Time -- The Fiercest Calm

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Date Posted: 02:13:08 12/19/02 Thu
Author: Name (required)
Subject: Time

My mind feels a hundred years away tonight, a hundred years away in button up boots beside a river, perhaps in Wisconsin, perhaps in the mountains nearby before the trails and signs were there.

I feel as though I am in a sepia toned photograph, looking at myself a hundred years hence.

Yes, the picture becomes clearer and I am near a river, and it is not now but much earlier. The woods surround the bank upon which I stand, and I�m looking not directly across the river, but a little upstream. I am alone for the moment, but someone else is there, a man with a moustache and he is slowly cooking a meal on a fire somewhere behind me. It is far enough away that I cannot hear the crackle of the fire, and we are camping where there are no kept trails, because it is before there were many such things. We closely follow a map and seek landmarks, an unusual tree, a large stone, to guide us. It is summer, and the trees are every shade of green as sunlight shines through the branches and illuminates the leaves. I am content and wondering about time; not my time, but time in general. I am thinking abstractly and mostly just watching the water rush over the three large stones in the river, I see an occasional fish, and I am standing.

I return to the camp and dinner or lunch or supper or whatever we are eating is soon done cooking, so we eat. The man and I speak rarely, but not out of displeasure. On the contrary we speak mostly in smiles and understood gestures. And we go to the river to wash our tin pan and bowls, and together we sit upon a rock that comes out of the water. I can feel the vibrations of the water flowing through the rock, and I eventually find a position that sits comfortably. As the sun sets and it gets darker and colder he puts his hands upon my shoulders to warm me a bit. We sit as it becomes night and the trees can no longer be seen against he sky, but instead a curtain of stars peaks through here and there and in the sliver of sky over the river where the trees do not obstruct is amazing. I am a bit cold, but it is a warm night for the mountains, and I do not mind the chill as we sit in the most beautiful silence, trees whispering in the silence of night wind and the water bubbling, and when I occasionally shift my position it seems oddly loud, though it is only as loud as skirts rustling.

We sit for two hours past dusk, maybe more, in silence, and every so often we simultaneously catch our breath at a falling star. We are nowhere and yet I do not feel vulnerable in anyway. The river is shallow and gentle, the night is still and safe.

And this was a hundred years ago in my mind, and this is d�j� vu though I am anywhere but there. Like a day dream except unintentional.

I am nowhere tonight, so far away from everything, solitary to the point where I�m not even a part of time.

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Replies:

Re: Time -- Porthos, 18:12:04 12/19/02 Thu