaning only with the discipline necessary to reformulate the origins.
Is it really possible for any sentient being to relate to its environment in any way detatched from its own perceptions? Today I think not, which explains my fleeting contempt at crossing the slick, snowy street near our parked car only to run six miles in the cold rain.
Memory is the only thing I have to understand my surroundings — therefore, if I forget myself, the world is new and pain has a different meaning.