quiet rivers

There are days in my life when thinking leads me nowhere. I look out windows of my soul and see gray expanses. I measure those spaces out; expand and decrease both my ‘line of sight’ and the depth of that grayness, with perspectives varying only in degrees of desire, or the absence of it. Depending on how much a particular lack offends my sense of proportion, I try to splash bits of color onto that gray tapestry; a mental transposition of a remembered image of a bedewed leaf, a virtual imposition of a pair of impossibly-blue eyes, a rolling-out of a cherished memory of full black tresses curling down an alabaster cheek like huge falling teardrops. There are days when my thoughts simply are.

During these times, I tend to watch life go by. I do not do so out of cynicism, or out of any sense of complacency borne out of any feelings of superiority. Call it self-preservation, or call it by any other name except selfishness. For the most part, I am caught midstream in most things that affect my life; the flow of life only steadfast, only meaningful, for me, if my commitment was halfway total. But there are times when my involvement is better self-defined when I can lie back, as it were, on a bank, while the river of life rushes by. To seek that definition, nebulous as it usually is, gives my soul a basis to move in a gentle and peaceful direction. Almost all of my thoughts, if burdens they can suddenly become, are as nebulously real as the reflection of the night clouds on the surface of a lake.

It has taken me years, in the context of this particular soliluquy, but only during the times that I can sit, if figuratively so, absolutely still, is it possible for me to say, even sing along, that “…on a clear day, you can see
forever….”

Do you think any one of us really, ever stops dreaming? In the middle of strife, in the concourse where grief seems to gather and peak at its most painful, in the hardest grip of loss and in the most poignant of ecstasies, do our souls ever really stop dreaming? Do we ever stop wishing that some of our fantasies become as real as breathing?

I live in America. And here, most of all, you can see people living in their most independent. And only here, at their most independent, can you also see, at its steepest, the meaning of loneliness. The starkest loneliness is, the faster these people seem to want to devour life. Here, where an individual has, arguably, the most chances at success, can also be seen the most vivid examples of loneliness.

“People…people who need people…are the happiest people in the world…”

There are days in my life when thinking leads me nowhere. In days like those, I am sadder than most, I am happier than most. I look out windows of my soul, see gray expanses, and fill them with the texture of wind slipping past my cheeks, to wipe the tang of absent tears from memory. I measure those spaces out, fill them with the laughter of everyone I have ever cherished, color them with the knowledge that there are days when thoughts must simply be themselves…and that, truly, there are times that are simply meant to be.

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