...Leif was growing weary of the endless sprint and only snatches of comfort. He was sick of having to work so hard to constantly find joy like matchsticks. Sure, there’d be rushes and blazes of light…and then the stick would burn down and the smile was over. Why couldn’t that fire catch on anything? Why was it destined to always burn out in its predictable crawl down the stalk ‘til fingers clutching to the moment are nearly singed with desire to hold on to the high just a little bit longer? Why couldn’t *happy* be more like the sun and just fireball with permanent might? Why did the train of good feelings always have a stop over and wind up with a shitty seat to complete the ride? – next stop, loneliness.
Why was “why” such an exasperating word?
It’s not that Leif even wanted answers. He just didn’t want the constant questions, whose answers begot more quandaries, quagmires and quickly dissipating comforts of resolution. Why couldn’t his mind hush to mirror-like stillness, so it could reflect the perfect vastness of a divinely appointed sky? Why couldn’t he regard the pursuit of asking why, not as futility but as a divining rod destined to point to the presence of silent elemental knowingness, deep under the human crust of consciousness. And why couldn’t he plug his current of wondering into this telluric socket, trusting, like a sage sunflower, it would conduct its quest back to the unequivocal light of the sun, where life is given without question? He was starting to grow weary of the perpetual “why”-shaped branch of his witch hazel psyche, always prancing forward at something tellingly beneath the seeable, but never knowing exactly what.
Today Leif wanted exhilaration of feeling alive, of striking water, or alchemical ore, or that mystical umbilicus mundi, so he could control capricious energies of life around him and subvert their transience once and for all. He was sick of joys being little untrained puppies that would only scatter and bark anarchically when you commanded them to “stay!” So, with his backpack around two shoulders, Sorel Caribou boots, and an inscrutable gleam in the orb of his right eye, he trudged through the shag coconut carpeting of his snowed-in toy town on December 24th. He was determined to leave glass-half-emptiness behind in favor of something that would let his heart overflow in the frothing springs of vitality. He was ready for something extreme. He was courting something off the beaten, ground-down path. His desire lines felt more like rug stains, his desire tree bore hollow fruit in the flaying cold of this hark-hear-the-bells night, tolling desolation in the void of a ramshackle, Yule-bereft bell tower.
Leif knew where there was a bridge nearby. The highest one in the outlying vicinity. He didn’t mind walking miles to get to it. It took the seemingly endless march of a lifetime to get to what he was planning but some hours in the Jackfrostbitten evening were a little price to pay for the release he was ready for. He never had the courage ‘til now...
