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Wish you were here
2011-Sep-09, Friday 01:41 amThe weathered wise man stood at the lip of the gorge weeping into the abyss. I approached his sagging shoulders from behind quietly and pensively. He slowly turned over his shoulder and saw the despair seeping through me like a noxious smoke fume from a burning building. My eyes found his blistered toes poking out of his tattered sandals. There were silent moments of understanding and comfort knowing that we had both trudged the same craggy path to get to the dismal edge of nothingness.
The cool air wisped through our wild hair and refreshed our steaming skin. The smell of juniper floated up with it from the deep chasm below. I crept closer to the edge to try to get a glimpse of what might lie beyond what I already knew. It was too deep; too far down to see the mysterious life spring up from what must surely have been a river. I sighed.
“Son, don’t give up in your fiery doubt, you’re at the door”, he said.
I wasn’t sure what exactly he meant, but I sensed he was right in one way or another. I had been scouring the earth for so long and now here at the end of all things, I could see that no matter the direction, the journey is always just beginning. I stared deep into his loving sad eyes and realized that at the end of every journey this is where I will always be. I will always be living in my own heart, on this earth and with people seeking the same things and most of the time coming up to emptiness.
The moment I took my eyes from the floor and his gnarly feet and found the passionate moisture in his kind glowing eyes was when I proclaimed to myself for the seven million-three hundred-twenty-thousandth time that it isn’t my plight to stare at the floor. I remembered to myself that fretting about what has not yet come to pass isn’t how to live each glorious moment, no matter what those moments might bring.
So there I stood painted in the warmth of a mysterious spice, cooled by a refreshing breeze and staring out past a deep gorge with a man who knew me closer than I knew myself, albeit we had never met. I stood filled with comfort and happiness. I dreamt of what lay in the wellspring below that I would never know with contentment that it must be just as glorious as I imagined. Then I remembered where I was from. I bid my fellow journeyman a kind departure and started my journey home, one footprint at a time.
The cool air wisped through our wild hair and refreshed our steaming skin. The smell of juniper floated up with it from the deep chasm below. I crept closer to the edge to try to get a glimpse of what might lie beyond what I already knew. It was too deep; too far down to see the mysterious life spring up from what must surely have been a river. I sighed.
“Son, don’t give up in your fiery doubt, you’re at the door”, he said.
I wasn’t sure what exactly he meant, but I sensed he was right in one way or another. I had been scouring the earth for so long and now here at the end of all things, I could see that no matter the direction, the journey is always just beginning. I stared deep into his loving sad eyes and realized that at the end of every journey this is where I will always be. I will always be living in my own heart, on this earth and with people seeking the same things and most of the time coming up to emptiness.
The moment I took my eyes from the floor and his gnarly feet and found the passionate moisture in his kind glowing eyes was when I proclaimed to myself for the seven million-three hundred-twenty-thousandth time that it isn’t my plight to stare at the floor. I remembered to myself that fretting about what has not yet come to pass isn’t how to live each glorious moment, no matter what those moments might bring.
So there I stood painted in the warmth of a mysterious spice, cooled by a refreshing breeze and staring out past a deep gorge with a man who knew me closer than I knew myself, albeit we had never met. I stood filled with comfort and happiness. I dreamt of what lay in the wellspring below that I would never know with contentment that it must be just as glorious as I imagined. Then I remembered where I was from. I bid my fellow journeyman a kind departure and started my journey home, one footprint at a time.
