Saturday, July 27, 2013

Saturday Morning

I’m sitting at my desk looking out the window at an overcast morning partially cheered up by the blooming red roses and coral gladiola in my front yard. My thoughts are not too cheerful, though.

The past few years have been tumultuous for me, and I have emerged a changed man at least in several aspects. One might argue it was good for me, but was it really worth the scars that have been permanently left? This morning I looked in the mirror and saw a tired, puffy face with decidedly unhealthy complexion woefully staring back, and I could almost hear it ask me why oh why I had to refuse to be just like everyone else.

The fact is that my world has shifted around me and I cannot adapt accordingly. Or rather I will not, or I cannot – I don’t know anymore. How to analyze why I still believe in kindness instead of self-interest, in truth instead of fabrication, in genuineness instead of calculation? How to explain the fondness I sense at the sight of a solitary wild flower, the joy I feel when a long-forgotten melody wafting on a fortuitous wind reaches my ear, or the nostalgic quiver that seizes my heart with a whiff of a distant perfume that whispers to me across the years?

In a world saturated with and dominated by crass, fake and whimsical values, I have sought solace in friendship but found mostly disappointment, in churches but seen only insecure and inflated egos, in God only to face an incomprehensibly silent stone wall. More than ever I’m feeling like an alien stranded on a grotesque planet.

Is it ever possible that I find a corner of my own to grow my roses, sing my songs, and be free to be just the way I am? I’m going to look in that mirror again to see if that tired face will regain its vigor anytime soon. Whatever feeble ember that remains inside me now, I'll have to fan it into flame once more.

Thursday, July 4, 2013

Winter Sunrise

I got up early on a February morning, bundled up, opened my bedroom window and waited for the moment the sun came up.