on the banks

I have no plan here. I am just writing, and maybe you’ll gain something from it. Maybe, like a man in the late evening hours troubled by restless thoughts and questions going out for a walk, I’ll tire myself with the wandering and find peace in the curving of the crescent moon…and then soundly sleep. I really don’t know.

It’s exhausting sometimes. “What’s exhausting?” you ask. You know quite well what I’m referring to; you have found yourself worn down by it many times throughout your life, though now you drink wine and eat pleasant meals with friends, and you laugh so much that you cannot remember the feeling of heavy strained eyes staring into everything you once knew and seeing nothing but grains of sand and crashing tides.

In the womb I swam happily about, but then one day I was born into a world that was full of big loud things. The womb was far away. The womb is far away. My eyes developed slowly, my ears and hands as well. I let the womb go, and found that there was much to explore in the world. I crawled around the small living room floor, and when I bumped my head on a table leg I cried until my mother picked me up and rubbed me on the back.

On another day I stood up and started walking. I don’t know why that day was different from others, nor do I know quite how I did it, but I did it, and there I was walking around the living room, then the bathroom, then the kitchen, then the porch, and 12 years later I found myself holding hands with a girl I liked, walking into the woods for my first kiss. The stars were bright that night, the pine trees fragrant, the river rushing. I let go of my house and the small things in it.

But not without heartache.

A man I know built a small cottage on the east side of a little known creek deep in the Himalayas. He spends his winters by the fireside, eating jerky and reading books on agriculture and spirituality…always alternating between the two. When spring comes, a wild garden grows on the back side of the house, with little cultivation on his part. On most afternoons he fishes or walks to the houses of his distant neighbors to eat or go on small hunting trips. He has written me for years, and always in his letters is an underlying peace that I must admit I long for.

On restless nights like tonight, I imagine him there in his cottage sitting quietly and alone, with nothing but the cracking of the knots in the burning wood, and the muffled hush of the creek outside. I love this image, even if imagining it leaves a slight tinge of envy in the recesses of my mind, but I wonder if the image is true. Is peace like that true? In my wondering about this acquaintance of mine, I wonder further if he will ever cross the creek by which he lives and dare to venture past the great river he has written about, 50 miles to the east. By all accounts, the river is nearly impossible to forge, and beyond its banks are a collection of remote villages and people with customs and beliefs completely unique to that part of the world.

When does peace become comfort, and comfort slip into sloth? How long can a man hear a river incessantly calling and not decide to go to it? And can he cross that river and meet those people and not be changed, in turn feeling the pain that comes with it? Is peace possible without moments of war? Is growth?

Sitting on the banks, I sit and listen.