Turn to stone May 14, 2011

I wonder how it feels to know your days are numbered. Are gazelles haunted by the day when they’ll finally be caught? Or lions by the day when they’re not fast enough?

There are weekend days when I fear I’ve turned to stone. The music plays, and the notes flow right through me like water past rocks anchoring a stream. Sometimes I wish I were unbroken again. My paper walls don’t compare to the castle I used to imagine myself in. But then I remember the little girl in the room with the glass windows, how those panes were fogged up and smudged up with imprints of cheeks and the tip of her nose squished. There were no scars to compare; she was the last one to leave.

I ran out the door, and banged myself on the step but racing into the yellow meadow, I found no one. I’m outside, but they’ve all left. Save one, who prefers his solitude. I coaxed for stories, but he really just wanted to be left alone. Is it too late to chase after? I can’t stay here with the dreamer for my legs will surely turn to stone, and the house is just a room after I’ve seen the world. It’s crept up on me. Sometimes I’m afraid I won’t be fast enough.

It’s hard being both gazelle and lion. The hunter and the hunted.

it’s raining today March 13, 2011

“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life. It goes on.” ~Robert Frost

Sometimes, I almost believe in a God. But most often than not, the closest I’ve gotten is an ethereal being, like a whisper of a thought.

What I believe then is that no matter how bad things are at this moment in time, life will go on. I can see this in the young cherry tree on my front lawn, its pink bundles waiting to spring forth into blossoms, hear it in the mourning call of the geese as they flee the incoming winter, even in waking up and knowing before I glance out my window that the world had been blanketed with snow overnight. Life is always happening: flourishing and wilting. Birthing and dying. It’s such a fragile kind of beauty; it almost hurts to appreciate because you know that part of the reason your heart longs for it so is because it’ll only be there for a fleeting moment before it’s gone. Nothing can ever remain the same, but this persistent change is what makes life so meaningful. For everything we’ve said and done, and anything we didn’t say and didn’t do, has led us to who we are now. Life will always go on, and amidst its going-ons, we will continue to become until the grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back and you’ve reached this journey’s end.

Pippin: I didn’t think it would end this way.

Gandalf: End? No, the journey doesn’t end here. Death is just another path. One that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass… then you see it!

Pippin: What? Gandalf? See what?

Gandalf: White shores… and beyond. A far green country, under a swift sunrise.