Whitsunday 3 June 2001

Pic of the day: This path is like a shining light that grows brighter and brighter ...

Paths of light and darkness

The cold of the last few days gave way to a comfortable day of sun from blue skies with only the occasional sheeplike cloud. I grabbed my camera and my minidisc walkman and set off for a walk. Losing myself in music and thought, I eventually took roads that I had never walked before. Yet I was not worried: Even though I did not know exactly the road ahead, I knew the general direction. Even should I take a wrong turn now and again, I knew I would find my way home at last.

The roads were narrow and made for using one's own legs. No big surprise then that I found myself alone on this road too most of the time. Business as usual. :)

Along the road on both sides were, often as not, the forest. The wilderness is quite fertile here, and the leafy trees close ranks like a green wall for those who stay on the ordered roads of civilization. In there are paths barely visible, made for those creatures that live in that different world, and for the children.

***

Like a bird on the wire
like a drunken in the midnight choir
I have tried, in my way
to be free.

Leonard Cohen: Bird on the wire.

I look at the three dice lying safely on the edge of my desk space, half covered by the stack of old magazines. The rightmost of them is still standing half on edge, the side showing two dots tilted forward toward me. Nothing has disturbed its precarious balance. The one to the left still lies with two dots up. But the one in the middle, touching it and almost touching the other, shows five. When I started to write, I pondered the fact that they all showed two. I try to jiggle various cables and stuff, but there is nothing that touches the dice.

Is it a change that defies natural explanation? How many other changes in my life do that? Or is it my memory that is incorrect, or at least imperfect? How much else of what I remember was never quite the way I saw it? Whichever of these it is, it is not how I wished it would be. But I have tried, in my way...

***

You ask me where to begin.
Am I so lost in my sin?
You ask me where did I fall.
I say I can't tell you when.
But if my spirit is lost,
how will I find what is near?
Don't question: I'm not alone;
somehow I'll find my way home.

Jon & Vangelis: I'll find my way home.

From the dawn of time, life has been likened to a journey, walking a road or path we do not remember. Coming from where, we do not remember. Going to where, we do not quite know. Yet we think we know that, in the end, we are going home. We may not know the exact turns of the road, but we know the general direction. And if we are really lucky, we eventually reach a rise where we can look back and see some of the road we have travelled, and things begin to make sense.

Some seem to have to walk the shadowed paths among the trees, wending their ways among the tripping roots and the thorny bushes, every tree looking like some other tree they have passed. Once on that path, it may last for a long way. Others seem destined to walk under a blue sky, along a path that grows brighter and brighter until it is flooded by the light of high noon. And some cross from one to another.

I walked in shadows for a long time when I was younger. And when I came out toward the light, it blinded my eyes, and it seemed darker than the darkness. But my invisible friend warned me to hurry on, if I wanted to ever reach my home.

And in my fear I had to carry on
where no one else had gone
looking in a heart of darkness from above
to the man inside
I took my chance and set off for the light
and started on the journey of my life ...

Chris de Burgh, Heart of darkness.

So ... now I walk in brightness, but I have not found my way home. Will I? I think so, unless I grow too content with how far I have come and try to stay.