i n

F

BIGGER

SMALLER

COURIER

GEORGIA

TIMES

VERDANA

COMIC

l

RECENT

POPULAR

e

u

 ^{(it's beta!)}

When you see everything at first glance, details are blurred; it takes a keen eye to determine all surroundings. I t takes an even sharper intellect to explain them, since everything is moving at once, changing with each passing second. I have yet to fathom everything myself, let alone recite what I recognize. When you're out in nature, nothing is still, there is only hope that the wind will die down and people will settle in to the trees that caress the earth with their low branches. It wouldn't take much effort to climb their humble arms to their leafy mop of autumn red. I won't, however, the weight of my bag full of borrowed books would surely topple me over to fall to the ground, though softened by the sun, still hard and merciless.

Interested children gape at the shimmering fountain-pool, wanting to swim and frolic in it's dirty koi-filled waters. They are told that they come from flushed goldfish, large and healthy now out of their bowl-cage. Amazed, wondrously imaginative-eyed, wanting to see a familiar fish face. So naive in gullible belief in those lies parents tell as jokes. They long for the adored reaction, too cute to correct.

How can they stare at those repeated ripples for so long?

Do they see something I can't?

Maybe they use their unconfined imagination to form welcoming mermaids, taunting with their beauty. Or a singing chorus of finned families, swimming along with melody from memorized movies. A sight for young eyes to see, smiling and dancing at the water's lapping edge. They only can wade with their feet, wiggling small toes in hopes of catching aquatic attention. They will sit at the edge and wish they had gills to live and breathe underwater, so foreign, a world anew.

An old man stoops down to the reflective pool to see only his reflection. Wrinkled and spotted with age, behind aching cataracts he is unable to see a clear image of himself, and elder afloat on the swirling surface. He will give a tired grin and heave a sigh, searching for that second chance to see beyond the unknown, still finding nothing but himself in rushing water.

Some regretful youth sleeps in awe of drifting off by this sound of ebb and flow. Closed eyes, seeing red through alighted eyelids facing the upward sun. He won't stay even if he wanted to. No one likes the young drunk in a park filled with guiltless eyes. He will stir and look up from his position, surrounded by middle-class taxpayers.

Families strike up conversations, whispering half-fates of his misfortune. He is a travesty to the sanctity of a public park; he is to be removed by park police, screaming curses as they drag him by his shoulders.

He knows more than I do.

He knows the meaning of life but is cursed with the inability to explain it.

Another irony of an entirely burdened existence.