Fleeting Freedom

Tuesday, 24 April 2007.

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I walked alone in the forest; a beautiful forest, but dark… silver trunks reaching heavenward, jade boughs closing out the evening sky, columns of feeble light filtering through sickly upon the grounds beneath. The beaten ground was coated most thoroughly with dried leaves of winters past, and the rustle of those leaves in the stiff wind was the only sound that echoed to my ears.

Why I stood there, I'm not sure. I could see the lanterns hung on the porches of the distant town beginning to light. Perhaps I wanted to be away from that, perhaps I wanted to be away from them. Perhaps it was responsibility that I didn’t want. Perhaps I just wanted to be free, even if for just a moment.

After all, I couldn’t stay in the forest forever. It was dark, and cold, and dangerous. I needed to eat, somehow. And surely I couldn’t last long without company of any kind. Yet for now I wanted neither food nor company; I wanted no respite from the chilling wind; I wanted nothing.

Strange it is, how contentedness stalks up upon you and takes you in it’s jaws, even when the whole of your being is in doubt and confusion. You know not what you want ten minutes hence, yet for now you want nothing; yet all at once you realize that it will not, cannot last.

How fleeting is freedom, yet so beautiful is the melancholy.