travels through the landscape of the soul

Sometimes you skim over the surface of life, like a dragonfly cruising in the sunshine. The breeze lifts you where you want to go, and everything you need for the good life is bountiful and at hand. You bask in the sun sunk deep in your bliss.

Sometimes you plod through the mud towards the trenches, step after heavy step. Your heart rebels and your head aches with dread and despair, but still you soldier onwards. Grim determination carries you into the trenches and you steel yourself to detachment as you man the killing machines.

Sometimes you hold a fevered child through the night, your heart fierce with love and anguish. You apply all the arts of the wise mother and know you are helpless against the universe. You can’t stop the child’s misery, so you force yourself to remain calm and soothe the child in a crooning singsong, praying it will get you through the night, treasuring every whimper because it means the child is still alive, in your arms.

Sometimes you work desperately, racing against the clock. Your hands and feet get into a frenzied rhythm, and you perform the same actions again and again, like an automaton. There is no space for thought or feeling or even the needs of the body, just the work that you need to finish before time renders all your efforts moot.

Sometimes you hide in the darkness, unmoving, scarcely daring to breathe. You will yourself to be smaller, and see your stillness blending into the shadows.

Sometimes you lose yourself in the mundanity of rote chores. You wash the dishes you have washed thousands of times before. You sweep the same floor with the same broom using the same strokes you used yesterday. You eat the same breakfast at the same table with the same view. You put the same key in the same car ignition and take the same roads to the same workplace where you do the same job you did yesterday. You greet the same people with the same cheeriness.

Sometimes you immerse yourself in learning a new skill, solving new problems, using new tools. Your mind struggles with the new knowledge, the unfamiliar practices, the undiscovered logic of the new ways. You feel satisfaction as pieces slide into place and your competence grows.

Sometimes you sit with a friend in grief, in despair. You listen as they wail their frustration at an unkind universe. At first, your compassion seems boundless, but then it grows thin. You lose your temper and tell the still-suffering person to get over it already, that you are sick of listening to them.

Sometimes you walk a trail in the woods, free and at ease. You watch the birds in wonder and listen to the sighs of the trees. You meet a bobcat and the two of you regard one another in the dappled sunshine. Two alien beings taking a moment to connect before going their own ways.