I’ve always loved an August sunset, watching it slip through clouds to become a perfect circle of burning red refracted by the haze, backlighting the scattered clouds, changing them from light to dark. I cannot stare too long or else I’ll see its image all night, which might not be so bad. I’m reminded of summers twenty years ago now – coming home from church softball games, thinking about the girl who loved me and who I discovered I love too late. This Saturday marks the end of that fateful summer, where speed and recklessness conspired to crack my vertebrae, enwrapping me with a halo for 13 weeks. It doesn’t seem possible that day could be so distant, that so much time could pass. In some ways I will always be that sixteen-year-old boy, trying desperately to fall in love, electrified by the slightest touch, unsure of myself and what I have to offer. That fledgling relationship set a pattern I’ve yet to break – my cluelessness when it comes to women, my second-guessing, my insecurity – all those glorious traits that make the women swoon.
Nature break: a family of deer just scampered out of the woods to my left, above a freshly mown field resembling nothing so much as a labyrinth. I’m glad moments like that still hold wonder for me.
OK, break’s over.
Nothing’s more attractive than confidence, or so I’ve been told, and yet it’s the one thing I lack most. Intellectually, I know I have a lot to offer. But inside I’m still that sixteen-year-old, finding it hard to believe the girl everyone else wants is smitten with me.
Or wondering why the girl I like likes someone else. Æ
Woods
I part the out thrusting branches
and come in beneath
the blessed and the blessing trees.
Though I am silent
there is singing around me.
Thought I am dark
there is vision around me.
Though I am heavy
there is flight around me.Wendell Berry
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