Do you see how those birds skim the water? Almost swimming on the surface?
The effortless effort. They know what they are looking for, without really knowing. Not in the way we know things.
I know many things. Same as you. I can tell you the date Abraham Lincoln was shot, how many sharps are in a G Major scale, how Stephen King broke his writer's block midway through writing The Stand, and how to make cookies based off of a halfling recipe from Dungeons and Dragons.
But I cannot know, anymore than you, how to be empty. How to be at peace. How to skim the water like that bird.
When the bird misses the target, is that really a miss?
It might soar up into the trees and sit, taking a moment to look. Or it might immediately try again, rising, turning, diving towards the water, and you're sure it is going to dive in, but at the last moment it pulls up, skimming the surface. The speed is formidable.
I remember walking the wrong way through a parking lot in Allston. The wind picked up. A car horn blared. And something was gone.
Rootless. That was the feeling.
Words floating away. Skimming the water. Sometimes failing. Sometimes succeeding.
I wondered if they would come back. If that structure would return. Welcoming in the divorced partner, to fill space with noise.
I thought I could recapture that bird. Using whatever I could find. Structure. Assimilation. Women. Drink.
Creating an artificial world requires artificial energy.
A residue that sours the skin.
You would think it takes time to remove that stench. It may linger in the body. But it will pass, the way all things pass.
What is left?
You sit on a bench, next to me. You look out to the water. You see the bird.
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