Take a toddler for a walk, or rather, the toddler pauses. Each new item, a special moment, a discovery of a magic portent. That leaf, that flower bud, that stone with the odd marking
and now, the same focus.
So many pitfalls, so many ways to die, to ruin your life. Fortunate not to succumb to overuse of anything, drugs alcohol food, sex, anything. To have something take over your life that is not positive, but how to define positive. So much to consider in life, so is total what is dilettantism and what is too much of something.
To begin again, to begin again. What is desire for an ending when a young person vs desire for ending when old and incurably ill.
I remember standing in front of those panes of glass, the glimpse into the wooded area behind the building, and wanting, desperately wanting to push my hands through hearing in my mind the shattering of the glass the quick cuts seeing the blood spurt, flow, feeling the paraloph release and then remembering who would have to pay, both monetarily and emotionally and knowing that they did not have the resources, nor I the right, And so I walked away to what life gives and offers as well as pain and longing.
In aging, when life grows smaller, reducing rather than expanding as it did when a toddler, nevertheless, the reduction, the not hurrying by allows a new exploration, and understanding of the glory of the small, the unnoticed. A bird is suddenly a magical discovery, its tiny or not so tiny body, a miracle of careful planning if one looks on it that way but c3ertainly an artist rendering of light and shadow of color and shading, An Audubon picture of splendor. Birding, a compensation for the lessening of the body’s ability, a new insight into a glory not yet understood.
Death again. A memory of a dead caged bird and sorrow of not understanding.