Over time, stacks of these fragments string together and hang upon the backdrop from which they were extracted.
I’m sitting in a hospital waiting room at about 11:30 PM on a Monday night because I’ve got a messed up knee, can barely walk, and I’ve got a high fever. Super-duper not comfortable.
Not a fish out of water, but a fish temporarily in the wrong body of water. I’m a trout in a tide pool.
We lingered there for a time, suspended in the moment, before continuing on, enjoying the snails and mushrooms in the undergrowth, the swaying of the forest canopy, and the trickling of a hillside stream.
The already-slippery concept eventually all but entirely lost its meaning after years as an emigrant and only regained some of its significance years after settling in Japan.
But it was a bike, and it was mine. A ticket to personal mobility and a way to get out of my apartment and get out of my head.
It falls on stone statues with both facial features and inscriptions worn indecipherable by centuries of exposure to the elements.
Many years later, I laid down and gazed up from the floor of the Gobi Desert, a place with a sky so dark that the Milky Way practically slaps you in the face. There’s no missing it.
I lost track of the cicadas in a span of weeks during which I was trying to put my head back together and in a general state of tunnel-vision.
If you find yourself at an intersection with a choice between roads that seem equal, choose your bath based on something specifically arbitrary. Choose the street with the sauntering cat, for example, or the one with the yellow house.
© 2022 David R Munson, All rights reserved
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