In the spring, the tree outside my window erupts in white blossoms that fall slowly to green grass and paint a carpet of fluffy white. When one sits and breathes and allows silence, the beauty overwhelms the noise. The greens and the whites and the contrast and the fact that this should exist at all in the same time and place that I do is a form of magic for which there are no words. And always (always) there is the head of a dandelion peeking through and, suddenly, there is yellow. Joyful, shocking yellow. And I have created none of this. It is here, simply, for me to observe with awe and wonder and the glee of a child. That this tree and I should exist in the same world and that I will one day leave and not see spring again is a tragedy I cannot bear to think of for fear of drowning in it. I am so temporal and this beauty is fleeting and I shall behold it for such a pitifully short time.
There are mountains and oceans and rivers that will leave you speechless, that will strip you of any essence except that which belongs to the whole. There are goliaths here capable of deconstructing you into your most basic parts, leaving you raw and nude and so very, very vulnerable in the shadow of their enormity.
There are whole woods where you can sit quietly for hours and hear the frogs croak and the birds sing and, for a moment, belong there. You can, on long and hot summer days, melt into the cool shade of a tree and close your eyes and become no one but a thing that belongs to the rest. If you can dampen the ceaseless chatter of the mind and forget for a moment the concept of separation, you can disappear, a wisp and an afterthought in the wake of a place so utterly magic-filled that the greatest poets and authors and minds could never conceive the details of its existence.
That this place should be here in an infinite universe of grays and blacks and explosions and mass we cannot account for feels terribly illogical. That I should be here, the soft petals of spring filling the air with perfumed sweetness, defies fortune.
And there is this looming thought that haunts, that I cannot seem to escape. One day, my last spring will come and I will watch those white flowers and those persistent dandelions and the ants’ frenzied building and I will never see it again. Will I know it will be the last time? And if I know, will I mourn each individual petal as it falls to the earth? I shall pass from a world filled with the enchantment of a fairy tale; I will not lie in the cool of the evening grass or sit in awe at the might of a moose and her calf or watch a falcon soar effortlessly on invisible jets that, somehow, keep it aloft. Some coming year, I will fall in love with spring for the last time and each wilted dandelion shall be my last.
Of all the terrifying aspects of death, losing the chance to watch silently as the world around me evolves and changes and turns from one season to the next with a slow humming entirely inaudible to my own ears but felt in every atom of my body is such an enormous tragedy. That any snowflake or petal or soft, white cloud may be my last fills me with palpable hollowness. This place is so terribly bursting with grace and magic and beauty and in its wake I am but the smallest of blips, occupying this space only long enough to understand how desperately sad it shall be to leave.
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