17th
She walked into the room. Where was she going? What was she doing? Sitting down at
a maple table, a tad bit shakily, not just ready to make any sudden movements into the
next part of her life. It suddenly felt foreign to be sitting in this chair in this room next to
this window. An utterly new sensation. One that evokes those emotions that you dont
feel that often. The ones you keep in the back of the corners of your mind for just such
occasions, so they can be pristine and fresh (an overused emotion would just not do for
this moment), something akin to awe, to the brink of a crisp, new beginning, to the
excitement of the unknown mixed with fear and trepidation. As though one were
tiptoeing around a sleeping animal - being ever so careful not stir it, but having the
adrenaline of the possibility of doing so, waking the beast. And then what would
happen?
She had crossed the turning point, she was now in the “after.” A small person in a small
chair in a small room in her new life. There was no huge change. No big sudden bang.
No large catalyst that one could use to clearly define the before from the after. In fact, if
you didnt mark this day on the calendar, it would just blend into the next. A feeling had
just slowly washed over her. it was, in fact, time for change.
Maybe her aura had filled up completely with orange. Maybe she was walking down the
streets glowing orange. Maybe when people looked into her eyes they just knew, “how
interesting, there’s someone on the brink of change,” as they shuffled past her. Maybe
wondering: if i followed her, where would we go?
It definitely, absolutely, seemed like one of those times where she was the last to know
about what was so obvious to everyone else. The glowing orange elephant in the room
next to the window across from her in a chair at the maple table. Sitting earnestly, as if
to say to her, what’s next, your the one calling the shots here…
Tracing her fingers along the grain, making small, complex, circular geometric shapes,
she was experiencing a new sensation, everything was so possible. It seemed as
simple as picking a playing card out of hat. Today I am the ace of spades. Tomorrow i
will be the queen of hearts. What a full house i have she thought. Slowly looking up from
the table where she sat, tracing a ray of light out the window, thinking about that same
full house, that same full life. She began to play in reverse the scenes that had expired
before that very window at rapid pace in her mind. The fast forwarding, in reverse of
years of memories. The seasons coming and going, the leaves turning red, then
glowing orange, then becoming amber and falling off the tree, sailing to the ground,
where to the untrained eye they seem deceased. But we all know they were just
planning. Planning their triumphant return to green.
Then of course, the sea of people. The tide coming in with bursts of hustle and bustle.
Its hard to make out the words from all the conversations as we fast forward this quickly,
but we all get the gist - the trials, the tribulations, the adulations, the bliss, the remorse
and forgiveness, the laughter, the love of daily life, washing over this window. Each
moment strung into the next to create afternoons then evenings, then days and from the
days sprang the weeks and from the weeks grew the months and with each flowing
month another year appeared. Until she found herself in this year, glowing orange in the
after moments…
