My head hurts, my shoulders hurt, in fact all of my body aches. I cannot trace it to a point of origin since it moves continuously through my body and it does not seem to even begin to dissipate. I sit on the armchair with my head in palms and keep thinking on what had just happened. I cannot get to the end of it. I have switched every facet of each side of the meaning given by your actions, your behavior, but all is in vain because I have not succeeded to understand you with all of my heavy reasoning. What has eluded me? Could it been something in tonality? Could it been in gesticulation or maybe in body language? I am unable to tell. In my mind, thousands upon thousands of analytical schemes are simultaneously running one more complicated than the other.
After more than an hour of intense analysis, with a pounding headache amplified by every rising thought, with the thousands of analytical schemes still running in the back of my brain and so far have not been solving anything, I give up. It is just temporary until this horrible headache passes. I lean my head backwards; parts of my mind are continuing to unwind the complex leads generated previously by the schemes. It feels as if my thoughts are escaping through the skull, here and there bouncing on each other.
Sitting like this after a while, when the brainstorm has quieted down to a significant degree, the image of your gesture along with what you have said flashes through my brain. And suddenly following it, without the need of any complicated analysis, the explanation comes into my mind. I finally understand you, sheesh how good it feels to have solved this puzzle too. What do you know? All I had to do to understand you was to remain calm and take things as they are.
“To understand you” was printed in Harvest Time, No. 5 of Inwood Indiana. Pick up the paperback from Prolific Press; the stories and poems published online are free to read here.
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