Escape

I NEVER hear the word “escape”
Without a quicker blood,
A sudden expectation,
A flying attitude.

I never hear of prisons broad
By soldiers battered down,
But I tug childish at my bars,—
Only to fail again!

~~~Emily Dickinson (1830–86)

Much as I love words, they can be tyrants sometimes. Swarming together into thoughts and buzzing around my brain, they distract me from my body.

Then I make my escape into the world of numbers. There is nothing so clear and simple and elegant as an equation, where all the powers of x and y are discovered and revealed and work together.


^116

[escape links: Thesaurus | Ish | Frog | Reconstruction | No]
[escape links: Traffic | Law | Beautiful | Common | Toaster]
[escape links: Sex | Submarine | Plexus | Accuse | Gardenia]
[escape links: Regret | Multilingual | Muscle | Invention | Garlic]
[escape links: Muscle | Which | Help | Text | Awake]
[escape links: God | Bombast | Bed | Factors | ^116]
[escape links: Engage | Seattle | Goodhearted | Reality | A-Bomb]
[escape links: Flower | Frame | Fret | Cinema | Understanding]
[escape links: Reasonable | Fridge | Master | Voodoo | Baby]
[escape links: Llama | Picture | Materialism | Will | Gleam]

The time came for my escape from Erewhon. I knew that I would have to find an excuse to visit the eastern mountains during the dark of the moon. I told the King that I wanted to observe the residents of Naffity when they gathered the tears of mourning. He raised his left eyebrow, but granted leave.

I was handed a dark lantern and we hiked up to the plateau below the giant fallen statues. Once everyone was bent over with eyes fixed to the ground, I slipped away and climbed up the rocky slope. My hands and arms and face were scratched by the long thorns as I burrowed through the boor-geresy thicket and found the tunnel entrance beneath the up-bent knee of the statue of Xite.

from all the others, from you,
from me ... from me?
how can I escape from myself?

If escape is not at hand then you must make your own escape.

Last week, someone asked me what it is that drives me. I didn't know what to say. Is there something other than architecture that drives me? I searched my mind for hours thinking of what my passion was. I thought of all the movies that I had seen throughout the year, and then it hit me: the thing which drives me is the hope, the promise, that I can be anywhere but Here.
I told her that I liked to travel. She thought I meant something like going to Europe. But I really only wanted to die.