Just Wait

Four years of photographs scroll past your eyes, a backup too long awaited, a process at once painfully slow and pleasantly meditative. This is a life, you think, and you don't know what to make of it. Was it all you had hoped?

Of course not. Lives never are.

I take a break by going outside to sit under the night sky, only to find it overcast, only the big dipper shining steadily at the top of the mountain ridge. You fear you are squandering your days, your year, your life, but you do not yet know how to catch back up. The to do-lists are tempting, a fall back when all else fails you, but you wonder if the things you need to do can really be described in bullet points. The starry night sky last night seemed to have something else to say, and now it is cloaked in mystery, the whole thing seems to be on purpose. 

You remain in stillness, listening for sounds from the meadow, sounds from the woods, but hear nothing. The only sound is whatever is creaking in the attic. Your ears are ringing with the silence, a constant stream rushing past your ear drum. It occurs to you that you do not actually understand how sound works. 

It occurs to you that you do not actually know how very many things at all work. 

There, that's a good start, says the night sky. Now we are on our way.