it's a dangerous thing to have a soul.

clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line.

dear little voice,

joan didion writes in the year of magical thinking that the most beautiful things she has ever seen have all been from aeroplanes: the light’s play on cyprian water, the forever confidence of fields, the hush of the miles-white arctic and shatter of californian coastlines.

i think maybe i must have some defect: on airplanes i see only tears.

it is true that there is no shortage of crying on airplanes: babies shriek and moan through their accumulating discomforts. people watch sad movies on small screens until their eyes grow hot and blurry. in window seats strangers lift small hands to their mouths at take-off to unspecific music. i always wonder what they’re ending. i always wonder where they’re going.

we spend all this time crying, and yet the plane lands without drawing so much as a sigh from any of us. occasionally, there may be a brief and startling episode of applause— we meet the perilous exercise of our body’s unpracticed levitation in a precarious clot of tin across a geography spanning the entire fathomable world with the same mute enthusiasm as we would man pulling a rabbit from a hat. impatiently we disentangle ourselves, reach for bags, unsteadily switch on telephones and dispose of biscuit wrappers. we tug on our sweaters and collect our purses. we dry our eyes. we know that the dull magic of casual flight cannot possibly compare with our own private trifles. we save our tears for what is more important. 

what is intimate to us will always be what is most important to us.

i’d be more embarrassed for all these teary people, but i’ve been tossed about in that little engine too. i’ve taken two airplanes this week and i cried on both of them. what is it about airplanes that are the apex of unexpected tears? 

An Air Asia passenger plane flies as a partial solar eclipse occurs Wednesday, March 9, 2016 as seen from Taguig city, east of Manila, Philippines.

i was trying to measure the Honolulu coastline, you see.

i was trying to measure the Honolulu coastline when i realised i couldn't.

naturally, i began to cry.

i'll explain. 

lifting from the tarmac, my eyes move to the window to witness the shrinking of the honolulu coastline. i begin to aimlessly wonder how long it is— one of those vague and unimportant thoughts saved for the aimless trifles of bored and tired hours— and play at estimating its length as we lift off the ground. but as it begins to grow into a distant blur, i am overwhelmed by a simple fact: from afar and from close up, this coastline is a different size. 

the length of the coastline depends entirely upon the scale i measure it. 

as the entirely comprehensible singularity of granite rocks begin to transform into unfathomable distances, a thousandfold into light, i can no longer tell whether i am looking at the whole shape from far away, or at a tiny part of it up close. 

later, in the dark of my room, i give up on sleep. i look up the length of the honolulu coastline— and i realise i am not mistaken. 

everything i read contradicts itself. some sources say 840km, others 1000km, some 3,452km. 

from afar and from close up, this coastline is a different size.

an aerial view of king sound coastline, western australia.

so: it’s january. so: it’s the second airplane i’ve cried on this week. so i’m abandoning summer and i’m abandoning ripe mangos and salt, i’m abandoning open windows and butterflies, the murmur of sand and maybe even love. so i’m trying to measure the honolulu coastline from the window seat of an airplane when i realise i cannot. so i’m crying.

it happens.

and as it happens, a great phrase is tugged from somewhere inside of me i do not know— as so often happens—

clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line. 

at the time i do not remember where these words are from, why they are appearing in that moment in the abstract gentleness of clouds, or to what responsibility i owe them, where i picked them up or whether i did at all— whether they are the relic of a reading or of my own invention.

but as i leave the ground i realise that, to whomever they belong, they are correct: clouds are not spheres. i know this because i am close enough to see it: they are no longer the clumsy childrens pictures or hazy fingerprints they appear to be from the ground. they are pure air; a cloud is not a cloud, it is a transcendental haze that defies the convenient shape we have assigned it in both science and illustration, some invariably random collection of shapes and patterns. i think this. i pass right through them.

clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line. 

later in the big dark of that little room, doing the research, i realise that this is a line from mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot whose work i believe i read some years ago, and that for some unknown reason emerged only amid the gentleness of clouds, when i looked upon a honolulu coastline, when i felt a tear in my heart and was quite afraid.

Mandelbrot writes: 

"On a map an island may appear smooth, but zooming in will reveal jagged edges that add up to a longer coast. Zooming in further will reveal even more coastline.

Here is a question, a staple of grade-school geometry that, if you think about it, is impossible: the length of the coastline, in a sense, is infinite."

Steve Back - Pink Lakes Abstract aerial image of the lakeshore of Hutt Lagoon in Western Australia. The surreal colours are naturally occurring due to the strong concentrations of certain algae

until recently geometry was 'cold' — incapable of describing the irregular shape of a cloud, the slope of a mountain or the beauty of the human body. what Benoit Mandelbrot did with his theories was give us a language of perspective. 

i don't sleep on the plane. instead of Dreams, i am circled by the same hurried words, and this time of my own broken invention: this world is not simple in its geometry. 

this world is not simple in its geometry. 

a coastline is 100km and 1000km. we don't bat an eye at our survival in what is essentially a rocket ship but in its chairs we cry over the trifles of a boy or a friend or a book. 

there are so many tears on airplanes. we perceive the world only by the small and large scales of our little ecstasies and mortal disappointments.  

it seems we are creatures not naturally talented in the art of geometry.

it’s why the length of a coastline is infinite. it’s why that which we feel in any moment feels endless, because to us it is endless. 

the length of a coastline is infinite.

we are disclosed no expiration on love nor specific duration to grief. like a coastline, we cannot tell whether we are looking at the whole shape from far away, or a small part of it up close.

and so naturally everything feels very enormous all of the time. 

i confess i am an untalented mathematician, little voice. i know this to be true in love. i’m not really the calculating type, you see. i’d rather make some good sentences and call it a day.

it can be hard to make sense amid infinity’s enormity. simply put, it's hard to know whether you're looking at something from up close, or from far away. 

clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line.

nothing is simple in its geometry.

Flamingoes, \ Michael Poliza

there are moments in life when we are reminded that we are unfinished, that the story we have been telling ourselves about who we are and where our life leads is yet unwritten. such moments come most readily at the beginning of something new, when the size of things begin to change at the scale that we measure them.

for me this usually happens on airplanes.

these moments ask us to break the pattern of our lives and reconfigure them — something that can only be done with great courage and great conviction. nothing exposes our potential and our vulnerability more acutely than a beginning does. 

and because of this beginnings often frighten us. they are, after all, a straight-shooting path into the unknown. 

but really no beginning is empty or lonely. we seem to think that beginning is setting out from a lonely point along some line of direction into the unknown. but comfort and warmth and energy come alive when a beginning is truly embraced. we are never as alone in our beginnings as it might seem at the time. we are never, ever as alone. and ultimately, we are being invited to embrace the gifts we have inside of us. the gifts that have been preparing for this very moment. 

to do anything else would be a serious act of self-neglect. 

it’s enough to make you cry, if you can get further enough away from the scale of it to allow yourself the privacy.

Colorful patterns are seen in Lençóis Maranhenses National Park, a 380,000-acre (155,000-hectare) protected area in northeastern Brazil.

this world is not simple in its geometry.

we cannot measure the length of a coastline. we cannot measure the length of our Hearts; of anything we feel in any moment. i know i can't. everything feels very enormous to me all of the time, especially when i'm looking at it from up close. 

“what we see, we see / and seeing is changing,” Adrienne Rich wrote.

and it does change— but only by how we look at it, by the tools we look through, by our distance from the ground.

and i find that nothing can carry you better than a couple of really good sentences.

so i want to bless you with this poem by John O'Donohue. 

my only sadness is that i cannot be the one to read it to you. perhaps on a beach over tangerines while the heat slows and the world goes with it, where the sun's light disappears into the sand at our toes and the people around us slip into the familiar ease of a day's closing. i think you'd like that: 

awaken your spirit to adventure; hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk; soon you will home in a new rhythm, for your soul senses the world that awaits you. 

for your soul senses the world that awaits you. 

it is a dangerous thing to have a soul, isn't it? just as keeping the company of anything wiser than you is. at once all spiked daze, confusion, certainty and awe. but it knows so much more and sees so much more clearly than its owner: it knows what courage you need and when you need it in order to live the life you would love. it would never postpone a Dream— the soul only does what it came here to do. it does not waste its heart on fear. it senses the world that awaits you. it holds nothing back. 

i think it is just about the most terrifying and most important thing we can speak with. 

i think it is terrifying and important because its only responsibility is to believe in its owner. without that sacred belief, it dies. a soul is only the thing that believes in what carries it.

but we— their strange owners— rarely believe in ourselves. not until we meet someone, usually, who reveals that what is inside of us is worthy of being listened to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. and it's only when we believe in ourselves that we come into real contact with our souls, where we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals our souls to us further. 

now that i write that, i wonder whether the soul is simply our search for it. 

what a tricky joy that we're here to ask the question at all. and only by the grace of some random chance.

i say: find what is infinite, and take one step back.

and then look again.

i say: put your ear down hard and hot to your soul.

and then listen.

love,

ars poetica

the contents page of Pictures & Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings by James Elkins

little voice: it is my belief that Poetry is a human birthright. my work will always be completely free, and takes considerable Time and Love to give to you eery week. if it has brought you Joy, consider buying me a book so that I may continue to tuck Words in your pocket:

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After Life ワンダフルライフ (1999) Directed by Hirokazu Koreeda