An E-Portfolio

HUMAN’S POINT-OF-VIEW

 

         Today I just needed to get to my place. To see the rich blue lucidity; to hear the light spatter of the tides hit the embankment; the slight smell and taste of salt wafting in the air; and the warmth of the glaring sunshine. I go to my place often. I discovered it completely by accident, validating further my belief that this discovery was fate. The isolation of my place is its most captivating feature. Most people may think this desolation is unsettling; the idea that no one is around to hear you scream tends to freak out about ninety percent of the world’s population. I find it halcyon. This little undisturbed section of the world belongs to me just for a while, acting as an escape where I can let my fears vanish, my anger release, my sadness boil, and my happiness be found.

 

         On this particular day, the reflection of myself mirrored by the placid water stared fervidly back at me. Who are you? echoed the voice inside my head, as if directly addressing the facsimile on the water’s surface. I could never tell exactly whose voice it was that resonated within me, but it was unfailingly and unwaveringly always there, speaking my thoughts inside me. The voice responded to my rhetorical rumination, repeating my name over and over again in my head as the answer: Luna, Luna, Luna… until it sounded like gibberish and seemed to lose its meaning. My soul felt void of something; I didn’t know who I was. My name isn’t enough to suffice the philosophy behind my self-questioning, I wasn’t just Luna; I needed more. When I feel unsure and lonely, when I lose touch with reality, I ground myself by coming to my special place. The purity of the earthliness serves as a reminder of what I am and where I came from.

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        When I visit my special place, the unmistakably blue hue of the water serves as a comfort. The mixture of my own emotions and the pulchritude of my surroundings causes my eyes to flood over with tears nearly every time. I usually come when I feel sad and angry. I like to sit by the shore of the lake and watch the water creep up and drag back; it’s hypnotizing. Sometimes I cry because I have to. Life gets the best of me, but in this place I regain my strength. Today was a day that I needed to cry. I kneeled at the bank and let my tears drop into the water below. I pictured every tear drop as its own solitary worry, imagining the issues melting away as they mix with the clarity of the blue aqua pura. I cover my face and really let lose causing the tears to run down my arms instead of fall into the lake. I needed to end this once and for all. I needed to find some rocks.

 

         I rise from my kneeling position, taking a little longer than usual as a result of the feebleness felt in my knees. I search left and right for something to throw into the water; anything to smash the reflection that peers back at me. I settle on a large, rough boulder-sized rock and lift it over my head with all the might my lanky arms have got. As I release the stone it crashes into the glassy water, causing ripples in every direction. This makes me happy and genuinely brings me joy. I smile.

 

        After the lake has resumed its natural resting state, lacking of any interruption that could manifest ebb and flow, I feel myself become mindful. My mind frame seems to correlate proportionately to the tranquility exuded by this magical place, and my smiles start coming involuntarily. My lips curling back, my eyes still wet from the crying, the sun shines on my face, illuminating me as if I were in the spotlight. At that moment, I thought I saw movement in the water, as if it were trying to communicate with me. I looked at it in awe; its influxes seemed to be waving at me. I walked closer to the edge of the water, still smiling as I became entranced by the fluid dancing movements. Skeptical at first because of what might be lurking below the surface and causing these rippling effects, I only very cautiously drew nearer. I felt a connection with the energies transpiring from the lake, so I decided to take a leap of faith.

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       Just like the rock I hurled earlier, I hit the water with a crash, sending drops flying through the air. I feel the water enrapture my body and wrap itself in my hair, soaking every inch of me and my clothes. I dive deep down, hoping to hide from my realities. I spiral and swivel, doing flips underwater. Soon I feel breathless and return to the surface for air. Floating on my back now, I stare at the sky, making pictures out of the flocculent cumulus clouds. I feel the water enveloping around me, as if embracing me in a big hug. I feel like Mother Nature is trying to tell me something.

 

         I glance down at my fingers, realizing how pruny I was becoming. I made my way toward the embankment and hoisted myself back up onto land. This visit to my special place was unlike all the other ones. Before, I would just come to release my emotions; today, I became enlightened. Something clicked deep inside my subconscious, triggering acceptance and harmony with every aspect of my life. Change is inevitable; even that fact in itself is unchangeable. I thought about this as I wrung out my hair and shook out the curls. The spontaneity of my swim caused a domino effect of thoughts, resulting in one paramount epiphany. I am who I am, nothing can refute that. That’s the only thing that will ever stay stable. As these last thoughts entered my brain, I approached the water once more, and looked deeply into the eyes of the girl looking back at me. For a split second, I saw something. A glimmer of hope pierced me. The water’s composure inspired me to not only look but to see. I saw a girl, a troubled girl, and I wanted only to comfort her. I reached out for her hand, touching the surface of the water ever so lightly, sending one last set of ripples distending. I’ve finally come out on the other side. 

 

 

 

 

OBJECT’S POINT-OF-VIEW

 

           I am cerulean. The ripples I make are reverberations of life splashing, clapping, smacking along my surface, as if giving me a high five; praise for being a necessity to life of all forms. I am calm, however the magnitude of my capabilities is enough to destroy cities. I am drank, I am breathed, I can kill.

 

          There’s a girl that comes to visit me. She looks at me so beautifully, almost alluringly, her eyes staring deep into my soul as I reflect her face back to her. I know she’s looking at herself, this raw and emotional reflection; she doesn’t know I can see her, but I like to think that she’s looking at me. When she comes she feeds me. Her eyes pour small liquid drops into my being. She doesn’t seem to want to behave in this way, but she does it a lot. She covers her face when she does this sometimes, as if she doesn’t want to see herself engage in this act, making the drops scarce. I can’t help but wonder why she seems so unwilling to want to share her little liquiform souls with me. When her eyes dry up, I get hit. Rocks are the most prevalent form of punishment; big stones seem to be her favorite. Every time, the drops cease to fall from within her quintessence to within mine through the portals near her forehead: I know that’s the sign for what’s about to come. I prepare for the worst of it.

 

         The girl rises from her kneeling position against my bank. Slowly at first, as if exhausted, but steadily nonetheless, as if a tower erecting herself high into the abyss. Once she seems to have collected herself, she twirls about the surrounding perimeter in search of that day’s chosen weapon of mass destruction. Sometimes I’m lucky and I’m only within the line of fire of some scanty pellet-like rock chunks, other times she markedly hoists stones bigger than her head above her as if she were Rafiki and the stone were Simba. Today was a hoister, and the huge jagged mass came tumbling straight down at me, shattering her reflection into a million pieces and sending my ripples chaotically undulating. This time, her eyes well up once again in that lachrymal way. Although, my vision seems blurred thanks to the small surges I’m involuntarily forced to carry out because of the simple laws of nature. Through these fluid vibrations I could swear I see a flash of white cross the bottom of her face. I felt the energies in the air transform immediately and I knew this act of shedding eye water was much different than the others; this one seemed a little too victorious. Once my surface smoothed out, I was able to get a clearer visual of the scene; the girl looked more stunning than ever before. Her face spectacles shone bright, the sun hitting the wet lining of her tear-stained bottom lids in an animating manner; her lips pulled back in the most attractive fashion, revealing what looked like a collection of gleaming white pearls. I realized then at that point that the girl was capable of experiencing multiple emotions. I knew the organisms that lived within me experienced a variety of feelings because I transmit the sensory energies among them. Now I was putting it all together; she was sad before and happy now. Crying, that’s what it’s called. Organisms that live within my being don’t experience it. I moisten their eyes too much for them to produce tears. I recognized her happiness vibes right away, though; I transmit those the most. Chucking the rock at me helps her. It makes her happy. I make her happy. Smiling, that’s what it is. I make her smile! At my epiphany, I create a ripple effect just for her. It starts off small at first, building itself into larger swells; I’m waving at her. She looks at me curiously, this time I know she’s looking at me. She knows the efforts of her throwing in the stone are long gone, rippled out into eternity forever. She knows there’s no wind to create this effect. She doesn’t know, however, that I can talk. You’re too beautiful to cry, I say. I want her to come to me. I invite her in.

 

          She seems to take me up on my offer; her smile brightening as she stares at my hypnotizing fluid motions. She approaches me a bit cautiously; unsure of whether my gestures are being caused by an unknown organism lurking just below the surface, but continuing to smile all the same. After contemplating taking a leap into the unknown, she lets out a loud echoing sound from deep within her. I am familiar with this behavior: laughter. Her legs curl up and her body seems to hover for just a second before colliding with me. I catch her and hold her close, embracing her being and entwining myself within her long tresses of hair. She flips around and dives down, down, down in me, her cupped hands resisting my pressure and kicking feet propelling her deeper. She swirls and spins, twists and bends, using the benefits of my weightlessness to her full advantage. I push her back up to get some air. She maneuvers herself around and eventually ends up on her back, floating serenely, inhaling and exhaling the type of respiration I can’t provide for her. If only she had gills like the organisms that live inside me. If only we could spend every day like this.

 

         I hug her body closer to me, blanketing her in my warm but wet grip, reminding her that I can wash her worries away. We had never been this close before; the only souvenirs she ever left me with were her teardrops. Now, her beauty was one with me. I seeped into her, burying myself within the crevices of her skin until every inch of her soaked with me. I soon noticed the dermis covering the tips of her fingers and toes became translucent and wrinkly. She noticed too, and made her way toward my littoral region. Climbing from my clutches and back onto land, she wrung out her hair, causing a stream at first to fall from the end of her strands. Then, as I dried out of her cascading curls, tinier drops of me flew around whenever she turned her head. She looked at herself one last time in my reflective surface before turning to disappear and return to her life. I used all my might to cease any activity that may reverberate from me, smoothing out my surface, making it as glassy as possible. I wanted this girl to not just look, but to see. And see she did, as her face drew in and was poised mere inches from my surface, she looked deep into her reflection. I acted as a mirror so clear that I could see myself in her eyes, just as she saw herself in mine. Her palm flattened against my tranquil expanse, creating one last set of ripples that I took my time to resound. She wanted to touch the hand of the girl whose reflection stares vehemently back at its producer. I knew that she wouldn’t be coming back to cry anymore. She’s found her peace with it.