beads of living
The beauty of travel is not the road but instead the footprint of the traveler; not the wind but in the taste on the wind; not the cathedral but in the stillness its walls contain, in the cool of water two hands cup from the river; not in the kiss, but the moment before the kiss, the sweetness of meeting, the poignancy of parting; not in the song as it reaches the ear, but when it reaches the heart, or shakes the limbs into dance; not in the fruit but in the body’s knowing how fruit sustains; not in sleep but in the freedom of dreams; not in life but in the fine beads of living that comprise it.
I meditate as much to gain moments’ insight as I do to savor their memory: one can be a connoisseur of memories, by tasting them carefully, repeatedly.
My foot moves along the ridgeline. I am at the level on the eaves. Wind has piled snow like a great wave poised to crash against the shore of my house… but it never will. In Ironwood, Michigan, snow falls in great glaciers whose plowed collection will not dissolve ’til mid-July or August. My foot moves, and now I am sitting atop the wave. Below me is a tunnel from our front door to the garage. The hand of the wind constructed it. I love my mother. There is a cherry tree in our back yard; or so I am told. There is a field as large as the sky. My foot moves, and a small stone of snow breaks free and rolls down the face of the drift, diminishing as it falls, leaving itself in a trail behind it, carving a path that gravity and my existence described for it. My fingertips are cold; a voice says “come down – it’s dangerous”. I smile. I am too young for danger. I edge forward in little hops of my hips. Finally free, I slide down the wave as a winter surfer, and recollection arrives on the ground at the same time as my two feet.
When you walk into memory, anything can happen. Sometimes it is true, sometimes nearly true, and sometimes simply impossible, no matter what you tell yourself, impossible! There are moments in life that are indelible. Some are described by others with such dramatic difference you wonder if you witnessed the same scene at all. The beauty of travel is how you walked, not where you walked; it is who you walked with, not why you chose this path or that; it is not whom you touched, but who remembers your touch; it is the trail you left behind, and the trail ahead of you, both of which meet right where you are; it is a stone tossed into a lake, with only the expanding ripples to remember it. The stone is still there, even if you can’t reach it.
My foot moves along the ridgeline. I am at the level of the clouds. Wind takes my words away from me, so should I wish to be heard, I must cup my hand to my companions’ ears; but I have nothing to say. The mountain range is a wave that rose up some millions of years ago, and crashes so slowly my entire species may not see it come to shore. Time moves slowly in this sea. I walk on pieces of the wave’s spray that successive winters have chipped free, each fleck weighing more than fifty of me. The foam itself, millions of tons. Everything here is measured in millions, if it can be measured at all. Beside me are shadow-peaks white as the drifts of my youth. Below me are trees; then far below me are many more trees, and beyond them – the millions of them – a road that reaches back to yesterday, to the day before and the month before, the year before that, spans states, crosses water, crosses back again, and leans as far as my pearl-strand of memories may take me. I count them like a rosary, I work them like a Buddhist mala. I go round and round with them. They begin to look alike.
The beauty of travel is lost upon arrival; it is not the road but the weight of your body on the earth; it is not in the wind but the sighing and crying of voices on the wind; not in the cathedral but what you brought to the cathedral; not in the coolness of water, but how it made gentle the heat of your hands; not in the kiss, but in the impossible distance that exists between lovers’ reaching lips, the sweetness of trying to meet, the poignancy of falling short; not in the song as it reaches for the heart, but in the voice of the singer who does the reaching; not in the fruit, but the body which becomes everything it has ever taken in; not in sleep, but in the room that tomorrow builds for you while you wander through your dreams; the room you enter even if you do not wish to; the beauty of travel not in life, but the fine beads of living that comprise it.