Postcards

I still remember how your distinct calligraphy, lovely descriptions and beautiful stories could inspire awe. Do you still use those metaphors, still melt hearts? Yesterday, I frantically searched for, and located, the postcards you sent me. Yes, my routine exercise these days.

“Path”… “Flight”… The more I seem to try, the more they never seem to get lost.

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“Path”. You had taught me that the path isn't supposed to be familiar or complete. For familiarity repels challenges. For the ends are never supposed to meet, it is we who can make that happen. I had prodded along, swimming against the tide, fighting the wind, dashing against gravity. Just so that I could prove you right when you repeated that I'd fall in love with passion en route.

Now, I scorn at familiar paths; I feel an unusual calm when paths are incomplete and ends don't meet. Now, I follow the religion of pure passion.

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“Flight”. Back then, it had sounded so bizarre to me, when you asked me to see beauty in chaos. I had watched the pigeons fly for days on end. They flew from one feeder to another, across the lake, among people, above everyone. Ruffling feathers, pecking on food, flying in confused aimlessness. Chaos, I see. But beauty? You told me that's a state of mind... We see what we want to see - Chaos in beauty? Or beauty in chaos?

Watching the birds, I think I've been trying harder to see that beauty, to rise above things, to soar.

***

I've fallen in love, with the stoicism of the lake, the chaos of the pigeons, the resistance of the wind, the incompleteness of the path... because these postcards from you still inspire awe, still melt hearts.