If you didn’t know any better, an alien perhaps, and you looked out my window at the great autumn-leafed trees, I would not belittle you if you thought that, perhaps, we were living under water, and that it was the currents and surges that moved the limbs and branches.
We can stand together, you and I, and watch the colours move softly, gracefully, and in groups as if choreographed by some, offstage talent. Clear, that the top of the most distant maple catches a current that the closer ones do not, at least, not at the same time, so there is uniqueness among the players. You are amazed at their flexibility–sure that something is going to break, as the upper trunk seems to be giving some way to the challenge moving against it. Open the window, and the magic breaks–air.
Yes, it would be compelling to swim out through the empty leagues and rise up to the surface. What would be there, I wonder? And where would this surface be? Near the moon? Further? What a luxury to be able to simply leave. Fiction though.
Fiction.
Although I would not belittle you if, upon explanation of what was going on in the world right now, you assumed that noted events were part of a terrible movie. There is no grace. Movement is fearful, and shocking. We might stand, you and I, holding each other, horrified at the pettiness, the cruelty, and the overwhelming greed of powerful, ignorant men. All of this on this heartbreakingly beautiful planet. Shut out the news but you can still feel it, if you are at all tapped in. Open the window and pray for water to wash it all away, but again, there is only air, and the echoes of the crossing guard’s whistle, the coffee grinder’s yowl, elevator doors opening and shutting–attempts to continue on, deflect and deny madness.
It would be compelling to stop and sit where we are, loving whomever we love–but to stop everything. Stop. What luxury it would be to rebuff complicity–to find some way to release from our physical expression and fuel a great tide of compassion–a flood perhaps. How many of us could contribute? Where would the surface be? Near the moon? Further? What luxury to be able to enact such an effort. Fiction though.
Or, is it?