A Vernal Eve's Contemplation

I was on autopilot. A weekend of too much work followed by too many late nights out had stripped me of my ambition; I simply moved. I moved around the apartment, performing tasks which were necessary but required little thought. I cleaned, I organized, I checked my e-mail. Sometimes I would complete a task without being fully aware that I had started it. In fact, I was halfway out the door with my keys in my hand before I realized that I was hungry and already on my way to get some late night fast food.

I was still on autopilot as I walked out to the car, but some actual thoughts were beginning to emerge as I crossed the parking lot. Something Deisy said earlier that night? Something read on another's blog? Something I had written not long ago? It was all creating an unconscious synthesis that might not have been possible but for my extreme mental fatigue. Somehow it all came together and I was paralyzed by the weight of my own thoughts. I stopped in the grass in front of my car and leaned against a tree. I didn’t care who saw me standing out there alone, staring not at but past the leaves. I needed this time.

The air was perfect. Its temperature was just half a degree cooler than that of my own skin, so that I felt a coolness in it but wasn’t cold. It had that electric smell that predicted that one of spring’s little evening showers was approaching. I sighed, and the tree sighed with me as a breeze passed through its leaves.

My thoughts were not whirring through my head as they might have during the day. Instead they flowed calmly like a river, and I stood on the shore to watch them pass. Fear swirled with excitement in the current, and eddies of knowing/not-knowing spun in and out of existence. I watched it all unfold in front of me. It was as if I had been in possession of these thoughts all along but was only now allowed to see them. The revelations came easily and the doubts were so well worn by now that they no longer held any power.

I wish I could say that all was clear by the time I pushed myself up off the side of the tree, that in this synthesis I had found all of the answers. There were no definite answers, however. No certainties. As the drops began to fall I walked away from the tree with only a newfound acceptance of that which I did not know, and that is more valuable than any definite answer.