Leaving Trees Behind
It is 4am, I am tired writing, but I have a point. The world sleeps around me; yet where this picture was taken life is starting. That is the cycle of life, like the turning of the earth, and the earth’s revolution about the sun, we are born to live our time and pass like the perceptions and memories we have.
I used to wake to this scene every day for two years. I was happy waking to the mist and dew, to the path I where would meet friends before we went out to start our mischief. The path was a safe path, full of happiness and memories of misadventure. The fights with girlfriends that meant nothing and carrying suitcases for friends I never saw again when their future came.
Normal, it was normal and that normality was great. For in this body and in this mind are the swimming memories of a life lived as ordinarily as I possibly could. Isn’t than magical, to be safe with friends, to have such familiarity with one scene as you grow into a person, to have a place with as many memories as the days would allow.
We grow, and as we do we move, we move from boredom, from ambition and from necessity. We move, but do we forget? Nostalgia and sentimentality are not feelings we respect, but we have our sentiments and we hold them dear to our eyes when we see old friends, each having had their histories, separated through time from the moments you shared together once; yet those moments come into focusfor a brief glance before the reality of the distance draws between you. What a shame life would be without memory.
And for what? Inside the shell there is a human, a human with the same bones as you, the same sentiments despite the histories that bring the pains of living into a disparate separation.
Life brings trouble. Life is painful at times, and at those times our very existence is begged. I don’t question if I should die, my question is my pain of living; I beg the existential question – do I even belong in this universe? But what a silly question to ask. I will leave this life one day, but before I leave, before my time is up I will have all the friendships, the smiles and the people who I have met on my journey to thank for the wrinkles that bless my face.
So when I look back at this image, the dearest of all my memories, I remember life, I see age and all the lessons I have learnt through the ages that brought me here; and with with one wish I hope that the joy of living continues through the struggles of life. I hope for the happiness for those people who made this image what it is to me, the fondest icon of my life.