Riverside Sitting.

Sometimes I wish I could float down a river, the way a fallen leaf glides through the ripples and follows the current down.

Effortless.

Bobbling.

No movement, no drowning, no struggle.

I think I would just lay flat on the surface.  Straight as a board, eyes turned up towards the heaven, watching clouds and branches and stars and birds pass in a continual motion; a never-ending forward movement.

I heard a question the other day:

"Would you rather loose all your old memories and only make new ones, or loose the ability to make new memories and live the rest of your life only with the old memories you've made so far?"

Right now, in this moment, I would like to make new memories and forget all the old ones.

I would like to just move forward.

I think we constantly underestimate the beauty of what it means to be a blank slate.

This life is sad, and I don't write anymore because I'm tired of regurgitating the feelings I've already felt.  Why make yourself relive the pain if the first time you felt it was bad enough?

Sure, there's flaws with this theory.  You could talk about catharsis, healing, training your mind to constantly be searching for inspiration which is a natural combatant for depression.  All of that is true.

For the past two years, I've felt like stopping my creativity has been a way to protect myself from a million and one tiny little hurts that have happened.  I don't regret that.  I laughed more, because I could put things behind me and leave them there.  I stressed less because I wasn't trying to turn my anxiety into art.  I focused on becoming logical and business-like and that grew me up in ways I can't begin to describe.

Today I come back to the written word with a heavy heart, which is ironic because I've been running away from writing every time I've had a heavy heart for the past two years.

But today, as I sit here, in my car by the river, 10 AM blaring from my dashboard clock, I come back to the written word.

There are lives caught in the balance today all over the world, the outcomes of which nobody knows for certain, but the resounding knowledge is that there isn't much time left. For cancer-wracked bodies, lives plagued by old age and terrible hunger. For you, for me.

When I watch the leaves float down the river, I am jealous because those leaves have all the time in the world.

For them, there is no cancer, there is no death.  There is no repression, there's no stopper in the flow of creative thought.  There's only the long outstretch of constant forward motion.

I know in the deepest center of my soul that God has designed everything for a reason, and I have had enough experience with the flat-out unknown and inexplicable in my life that I know full well trusting in Him is the only way to navigate through it all. "If you don't swim, you'll drown."

We're still intellectual beings, though.  He created us that way. And sometimes, even though in the deepest center of your soul you are trusting in Him, you find yourself sitting by the river watching Autumn unfold, repeatedly asking the question "why?"

Leaves never have to ask why.

Maybe that's the real reason I wish I could be one of them right now.

I can't promise that this is a return to writing for me, because I don't know that returning to writing will improve my life.

What I do know is that today I was moved to pick up my pen, and that movement was sparked by a very profound sorrow which has forecasted the remainder of today.

In which, instead of focusing on a million and one tiny little hurts, I will focus on sending up a million and one tiny little prayers for peace upon hurting people.

That is something only humans and angels can do, and that alone is reason enough to keep moving forward.