The Empress of all Senses
What is that one most ruling sense that drives us? To compel, beseech and even challenge us to become more than what we thought we were capable of?
Our senses are what make us. We are run by them. They tell us and the world who we are. They are not only the system through which we interpret the world. They are also signals for the world to interpret us.
And among all those senses and the complex charisma of their working, which do we think is the most valuable of all? Which is the one that makes every one of the others worth it.
For me, it is freedom. The freedom to be and do and make choices and mistakes and every other action and its repercussions and reverberations that constitute the fabric we call life.
Freedom isn't the absence of fetters. It is not the liberation following the incarceration. It is not release. It is not redemption. It is not retribution or relocation of one worldview to another, possibly exalted place. It is not a mandate or a metaphysical monument to arrive at. It certainly isn't the destination after a journey of toil and torture.
Then what is freedom? For the love of goodness, what is this chimera? Is it so abstract that it can only be missed? And never attained? Is it so treasured and yet so ephemeral that one can only hope for it and never achieve it?
I do not believe that. The Empress of all senses, all MY senses, is not easy. Nor is she easily attainable. As Empresses ought to be. But she is reachable. Her wake is not a mirage. Her presence is not a fevered imagination. Although, to fully begin to experience her one needs imagination. More than intellect, I would commit.
My Empress is like a dragonfly inside a furnace. She is like a dandelion in a storm. She is like a poem on Wall Street. But she IS. And she can be reached. I spend my waking days and my dream-laden nights in homage to her. In my completeness and fullness of integrity. In my proud vulnerability. In my conscious absence of illusory mechanics.
For in her desire, I feel whole.