Peregrination #1

More on the writer's conference at some point. (Man, do I wish I owned sunscreen--or didn't burn so easily). But for now...well, a goose just flew honking overhead. And it made me write the following:


There are certain sounds that grab something deep in my soul. The honking of Canadian geese. The warble of a loon. The echo of a train's horn. The ebb and crash of waves on the shore and rocks. The howl of a wolf.

Each of these cries brings a smile to my face automatically, an unasked-for burst of responsive joy. At the same time, they are some of the loneliest, most haunting sounds in creation. They have both pathos and perfection in their echoing strains. They carry an inevitability, a ring of time and history that my entire being seems to recognize. I respond to their resonance and beauty, a beauty that in large part is owed to sorrow.

Perhaps more than sadness or loneliness, though, the ache they evoke is due to something simpler. Each of these sounds carries with it a particular image -- solitude. It is the sound of space. The sound of wide-open plains and pristine vistas. Woven deep in the warp and weft of these one-note tonal symphonies is the memory of, the promise of it being the sole sound. No other people. Just a lake or trees or wind or rock or sun or moon.

They tell my heart a lie, that if I could simply find the place from which they are born, I could lose myself there, merge myself with the world I find. That this lonely, perfect place would be my Northern Eden, dark greens and shadows, nothing but the deep, minor note of quiet. That -- at long last -- I can become one of those moments of brief and absolute beauty that never fail to startle me and drive the air from my lungs.

They remind me of something I suspect deep down: peace on earth can only be a place of mingled transcendence and pain. Complexity is its foundation, a reflection of the realization that human peace, by our very nature, cannot be the truest peace.