I took a short walk. It aimed toward the greenway and instinctively and intentionally I found my self striding through tall weeds to be down by the water. Was I in search of something? I don’t know if it was a thing at all. I didn’t really plan to gather any goods. It just happened.
I’d been pedaling hard for a few weeks, laboring on house painting jobs. Good, satisfying work, that earned me money, useful in our money-driven culture. Some get by, some prosper, many suffer; some survive, a few thrive. It all seems relative to one’s view. The noise of adamant political signs and insistent remedies for the many challenges pressing into my psyche only added to my subtle agitation. We will get what we have sown, for sure.
I might have stayed on my sofa, stared at a screen, or rocked in the chair on my front porch. Somehow today I felt a need shift the routine; to be away even from my sweet house. On this warm sunny morning I chose to just go and be, apart from all this human-focus for a bit. Maybe the river beckoned me.
The scene’s familiar to all my senses. Still it requires time for my mind to let go. And I can’t stop seeing the litter scattered about the bank, nor stifle a compulsion to act. A plastic bag hangs across the water like a flag of surrender offered by our tortured earth. There’s an Xbox, golf balls, bottles, cans, plastic bags, roofing metal, and more. I drag some tires out of the muck, and gather up all manner of other consumer debris. Remnants of last month’s heavy rains and high-water, and more so our arrogant, disconnected attitude to the fabric of life that sustains us all. Rather than fight my urge to also be still, I play along, figuring some waste collection can’t hurt. But obliquely I know I need to get it out of my system in order to collect the courage to sit.
When I finally take my place on a dry rock protruding from the bank, body planted, my mind refuses to relinquish identifying and labeling. I spot deer tracks, maybe some coon too. And here’s a feather (from what bird?), look—a shell, and a snail, there’s an acorn cap, and a maple seed, a brick so current-worn it mimics the smooth ancient rocks.
Slowly, steadily, I accept the irrational nudge that’s led me here. There are no animals in sight to distract me, and the only sounds are gentle ruffles of sycamore leaves waving from high with each breeze, and the soft gurgle of the clear water. I gaze at the random leaves that let go their towering status and smile as they pirouette downward. Caught gently by the blanket of the river, they graciously bow and lay into the current, acquiescing without a sound. Each performer disappears from view swallowed into the downstream.
My breathing unconsciously begins to sync up with the flow, the ripples of sound interweave, and sunlight sparkles golden in the cascade. As I depart, it seems a desperate clinging to imagine a human life is any more or less significant than each note in this ongoing song.
I’d been pedaling hard for a few weeks, laboring on house painting jobs. Good, satisfying work, that earned me money, useful in our money-driven culture. Some get by, some prosper, many suffer; some survive, a few thrive. It all seems relative to one’s view. The noise of adamant political signs and insistent remedies for the many challenges pressing into my psyche only added to my subtle agitation. We will get what we have sown, for sure.
I might have stayed on my sofa, stared at a screen, or rocked in the chair on my front porch. Somehow today I felt a need shift the routine; to be away even from my sweet house. On this warm sunny morning I chose to just go and be, apart from all this human-focus for a bit. Maybe the river beckoned me.
The scene’s familiar to all my senses. Still it requires time for my mind to let go. And I can’t stop seeing the litter scattered about the bank, nor stifle a compulsion to act. A plastic bag hangs across the water like a flag of surrender offered by our tortured earth. There’s an Xbox, golf balls, bottles, cans, plastic bags, roofing metal, and more. I drag some tires out of the muck, and gather up all manner of other consumer debris. Remnants of last month’s heavy rains and high-water, and more so our arrogant, disconnected attitude to the fabric of life that sustains us all. Rather than fight my urge to also be still, I play along, figuring some waste collection can’t hurt. But obliquely I know I need to get it out of my system in order to collect the courage to sit.
When I finally take my place on a dry rock protruding from the bank, body planted, my mind refuses to relinquish identifying and labeling. I spot deer tracks, maybe some coon too. And here’s a feather (from what bird?), look—a shell, and a snail, there’s an acorn cap, and a maple seed, a brick so current-worn it mimics the smooth ancient rocks.
Slowly, steadily, I accept the irrational nudge that’s led me here. There are no animals in sight to distract me, and the only sounds are gentle ruffles of sycamore leaves waving from high with each breeze, and the soft gurgle of the clear water. I gaze at the random leaves that let go their towering status and smile as they pirouette downward. Caught gently by the blanket of the river, they graciously bow and lay into the current, acquiescing without a sound. Each performer disappears from view swallowed into the downstream.
My breathing unconsciously begins to sync up with the flow, the ripples of sound interweave, and sunlight sparkles golden in the cascade. As I depart, it seems a desperate clinging to imagine a human life is any more or less significant than each note in this ongoing song.
RSS Feed