thinking about things that exist even when I'm not thinking of them
like cedar groves preserved by a government that will eventually dismantle what it's supposed to govern
and the swing set in my grandparents' yard, one day only the wind will ride it and i probably won't be there to see even that. it's weird.
i'm thinking about kannoubine, these sacred mountains in lebanon, caves were carved into them and they spiraled down into the valley. there are so many caves that still haven't been set foot in since the banished christians lived and died there. they were the only ones that knew how to navigate over crags and moss and really thin ledges. there are probably still bones in some of those caves. i wonder what sounds reach in to echo there. during the day i imagine it's the chatter of tourism, a mother's voice as her kid teeters over a rock, she's probably just shrill enough to brush a pebble at the mouth of the cave like a loose tooth that a surge of saliva knocks the tip of on the way out. at night i imagine owls
or crickets, maybe toads. maybe whispered prayers left over from expanding to fit the container of the church, tucked into the mountain. maybe the clink of giftshop keychains are distinct enough for the caves.
if you climb high enough, there's a monk from south america living and praying all hours of the day except for one, when he comes out to speak to someone when he feels the cosmic pull to do so. i'm a skeptic myself, but he's definitely tapped into something earthly wearing a cosmic coat. roland almost fell over the railing separating the monk's tiny sanctuary from the steep bowl that was so many years of pointy earth trying to stab something out of the sky with its peaks. addisson and i hummed ska when we should have been praying and i saw other feet tapping.
i wonder what that old monk is praying for right now. i wonder what the valley sounds like at night. what it does when everyone forgets it long enough to make it nonexistent, if only for a moment. what if that's when something dies? when it's forgotten by everyone even for just a moment? no one is looking, so something goes missing until it's not quite the same, and then until it's done. i wonder if the echoes in kannoubine are waiting to be forgotten so they don't have to be anyone's sleepless reminder anymore.