Bowl of string beans

 

March 29, 2013

 

Beneath the tapioca sky, the bowl gleams with fresh string beans, slim fingers poised above them, as I watch them snap.

Outside, a dirt road waits for the dust to rise from some arrival that never comes.

We always wait for things like that, while the bowl sits in front of us, and we miss the real things, the important things, the only things that matter.

This whole need to be something more than we are is an illusion. We sell our souls for things that never take place – while missing life.

I guess this is why I write so much about what goes on around me, drying to document the day to day things, even when they are painful, reflecting on what I see and feel about anything.

Some journals are so stuff with petty details I can picture a room or a place or a person years later that memory has stolen from me.

Sometimes, these are so painful I feel the pain in them years later, too, as if reliving them.

But like the sky I see today, and the string beans, and the bowl, the pain is important. It is life.