Spoiler
This isn't fictional, but it isn't totally real, and it isn't really an essay, it's just a recount of an experience I had; enjoy!
SOUL RIVER
As I walked across the soccer field flanking the elementary school, with my dog in tow, I found the power of reminiscence bear upon me. A rush of senses filed back through my pores: smells; feelings; images; tastes – they all came roaring back. They cut through my person like an axe to an aged tree. I found them difficult to comprehend in my advanced adolescence. The most immediate was a yearning: to recede.
I found myself wishing to be young again: to play; to wander; to skip; to cry – I wished to be shameless again. I wished for innocence. I wished for more life. I wished to be naked and blind.
I found bees; and wasps; and flies; and ladybugs; and rolly pollies; and all the rest at their daily nuances. Generations passes in them to this point, and to the era of their ancestors that were familiar with me. Long dead were the bees that buzzed; the wasps that floated; the flies that hummed; the ladybugs that crawled; and the polies that rolled, about me. Long dead was the grass I had trampled upon during a hectic game of soccer, that wasn’t much of a game, seeing as the entire school must’ve been involved. Long dissipated were the clouds that loomed above me, with an omnipresence dwarfed by the delusions of adaptation brought along by adulthood. And long dead was the me that pondered all these things. The me that made decisions as if one side was any better than the other.
I found the backstops rusted; the swings rigid; the goalposts weathered; and the years wasted. I found the houses larger; the streets thinner; the children grosser; and the country older.
And I found the river.
The proverbial artery of future running through a landscape of past. A green tie lost on the suit of a “businessman” from a black – and – white 1950s sitcom. Encased in fence and concrete; lost in an urban spectrum; life where death had conquered life. Life where apathy had conquered life. Life.
All the vestige of mankind was apparent: shopping carts overtaken by moss; soda cans overtaken by moss; Christmas tree skeletons overtaken by moss; garbage as far as the eye could travel: all overtaken by moss; all reclaimed. I found everything.
Mosses dead; mosses living.
I found a family of ducks – or two separate families; I cannot be exactly sure. All I know is that a family was there; possibly two. Two large ducks; eleven small ducks. One with five ducklings – the other with six. Though my dog was interested more in the various smells bordering the fence, I was taken with the ducks. They went about their business much like my dog: bobbing; weaving; shaking; flaunting; and of course, ducking; my dog could have made quite a duck! Their acts were propagated by waves on the surface of the water familiar with blips on a radar screen. They flowed on the base of the water with ease and elegance, with a life devoid of predation. Lines followed them in the water, telling a story fading into the present and disappearing into the past. Ducklings followed duck, lines followed ducklings, water followed lines, and nothing followed water. Except for two of the ducklings.
I found myself following alongside of them downstream. I found myself concerned that their mother (or father) wasn’t following, and didn’t even seem interested. I found myself wondering if she was going to just let them drift into the street that ran by the river as it emptied into a grassy knoll on the roadside. I followed them down to a bridge that crossed at the other end. I walked across and observed as they crossed underneath. At the height of my worries I was relieved. A commanding quack sounded upstream, just as reassuring as a mother’s early morning lullaby. The ducklings continued daring their mother to follow them into death’s warm asphalt. Only a game, the mother, with siblings in tow, arrived long before any sensible danger was apparent.
I found myself long relieved to be relieved. I found myself leaving them behind, and returning upstream. I found the other troupe, and followed them upstream. They followed each other, one after the other, with the mother (or father) holding up the rear. A chain that must’ve felt unbreakable to them. Soon I found myself alone with my dog farther upstream, long outpacing the family, long to disappear from their periphery. I found myself leaning on the fence at the edge of the attainable stream, which ran on for miles, along houses and freeways and bike paths, finally reaching I don’t know what, and emptying into I don’t know where. I watched a crane stand on the opposite bank, seemingly on one leg. I attempted to count the blips on the water, but there were too many. I found myself returning to my car parked at the front of the school. I found myself scooping my dog into the passenger seat, and locking her in the seatbelt, just in case.
I found myself sitting there, staring down the blank road that lay before me. Pondering life had never been my thing, and it still isn’t. To ponder life is to ponder death, as that is the only reality. A release after a long and varied internment. But there I found myself pondering. What was I going to do now? Was I going to drive home and continue; was I going to drive in the opposite direction; was I going to float upstream or down? I felt that it didn’t matter, because whichever way we flow, we all come upon the same result: a terminus; a waterfall; a delta; a refinery; or, with the most hope, a tributary, merging with an even greater reality.
All the same.
