I sit upon these steps and wait

Originally published October 25 2010


The difference between nature and the human mind is that so long as the mind functions, all things can stay alive. Those flowers died on that step, blew into the wind, and disappeared.


And perhaps that is nature's way of moving on. Nature does not know emotion.  It continuously adapts. A new flower emerges, much like the one before it. 


Yet a single memory makes it near impossible to replace a great man or woman. The mind deeply roots memories, discriminating and deciding what is relevant to life. And they live. Even the ones that haunt us.

I remember this day, when I stumbled down from my home only days after my arrival, picking the flowers of winter, and placing them on this step--a step I climbed in my childhood and into adulthood. The first time I ever came to this distant place, I begged my mother to take me to the fields and pick flowers with me to dry them. I remember a blood red flower, and I stuck it between pages of childhood illustrations. 

I placed them in a book--and they became my literature. 

If we were like nature, would  we die and whither just seconds after being pulled from the ground? Would we become something simply scientific if our flesh was taken and dried between the leaves of a dead book? 

We would have no reason to live if we were not grounded. Yet notice the struggle of life, notice me here sitting on the steps my grandfather built, looking to be grounded and planted--looking for my roots. 

And still lost. 

We live to Return to something Greater. I prayed for your peace and G-d's mercy at the foot of your grave. Until this day sporadic memories break through the soil of time, and I remember my flowers.

That thing called memory is another pillar to survival, something that makes us human. It is pushing our existence. We remember they were once amongst the valleys and rocks and hid from the rain much like these flowers. The only thing keeping people from whithering, whether alive or dead, are the memories that water their names.

And if we cannot recall your names, then yes, we did lose you in the hospital that day, in that storm, in the chaos of a plow raping the earth of its human memory, its essence.

I sit now upon these steps and wait. I hope we can bloom together once again.