Revelations in the Woods in anticlimatic

The lady and I went for a stroll in the woods down by the river at dusk. Another hot late summer evening. Found this flower on the way, a ratty purple one that smelled like the inside of a tire and brake shop- like late summer to me. Months old oil slicks on vast empty planes of concrete and asphalt. Even the faint odor of elephant ears and cotton candy from the packed up carnival. The sun setting.

From the woods, below the tallest trees with the highest and prettiest canopies, a memory of something resurfaced. Fantasies I once held before reality dissolved them, but something more- the accompanying framework- from which these fantasies were crafted out of speculation.

To experience, and discover, with no memory or discernable motivation or awareness of greater context. To float on instinct and just behold, without knowledge or meaning. To walk through dreams and dream through walks.

I remember the society of individuals in my imagination. Subtle, unique, untethered to common standards or expectation. The soft shadows in the remote corners of the world. Drifting through overgrown patches of vine strangled shrubbery to the white house and old woman I last imagined there many months before she died. The young lovers and families and the responsible adults have grown up and out, with me. I felt them go, but didn’t see it. A generation passed on, and I with them.

There’s this thing with getting old and slowly detaching from the world and the meaning it holds. I miss the orange glow of the distant windows below as my 11:00 PM flight nears touchdown. I miss the dreams of cozy corners out of time. If something existed, or could exist, does it really mean it exists forever in a 4th dimension?