View from a Wolf

Sometimes the privilege come your way and you don’t even realize it until the moment’s gone.

That serendipitous moment that leaves you stunned and staring in disbelief.  You don’t even want to move, because you might blink and in blinking you might miss a crucial half second of this moment.  So you just stand there, drinking it in.

In the same moment that you consider grabbing your camera you dismiss the thought, knowing that there is no capturing this moment.  This is one for the ages, a fleeting instant to be recalled only in your memory.  One day, you may sit in stupefaction, unable to express a thought, just staring blankly at the wall, and you know that even though you can’t speak, and no one can hold a conversation with you, this is one of the memories that will remain.  Along with thoughts of that first kiss, that first dance, or the time you saw the brown dust blanketing your consciousness as your car turned over and over on the hot highway on that bright sunny day.

This shining gift is yours to keep.  You can’t give it away because the nature of it won’t allow it.  It fills the landscape of your mind, an incredible vista of darkness and shining stars.  Music cascades through the leaves of your mind’s trees, disturbing the air, shaking out sweetness with the sour, inviting your taste.  Taste, tactile brightness, a mystery hidden – you’re intrigued and curious.  Is there a rabbit hole in your future?   You don’t know and you can’t ask anyone.  This is your adventure, and yours to explore.

Sometimes this memory teases you as you toss and turn, dreaming.  Morning comes, and with it, blurriness and harsh light.  The disappointment is palpable and you struggle to retain those last notes which wink out even as you reach for them.   You walk to your computer and tap tap the keys to bring it to life.  Hair on precarious end, you close your eyes and type without looking, hoping the remainder of …something…will occur.   You type, not knowing exactly what you want to say, and miraculously, a new thought shows up on the screen – not the dream, but…perhaps a child to the dream.  A new thing.  In excitement, your fingers fly faster, building, dancing, creating.  You smile in your tiredness, knowing the beauty of this moment.  This moment.  This new time, this new gift.  Music infuses your consciousness – new notes, a new tide, a new rhythm.  Instinctively, you know this gift somehow relates to last night’s slumber, though you don’t know how.  It doesn’t matter – this sentient thought has its own agenda.  You delight in the pure creativity of this thing, aware that you can’t understand whether you control it, or it controls you.   It seems to thrive on its own, driven to life.

You despair the lack of a piano with which to dress this thought.  Words alone won’t suffice – it is too demanding.  The cry of a baby demanding mother’s milk has nothing on this.   Feed it, clothe it, give it purpose and vocabulary.  Give it music, give it dance, give it…give it….give it.

No matter – this wailing needful purpose will find its way, dragging you with it.  It laughs at the notion of beauty – enticement is in its DNA.  This is a given.  To mention it is redundant and yesterday.  We’re interested in the moment and the future of the next moment only. This thought looks around, searching for scraps of experience and creativity with which to cloth itself.  Fine, there’s no piano, there’s no guitar, but that’s not the end of the story, is it?   This thing will live.  It needs to exist.   You only thought you had a choice, and maybe that was true at the beginning.   Somewhere along the way, between thought, and dreaming, it became alive in a way you never realized.   It has reason, and necessity – and strangely enough, although narcissistic at the start, it now sees a world purpose quite beyond its borders.   It is now empathic, and so very curious, almost frightening in its intensity.  It feels the pain of the void of others – and it knows it has the ability to heal and bring life.

The creation now wants to create.  It wants to bring its own life into the present.

The clock ticks and you look up, realizing so much time has walked by, ignored and forgotten.

You scratch your head, and push yourself away from the computer.

And like before, you realize, only after you get up and saunter down the hall to take your shower that once again….

You have experienced a privilege.   You didn’t know it until now.