Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Logging






The dear bird fluttered through the air with the lightest of wings. She had composure even when making her way through the rain. As the droplets fell down from the pine tree branches, her slicked feathers wicked away the moisture. Her color was that of a beaming saffron. It shone brightly against the darkened backdrop of coarse bark and a leaden horizon. There wasn’t any sunlight peeking through the mackerel sky high above. No, this sight was pure and blissful. Even as the droplets continued to work against her – pelting her beat by beat – her determination kept at it. It was a sight so engrossing you felt as though you were watching a theatrical composition. How could nature present something so sublime yet keep it away from so many? Hidden in this taiga - so far away from the rest of those proles – was this magnificent sight and exuberant passion. She wasn’t just traveling to flutter her wings and look pretty while doing so. It was us that panned alongside, moving in an effort to catch up and catch a glimpse – if but a fraction of a second of this nimble movement. Call it beauty or call it life, what difference does it make if we constrict a moment to such ideals? Gripping for such conditions would be like the trees that became blurs and brushes of color while our eyes scan across. Containing this to a term or a phrase or a tangible description would do a disservice to the rush of energy that could only be felt yet not explained. Even the most erudite linguist could not capture this. Nor any artisan, any artist or any upper-echelon intellectual. This was life as it was meant to be experienced. This was beauty as the eye captured it and then let the brain turn it into whatever we may already know or assume we know. As we experience these sights we wonder why it is they stick with us for so long. We’ve seen so much in our lives and have experienced so many events – and that is the way we chapter them. It’s a daily process – a yearly process – then a decade upon decade process that keeps us going. A utilization of the time frames created for our own needs of organization. Yet for this moment, as she sped through the air and towards whatever destination she had in mind – it didn’t matter what needed to be done next, or after we accomplished what was next or what was meant to be done in a said amount of time. It was living in the moment, experiencing life as it came at us. We could say it was within milliseconds or maybe even minutes if we go blunt. But this was far from a blunt moment or an instant of crude generalizations. This was specific. Connected. Real and happening. This dear bird was an encompassing feature but also a subject of its own right. Wings and rain and bark and sky were the elements around it yet beauty was the big word that described it. I tried to scribble down as much as I could to describe to myself later on what I had just experienced – but that just didn’t cut it. It didn’t seem to cut it for you either. Yet we move on and keep going. However we remember. We remember the moments that happened and the seconds that we can’t describe but can only feel. They’re in there – inside us – and with us. We carry them just as that young bird carried the droplets while wicking the bad ones away. We attempt to flick and wick and get rid of what keeps us from advancing, yet they always find a way to get at us. Call it life or call it beauty – that’s the beauty of life. It repeats itself in ways we don’t like, but we deal with it. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be fluttering at all. Instead, we’d be giving in to moments like this.


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