I am Night.
I am the World.
I am the Turquoise Woman.
And a traveler like all of you.
You walk miles.
I spin through the vastness of space, listening to the ghost songs of the solar winds.
I awakened already spinning through space, hugged to the sun's warmth by his invisible arms of gravity.
But the sun is a distant lover and following his own path through the stars, drawn by bonds of his own.
He is caught like a glistening bead of dew in the web of the solar system.
Together, he and my sisters journey in a cluster which is itself part of a moving community of stars you call the Milky Way.
Travelers all, we can neither turn to the left nor to the right of our own volition.
We are children of gravity and explosion, cast into the darkness by forces we little understand or know.
I used to envy you your freedom of movement, of choice.
But the longer I watched your scurrying over my surface, the more a dark truth spoke to me:
You, too, are children of the gravity of your species and the explosion of the times around you which you little understand or know.
You bristle with denial?
If you cannot understand your own heart, how can you understand another's?
Which choices are yours totally?
As gravity and momentum send me on my path, so do your DNA, location, and experience spread the pattern of the paths before you.
You are no more free than I am or the goldfish wandering the narrow confines of its bowl.
From within its bowl, the world seems so large to the goldfish. Yet, it is trapped within invisible walls.
As are you.
Freedom is an illusion to the goldfish, to me, and to you.
Do we choose or do the choices choose us?
Damn...this is intense and amazing. Perhaps your best post yet...
ReplyDeleteThat is very kind of you to say ... and more needed than you can imagine. It's been one of those weeks! :-)
DeleteYou end with a very good question. I prefer the former answer, but I wonder...
ReplyDeleteIt is an open-ended question ... and I have different answers for it depending on the kind of day I've been having!
DeleteThat was beautifully written and quite intense. We choose but the choices present themselves on their own.
ReplyDelete@Kathleen01930 Blog
Thanks, Kathleen. The Turquoise Woman is a favorite character of mine whom I've used in most of my novels, especially the Hibbs and McCord ones. :-)
DeleteI believe that Fate chooses what to place before us, and we choose which path we take to get there, whether we are aware of our choices or not. How one reacts in any given situation or 'fork in the road' is another step towards the consequences of our choices.
ReplyDeleteThe Father deals us the Hand but we choose how to play it I think. :-)
DeleteThe road ahead when we are young seems to branch off in infinite directions. At the end of our days, we turn around to see only one path.
Been wandering that myself lately, I'm thinking the house is rigged...
ReplyDeleteBut maybe there is a way we can lose more slowly and with style. :-)
Delete