Seasons change with their scenery

There are so many odd moments in a life where you wonder if it is your life you’re living. Standing at a bus station, reading the label on a coffee cup while daydreaming about a new umbrella can suddenly spin the world into a neverland where imposing trees with their brown leaves are suddenly holding back your hopes and dreams of grassy fields. You sit for a moment, or stand as the case may be, and look around yourself in complete amazement that this could possibly be what your life is. There’s a patch of snow on the ground amidst the endless warmth of a contented psyche. No matter where you look or what you think for those few seconds, you have stepped outside of your own reality and questioned. Later, in a diner, over a long repetitive cup of coffee, someone will relate to you the odd moment and you will smile with acceptance of the normality of it. You will joke and say, it happens to me all the time. And you will move on from harping on a subject you know too much about already. The coffee will drag on, the cigarette may as well, and the waitress will eventually bring you a check, as it has been pre-ordained to be so. Years from now, your granddaughter will talk to her boyfriend from a great distance, harking about privacy and repeat how awful and unnatural the world is. You will grimace from deep within as that long forgotten cup of coffee swirls through your bowels rushing you to the bathroom. And once there, trying to avoid bumping into the neatly stacked readers digests behind your head, you will begin to feel old. Not simply in age, but in reality. You will look at the world and remember those fields ripe and grass high but all hazy in winter. somewhere beyond a rusted old telescope with a cracked lens, somewhere just before you, but always infinitely far and unidentifiable. An age old snow patch, littering the ground of a contented life. And in that dedication to contentment, a choice is made. Do you wish to stay with the warmth, the adventurous spirit of acceptance and journey on within this life? Or do you say, “no more?” Or do you simply bump your highly fashioned locks against the rotting digests and flush twice, so you can be sure it’s all over. Your granddaughter will think these thoughts again later, and maybe she’ll get a good laugh between sips on her long cup of coffee. Maybe then it will be time. time. time.