Archive for April, 2010
He falls to his knees, throwing his full weight into gravity’s greedy hands. The muscles relax for just that single moment as he gives himself completely over to the relentless, unforgiving force. Each patella strikes the pavement; the blows fail to be cushioned by the puddle that has gathered there. His torso heaves forward, forearms slamming to the ground as he hunches over, sobbing. He jerks his head to the sky, mouth open, screaming. Eyelids clenched tightly against all the universe, he cries out, tears running down his face. The rain continues to pour, drowning the streaming products of his eternal sadness. “There is no hope!” comes the shout from his tired lungs. “There is no hope!” screams his aching soul. “There is hope,” comes the whisper in his ear, but he does not hear over his desperate cries.
The child whispers again. “There is hope.” She reaches out a hand. The rain streaks her face, but her eyes remain bright. “There is hope,” comes the soft promise once more. “Open your eyes; I can show you the way.”
The death knell that rings forth from his convulsing diaphragm deafens his ears to her quiet pleas. He pounds his fists into the ground, splashing dirty water onto his face. His eyes remain closed. “There is no hope!”
Just ahead, the sun shines and the fields are green. Though she knows the way, she remains at his side. “There is hope.”
You just have to open your eyes.
She stands before me, simply beautiful, unknowingly perfect. Rather than the sum total of some arbitrary list, it is her whole that captures my attention. Like some ancient and hidden treasure, she exists in great and stark contrast to the world that surrounds her: quiet against its loud, soft against its harsh, real in the face of its false fronts. Her backdrop, for all her wonder, is nothing less than death—brutal, unflinching, all-out war. Guns fire and bombs drop, unleashing a bloody, fiery mess. Her order persists in defiance of such chaos, begs the question: How?
How, amongst all this horror, does such beauty exist? Is it struck, founded, forged in the heat of eternal battle, or does it hide from that ever-hungry beast, alive in spite of its never-ending chase? I cannot say, only cherish. She is tucked away in my memory, a seed for something grand to be poured out of my mind at some as yet unknown and later date. For now, I am merely frozen in this simple moment, soaking in its wrenching briefness, an untouchable, finite eternity.
The moment breaks as she calls once more for my attention. I turn away from the World War II documentary playing on the television, take the receipt she hands me. She bids me good day and I return the courtesy. As I walk through the door into the world outside, I cannot help but wonder if it is all that different from the imaginary one I’ve just left.
