In that faraway pre-Columbian world, waters still lap the shore of cold clear lakes, as the north wind blows through pines and aspen, maples and ash. If you quiet your mind and listen, perhaps you can hear the sound of when water and shore meet. No words capture the sound of their meeting, yet one knows them all the same. The full summer canopy casts a green halo round the sun. The soft sandy bottom of lakeshore is fully illuminated by the noonday shine and Indians young and old stand in the shallows awaiting that plunge into the cold. Such is a child as he begins his journey of life – standing on the shoreline in trepidation, led slowly into the shallows step by step as the cold clear water of life reaches ankles and shins, and soon knees and thighs, until his body is fully captured by the stream and his memory of shore becomes long-faded. He once held hands with those larger, but now faces the journey alone, not daring to let himself feel the inevitability of death, the loss of those who once carried him. As the years advance onwards he feels the winds blow, the small hands of others grasping at his to enter the shallows – his bond to them so strong, but alas they too must wander out eventually, alone. The paradigm of life, of birth from nothingness and the return hitherto, is the miracle that transpires, embodies, and brings forth more miracles that disappear just as quickly.
No pain is deeper than the realization that you are truly alive. No beauty more potent…
