Belonging_-_Creative_Writing_Piece_(_Noah_)

Part 1: Noah and his Father: On a quiet morning, majestic to say the least, the sun rose softly, yet unlike all other mornings, on this day, it embraced a pristine crispness, perfectly complementing the balmy accents of this summers dawn. Pastel orange danced with lilac in the sky, and as light gradually highlighted the earth bound greens, the world seemed to hug together, all elements as one, as family, each entwined with the next, as though made for the existence of what was made before and after. Unity in individuality. Noah did not sleep most nights. He couldn’t stand the silence, however many times police sirens interjected, it nevertheless seemed overly intense at a time of rest. He watched the sunrise art unfold against the clock, yet long after the sun had risen, he would continue to watch and wait. Sometimes he would wait for the sounds of birds, each in their families, waking also, enjoying what he enjoyed, living when he lived, and sometimes for the sound of his mother, unable to stay in a decent slumber, thinking of all the household tasks that lay ahead. Noah did not like to see his mother work so hard most days. “She labors over the silliest of things”, so he told his father. His father just stared, not in a judgmental way, not in a way of expressing agreement, but simply in an acknowledging way, as if to say, “My son has said something, I heard that something, this conversation is now over.” There weren’t many unscrewed nuts and bolts in Noah’s father’s head. He was a clever man, a journalist in fact, for a reputable newspaper. He was the type to sniff around for events, some called him ‘the bloodhound’, and when he found one, it was almost beautiful the way he dissected and interpreted, investigated and understood every relevant detail of the situation. Noah began to idolize his father after he travelled to Sri Lanka for a story on the ever increasing poverty. He stayed away from Noah for nine months, and all Noah could do was miss him. He understood that his father was gone just for now, for a little while, and for a good cause, but it felt as though he was away from Noah, himself, alone. Noah realized he was being entirely selfish however, when his father returned and told tales of all the many wonderful, yet heartbreaking adventures he had undergone. Noah didn’t pay much attention to the specifics, but more so on what his father had done in order to go on such adventures. His father immersed himself in the culture, in the people, who accepted him, cared for him and taught him how to be. He, for nine months, was no longer a white man from New York, in Sri Lanka, simply there to view them and observe the state of poverty in which they lived, “No, Sir-ee”, Noah thought. Noah liked outdated colloquialisms like that, especially in moments when they became the unexpected, and perhaps, the unwanted. No, his father became the person with which he would have wanted to encounter. He became the old Sri Lankan man, sitting on a dry dirt road, hunched and tired with a ripe tan and sweat on his neck. He became the mother of three, struggling each day to teach her children how to “live right by God”, tormented each night by the very thought of a day without food for them in the morning. His father met that very woman, and she told him that she cried, every night, at least one single tepid tear rolled down he sunburnt face, and into her empty lap. Her children were always asleep however, she told Noah’s father that she could never let them see her at her weakest, or else they would “grow up weak, and here, there is no room for weakness”. Ironic. Noah’s father made the mother’s story his first paragraph in what became a front page story. It was the day that Noah read his story, four times over, that he knew he wanted be exactly like his father. Unprecedented, unprejudiced, accepting and belonging. A simple man of words, yet a man so rich in integrity, in values, in understanding, and in friends. Noah was not like his father, a boy, of simple words indeed, but a boy and not a man, and Noah most certainly, did not belong anywhere. Part 2: Noah and Himself: As dawn had inspired artisans, dusk revealed the paint left on the walls. Daybreak was delicate and personal, sunset, however, felt rough and busy and shared and loud. Things did not calm as the sun slid behind skyscrapers, it left only a crimson hue to be slowly taken over by a blanket of cobalt night. Streets were ablaze of headlights and stirring traffic lights, signaling the start of a hasty race to the next red stop. “In such a hurry to go nowhere”, Noah always thought. Noah was not a wallflower, he did have friends, he engaged, on the surface entirely, but a wanderer gallivanted in his mind, and most days, the wanderer took over. Unlike his father, who he adored wholly, Noah never kept in touch with reality. He found no peace in the constant noise of ceaseless expectations, the need for love and admiration and the ever incessant argument over the origin and purpose of human beings. Noah creatively thought of the world as a canvas, in which he was the painter, where he would paint his future with the efforts of his present. Much like dawn, and how the sun is the painter, coloring the sky and the ground so that they are bonded as they brighten. Noah didn’t believe he belonged in reality, which was a fact he loathed. His father lived in reality, in fact, he investigated some of the harshest realities in the world, and by choice, he lived as a native within them. A survivor of life, and yet a direct descendent of this legend couldn’t bring himself to a days bus ride to school. Noah sat at the front of the bus, left side, single and content. He always sat beside the window with his bag taking up the second person space next to him. As he gazed out, he watched the landscape swiftly change as the bus sped down the road. “Too early for traffic”, Noah thought in his own little world, yet this was abruptly refuted when the bus suddenly screeched to a stop. Noah thought back to the moving window visions he had just witnessed, and he realized that perhaps they were in such rapid movement because Noah was not meant to see them. The moments that people were to experience in those passing places were not Noah’s to experience that day, not for Noah to understand. In those moments, Noah did not belong, and so, they sped by, like the bus, predestined for a location and a moment for Noah. Noah wondered if his life was predestined. He wondered if it was by his own doing that he was not able to belong like the people in those moments, or if it was because his life was already written down, and on this day the script had said, “Noah will not leave the bus until he reaches the school, he will not experience the experiences of others today”, and that this was in fact the reason that the bus sped down, ground to a halt, and inspired this revelation. “Hm.” was all that Noah had said out loud about this concept of predestination, and with that, it had concluded. Noah sat in his classes, did what was allocated, and was quiet. Unlike the other kids seated around him, collectively groaning at the very notion of homework, Noah was not there, he was in his mind, in his own reality, constructed in fantasy. He knew he belonged here, in his head, with the places he made, and the people he wanted to know. Unlike his father who found comfort in knowledge and the friendships of others, Noah felt happiness in the world he created, because this was his perfect, idealistic world. No wrong was done here, no pain, no anger, no arguments over the origin and purpose of human beings. It was his make believe reality, and whatever happened there was his own purposeful doing. Noah still adored his father wholeheartedly, but until he could come to terms with reality, he could not live his fathers life, the way he wanted to, rather, he would live his own, in his own. Noah sat on the right side of the bus going home, with his bag next to him, looking out the window at the passing moments he was not going to understand, thinking of how much he loved his father, and how neutral the city was in the afternoon. He shut his eyes and gracefully slipped into the world in which he created, where he, and everyone around him, belonged together like the oranges and lilacs of the morning sky, with the greens of the fresh earth. On this night, Noah slept all the way through until morning. Peaceful and whole.