Life 1

I live here now in this village, so far from all the racket that city streets stir up.

And you might wonder how that could ever be.

I tell you, dear reader, that there is some unexplainable comfort in the stillness, in the empty solitude I find amidst the impassive hush of this rural existence. When I go to bed each night, when with balled fists I clench the edges of my blanket and pull it around my tired frame, my body in silent repose, I think maybe I'll just stay like this: maybe I'll just stay.

Or when I sit hunched on the edge of my bed, my elbows resting in those spaces between the tendons above my knees, my eyes following bluish moon beams as they play games with the shadows of summer storm clouds on my bedroom floor, I think maybe...maybe, maybe this is enough. The moon, the clouds, and my bedroom. Maybe, just maybe, this is all I need.

But I know that this cannot last. Like a seasonal nomad, I know that my feet will be treading more northerly ground in a few months, and all of this, this summer, this serenity, this will be nothing but a warm memory among so many others stored somewhere in my amygdala.

There's a robin who's made her nest on a gutter outside the bathroom window, and all too often I find myself tip-toeing stealthily towards the screened-in opening, my fingers grasping the mahogany-stained edges of the windowsill, my breath held in childlike anticipation, my mind in a thoughtless lull, waiting...hoping to catch a glimpse of the robin at work.

Sometimes she's not there, and other times I actually catch her returning to the nest with an unfortunate worm, feeding one of her three chicks. Most often, however, my excited apprehension is simply broken; in most cases I am met only with an equally blank gaze. Most often, I only find her standing stoically on the fringe of her stick-and-mud abode, her orange-feathered breast swollen in a stately show of prideful protectionism. I wonder if someday that pride will fade, if someday she, like me, will realize the impermanence of her situation and if, one day, after she's long-since pushed the last of her chicks out of the nest, she'll stand again on the edge, looking with melancholic eyes on her former sanctum, remembering a life which no longer is. Though a wall and a window separate us, I wonder if she realizes this now, if her tiny brain comprehends her tinier role in the plodding-on, in the trudging forward and in the continuous churning-over of the universe around her. She is destined to be like this; nature has programmed her to move and to be motionless, to roam and to be at peace, to fly and to be still. And when her black eyes look back at me, I feel as if I understand her. Our lives are spent in a commute between extremes; we are forced to live here now, despite being aware of the chaotic movements and relocations our futures will most inevitably bring to us. Yet she still stands proudly on her nest, and I sit peacefully on my bed; until our lives tell us otherwise, the robin and I have decided to stay here, to exist meaningfully in these rustic surroundings, to be in this place so long as circumstance permits.

In the meantime, we will enjoy the tranquil beauty that this quiet village seems to be imbued with. The blissfully lackadaisical calm permeates life here; maybe that's why the robin chose it; maybe that's why I've returned. But I wonder if others will ever find what I and the robin have found here. I wonder if someone else will ever look at same glowing sun in the same purple clouds and ever feel the same inexplicable joy. I wonder if anyone else will ever hear the same cacophony of morning birdsong and, tasting the dew-drenched air of daybreak on their tongue, ever feel the same aphonic ecstasy somewhere deep inside themselves. I wonder, dear reader, if you'll ever look to the horizon at sunset and see what I see in the low clouds overhead: heavyhearted happiness at dusk, distant hopes in the dawn.