"I am resolved.  The layered distances between us are naught, they are void, impotent, 
ineffectual.  True, they are barricaded, but their walls will crumble and burn, for they are 
nothing between us.  Our strength can crush them, my love...the strength of that golden point
in time and space where, invariably, our souls meet."
     He stretched his arm out before him, his fingers fully extended.  He held it there, feeling
the breeze touch it, feeling the potential power of it, the inert ability.
     "Let this potent efficacy touch my soul.  I will find you."
     He looked at the points of his fingers.  They seemed to stretch over the vast ocean beneath
him, creating a bridge to the whitish band of the horizon.
     "Oceans?  Nothing.  Deserts?  Mountains?  Continents?  All nothing!  The power they own
 is empty - an orchestra to deaf ears, a painting to the blind."
     A gentle, cool breeze blew through his ruffled brown hair.  Behind him, the sunset was 
anemic.  It seemed that the sun, instead of infusing the world with color, instead stole it away 
as it slipped surreptitiously behind the wall of the horizon.  The sky was of a dark blue, paling 
at the fringes to create a white ring around the world.
     "Can you feel me, my love?  I reach to you, wherever you are..."
     The forest behind him was dark as the hand of night covered it.  The cliff that he stood on, 
sheer nearly to the point of overhang, was a throne from which one could watch the frothy 
ocean as it spent its infinite energy rolling over the land.  The waters were blue-black and 
seemingly infinite in depth and distance; they were perfect for the night in their contrast with 
the pale-rimmed sky.  
     White stars faded drowsily into their lengthy existence in the sea of the heavens.  White 
curves of foam emerged vigorously into their transient existence in the ocean below.
     His powerful voice was suddenly a whisper.  "Wherever you are..."
     He stood, looking with his dark, intelligent eyes over the ocean and the sky, over his 
extended arm and his hand and his fingers.  He smelled the salt of the sea and the freshness 
of the forest.  The breeze surrounded him, its invisible feathers caressing his flesh.  He closed 
his eyes and inhaled deeply.  For a moment, he did not move.  For a moment, he was 
immobile and permanent; he was a statue, a statue with flowing hair, a statue with a vividly 
eloquent expression of joy on its face, a statue with one arm reaching powerfully and 
inexorably toward the horizon...
     His arm fell.  He opened his bright eyes and, taking one last look at the horizon, he turned 
on a heel and went striding slowly, yet decidedly toward the forest.  His steps were a smooth, 
unbroken cycle, each contributing power to the next.  He walked as if it were the most natural 
thing in the world; his footing was unconsciously strong and sure and he was loose in his 
movements.  
     But something stopped him dead in his tracks.
     He was looking down at his feet.  There, lying in a blanket of verdant grass, was a tiny
white flower, sitting rather distinctly against the background of green.  The man knelt down.  
He lifted its delicate face with his finger.  It had four oval pedals, each with a tiny stalk arising 
at its base.  The man moved the fragile white beauty carefully, looking at it with seemingly 
undue intensity.  For a moment, his eyes seemed uncertain.  But then, he laughed.  He found 
his feet and stood, looking at the sun's trail in the sky.  Whatever he had found in the flower 
had infused his gaze with courage.
     "Oceans?  Nothing.  Your will and mine, my love."
     With a powerful movement, he turned, turned and ran.  He dashed back up the slight 
incline toward the crown of the cliff with a determination afforded by certainty.  His 
movements were smooth and terse as he rapidly approached the edge of the world.  Only a 
moment more and he would have to stop...but the moment passed; and only a moment he 
would not be able to...but that moment, too passed; and only a moment more and he would 
be soaring through the immaterial air toward the fluid sea...and then he was flying, the power 
of his action forced into the line of his fall as he assumed diving position.  For an instant, he 
was suspended in the sky, just above the line of the cliff, a figure arrested in the heavens and 
held by the wings of the wind.  Then, his cushion broke and his strings snapped and he 
plummeted with perfect form into the calmed waters of the sea.  
     His contact with the water elicited only a slight splash. Ripples rolled out onto the 
untouched surface of the ocean, living their evanescent lives with what seemed the raw 
perseverance to continue.  Nothing was left in their wake but the reflection of stars.  But away 
from where he had entered, the man had again broken the polished coating on the water.  He 
was swimming with strength and ease.  He was laughing, spraying the night air with warm salt 
water, calling triumphantly to the night breeze.  His triumph came from his confidence; his 
confidence, from his efficacy.  And joy was his.
     "Wherever you are, my love!  Wherever!"
     He knew, as intuitively as he knew he would breathe when he was asleep, as surely as he 
knew that the breath would sustain him, he knew that the love of his soul was sitting beneath 
the sharpened stars, smiling radiantly with the fearless felicity of life, calling out, as he did, in 
defiance, in fervor, in the purity of a mind pregnant with peace.
     "Let the distances be damned!" he laughingly cried.
     Nothing could stand between them; they were too much in life, too much in confidence, too
much in determination, too much in love to be denied by something as petty as distance.
     And the petty distances looked in fear at the man swimming euphorically in the 
beauty-black waters of the ocean. 

		–John Leonard
		  February 28, 2002