Siege of the Spirit

Feelings, feelings.

Oh, you can have feelings. Everyone has feelings. You aren’t unique.

The problem is, your feelings are valid, accepted, and even valuable right up until the moment you express them. First off, it’s inconvenient. Second, nobody cares. Third, if they do care, they think it’s unjustly directed at them. Fourth, if you mourn what you have lost, they say you are ungrateful for what you have. You must be judged and corrected.

Well, you have quite a persecution complex, don’t you?

You are sitting on my stump. Under the cloud shading the aspen trees. It’s always the place I sit. You’ve known this for years.

Why? Why are you here? This is my sky. This is my sun! It’s supposed to be sunny here. You’ve appropriated this stump for rumination and shadows. You should be ashamed.

Nature can be worshipped many ways. No one owns the Solstice.

You don’t understand how the flies are eating me alive because of you.

That’s because you never get bothered by insects. Some of us are quite used to it.

“You know, everyone’s a little bipolar,” she said to the gathering, while looking at one. Her face, so earnest, its wrinkles and eye-bags smoothed to impart her wisdom. “I’m serious.”

The one looked at her startled, with a word-bitten stare, for only a moment. Then, she turned away with her scarred arms, turned away before it was too late, swallowed by churning entrails boiling in a giant kettle.

She could not remember if she had even said, “Hmm,” before turning. It’s uncivilized to take offense, and all that.

“I’m not ungrateful! I’m not! I smile at the trees because they are pretty. I greet all the passers-by, though I’m not sure of faces and my enemy could be one of them. To make the passage gentler, less damaging, more content. I imagine happiness for all. It feels like a dream, clawing up from despair, because I know I will never bring them up with me once I arise. No one follows me, down or up.”

“What is that noise? What is that gawdawful perishing noise? Stop making it right now.”

“I can’t be given a rest.”

“Why should you? You’re being an idiot.”

“Yes, I am an idiot. Finish your laughter and leave me.”

“Why are you lying there on the rocks when the ground is soft right over there?”

The sun in the trees. The aspens glittering while the black clouds move over them. The robin. The elbow-high mountain grass. The flowers: purple penstemon, pale geraniums, red paintbrush, lavender daisies, and the sound of water are here.