• The day I was born, workers came and built a wall around my territory. I was not aware of this wall, not aware of much at all. It wasn't until several years later that I finally became aware of the bricks of stone that enclosed me in my fairly large living area.

    I don't remember actually discovering the wall, but I imagine it often. I can see myself, small and just leaving behind the years of being a toddler. I'm playing with a ball, which rolls away. In my mind's eye I see myself running after it, discovering it at the foot of the wall. I imagine myself wondering what the wall is, what it means, why I'm inside its confines. But in my childlike state, my curiousity does not last long, and soon I wander away to other toys, other adventures.

    I do not have to imagine further encounters with the wall. I clearly remember my second encounter with it. I am seven years old and wander off one day, seeking the wall which is only a faint memory by this point. I vaguely understand what it is now, but only vaguely. This time I notice something I did not before-- music. Music is playing from beyond the wall, a melody of a song I've never heard before. I press my ear against the cold stone of the wall, trying to hear more than the muffled strains of song, but if possible it seems like it becomes even more quiet at my attempts do discover its secret. Unpertrubed, I return to what I had been doing before my excursion to the wall.

    Thirteen years of life have passed, and the wall becomes a refuge to me. I go daily, straining to hear the music that I once did not care about. I care now, I want the music to be mine and for myself to be the music. I want to create the harmony of both it and I together. Every day the distant song becomes more and more beautiful, every day I curse the wall more and more for blocking me from it. But I do not expect the wall to ever fall, despite the fact that I know now what it is.

    Fifteen years old, I begin to openly hate the wall. I am hostile to it, I am angry by it for keeping me from the beautiful music. I try to climb it, but it is far too high for me to scale. In desperation I claw at it, try to tear it apart with my bare hands, but am only rewarded with scraped and bloodied palms. For a year I attempt to destroy it to no avail, until one day when I stop for rest, a pebble breaks free. I drop to my knees in astonishment and press my eye up to the hole left behind. I see nothing, but the music, ever beautiful, seems a bit clearer than before.

    Over the next year more and more pebbles break loose, and eventually rocks and chunks fall too. The wall still stands strong, imprisoning me, but I now know that it will not serve this purpose for much longer. But now instead of being excited, I am scared, for the music has changed. It is no longer that of beauty and far off wisdom, but something sinister, frightening. It is a mockery of what it once was, and it scares me. I will for the wall to rebuild it, try to place the rubble from whence it came, but it will not cooperate.

    It has been eighteen years of my life that this wall has been here, and while it is still present it is eroding faster and faster with each day. I will not lie, I am scared of what will happen when it is gone. Where will I go, what will I do? And the music, what will the music be? While it is no longer terrifying as it once was, its innocent beauty is long gone, and I realize that it never was that way, but instead my flawed perception made it appear that way to me.

    I do not know what will happen when the wall is just a memory to me and I become one with the ever changing music. Instead, I prepare myself and wait for the inevitable changes that it will bring.