| “Why are the stories always so sad when you
tell them,” she said. I shrugged noncommittally. “It sounds like you’re
speaking from experience…” she said, and I looked out at the sand and the
sea, grateful for the sudden sound of waves crashing on the shore, filling
the void. She put her arm around me and we fell into silence. Then, after a long time I said “He discovered that when life flees one place, it arises in others. He discovered that human beings have their own kind of eternity, it is shared experience, memory, and the family we are survived by. He discovered in the wanderings that followed, that God isn’t a man or woman like us. He discovered that God is simpler things like laughter, like birdsongs and wind sighs and oceans breathing, moon pulling, earth spinning. He discovered that God is us, all of us together, a tiny piece of God, in everything that lives, or ever lived, breathes, or ever drew breath. There has only ever been one ocean, one earth, and all the air that we breathe is the same air breathed by the earliest creatures to walk the earth exhaled and returned by the trees and the plants. The cycle continues forever like the tide rolls, like the sea shines, reflecting greater truths, and stronger lights, and we are like children that only see shadows flung long on walls and sidewalks. He discovered the inherit beauty in every breath and the sweet silence of being… simply being. He discovered that people who only live in memories and dreams aren’t so far away after all, and that just around the corner is the place, the moment when you were with them, just beyond the next hill is the time when you’ll be together again. And he felt the first little tickle of happiness starting to rise in him again like the first green sprout of a plant struggling to rise from the good, dark earth after a long cold winter.” “that’s a little better,” she said, smilng. I smiled then too, because it made me happy to see her happy. I looked out at the man on his chair and wondered where the path of his life was leading, where the path of my own life was leading. The fall wind was building strength in the north, soon it would glide down over the land, and beyond that winter, and moonlight painting on the perfectly still plains with pale blue shadows and rain, and then snow falling softly. What did it all mean, and what on earth could make such things, such everyday things seem so beautiful at the right time, in the right moment, with the right person close at hand. What kind of world was so full of graceful, brutal, random beauty? What kind of world could carry all the softest and sharpest, the kindest and cruelest thoughts and feelings and emotions. And an old line from a poem with no name came to my mind "How do they live, that know their days are numbered, but know not the numbers of their days?" Shadows were moving, light was beaming, all at once, life was living and death was killing, all at once. Infants were breathing urgent eager breaths, sucking in this life, this world for the first time, tasting open air, all while old men and women were exhaling never to inhale again. I stopped thinking of it, because it was all too much to make sense of. I stopped thinking at all, and fell back into my chair, back into her arms, fell back into the nowness of that moment and she kissed me on the jaw, no knowing why, she never had before. And I leaned his head against hers and there was peace in my mind, and all was still, and bright. She came back a year later, and walked across the sand. |
