- Joined
- May 5, 2012
- Messages
- 1,725
Find yourself a soft patch of sand along this riverbank. Let's muse for a moment or two.
We can discuss the elements, the sand and wind and sun.
We're granules of sand in water. We bump and swirl in an eddy, sometimes settling into place among our peers, sometimes swept along in the maelstrom.
It's a beautiful journey. So let's marvel at the illusions of light that manifest along that thin interface between a crumbling cliff edge and a sky pregnant with rain.
Engage in a bit of synesthesia with me. We'll sense the warmth of sunlight on skin and reminisce over how desert air steals moisture from our pores. Does it make you thirsty?
We desiccate as the icy water carries our boats downstream.
Perhaps you share these impressions. Perhaps not. I fear they're too experiential. Sensation has little heft here, on the screen of your phone.
Or maybe you're sitting, sedentary, before a computer at a desk. Skeptical. Unmoved.
How can I help you feel the grit that gathers in the corner of your eye amid an upstream wind?
Or hear the timpani thump of your straining heart as you run up dusty switchbacks to bid farewell to the last of the day's fading light?
Or struggle for breath as the uncertainty of rolling water's chaos strips away the security of your daily life?
We're so rooted by civilization. Cooled by air conditioning. Fed refined sugar. Perpetually connected.
Notifications, alerts, emails. How I long to replace them with the clacking call of crows and the question-and-answer honks of geese.
Disconnect me. Reconnect me to the water, to the wind, to the sand and to the sun.
I miss the friends of my youth. Why don't I ever tell them that?
Now we're all grown, or so we tell ourselves.
For shame, you've allowed me to ramble. Back to the point.
Let's you and I commit to make more of these short lives we live.
Let's wake from sleep, stretch our atrophied limbs and scorch under the summer sun.
Let's shed our reptilian skin, quit lurking and preying upon one another.
Let's allow the river's current to carry and deposit us where it will.
And when the sun finally sets, we can reflect like the silver slither of moonlight on a river's riffle.
We can discuss the elements, the sand and wind and sun.
We're granules of sand in water. We bump and swirl in an eddy, sometimes settling into place among our peers, sometimes swept along in the maelstrom.
It's a beautiful journey. So let's marvel at the illusions of light that manifest along that thin interface between a crumbling cliff edge and a sky pregnant with rain.
Engage in a bit of synesthesia with me. We'll sense the warmth of sunlight on skin and reminisce over how desert air steals moisture from our pores. Does it make you thirsty?
We desiccate as the icy water carries our boats downstream.
Perhaps you share these impressions. Perhaps not. I fear they're too experiential. Sensation has little heft here, on the screen of your phone.
Or maybe you're sitting, sedentary, before a computer at a desk. Skeptical. Unmoved.
How can I help you feel the grit that gathers in the corner of your eye amid an upstream wind?
Or hear the timpani thump of your straining heart as you run up dusty switchbacks to bid farewell to the last of the day's fading light?
Or struggle for breath as the uncertainty of rolling water's chaos strips away the security of your daily life?
We're so rooted by civilization. Cooled by air conditioning. Fed refined sugar. Perpetually connected.
Notifications, alerts, emails. How I long to replace them with the clacking call of crows and the question-and-answer honks of geese.
Disconnect me. Reconnect me to the water, to the wind, to the sand and to the sun.
I miss the friends of my youth. Why don't I ever tell them that?
Now we're all grown, or so we tell ourselves.
For shame, you've allowed me to ramble. Back to the point.
Let's you and I commit to make more of these short lives we live.
Let's wake from sleep, stretch our atrophied limbs and scorch under the summer sun.
Let's shed our reptilian skin, quit lurking and preying upon one another.
Let's allow the river's current to carry and deposit us where it will.
And when the sun finally sets, we can reflect like the silver slither of moonlight on a river's riffle.
