Chris Scroggins

10.5.98

'What is life worth living if you aren't having fun?' Wisdom, experience, and happiness are just a few of the many wonderful things that can be experienced with an open heart and an open mind. Like the fabled Ulysses, I strive and search the world both corporeally and ethereally for wisdom besting that of even the heavens.

Locked tight in my cage, every futile attempt at freedom only tightons the chains. At the bottom of a lake, drowning slowly of my own despair. The world once flowed like a river, spawning forth from the underground, raging violently through the canyons, or drifting lightly through the forest. But it has reached a vast stagnant lake. Squarely surrounded on all sides by blank white walls, the lake remains still and decaying. "How dull it is to pause, to make an end". And at the bottom, I struggle to free myself from my self-made prison of ignorance. And among me lurks the remainder of mankind.

Resisting temptation, a chain is snapped. Thinking for myself, a rope rips free. And with my final shout against the lies, the final lock crumbles to dust. Reaching the fresh, yet stale air above the lake, I realize that my life is not yet over. The river on which I drifted had another fork. "Tis not too late to seek a newer world". But, to arrive there, I must swim against the torrential current which brought me into this place. Ahead lies on even greater test than which I've already faced. "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield". For I can never once doubt myself, else I be swept back to this Hell of nothingness. To regain my lost self, I have to willingly deny the lies that have been embedded within me. I must put aside the ignorance which gave me false hope, and false strength. Through true dedication and wisdom, only will I perservere. "Free hearts, free foreheads, you and I are old".

I realize that the paths open to me are vast, even infinite. To do all, to know all that I want to know, I would have to live a dozen more lives. Yet, still I quest upriver, following these random forks, hoping for an answer. "And this gray spirit yearning in desire to follow knowledge like a sinking star".

Upon completion of a goal or the arrival at my destination, I have not reached an end, but merely a beginning of another journey through the vast world of both the Land and my Mind. And not once will I lay down and give up. Not once will I seek the easy route just for the sake of getting there. I will traverse the Land until my coffin is nailed shut. "For always roaming with a hungry heart".

Dripping wet, I climb out of the river and behold a world flooded with inexpicable beauty. The light, fresh spring breeze blows in my ear with a faint scent of a coming rain. The morning dew gleams off the lush and healthy green grass. I hear the faint sound of a flowing spring, and in the distance, a waterfall. Atop the green hills are colorful flowers in full bloom. A light mist evelopes all the land, and the sun's unforgiving stare is shrouded by thick rainclouds. Drizzle gathers at my eyebrows giving a likeness of tears. But I can't tell if it's the drizzle or my own self weeping at the sheer beauty of this land, and the terrible fact that the only time I may see a place like this now is in the depths of night asleep in my bed. "Gleams this untravled world whose margin fades forever and forever when I move".

I feel this way every time I look up into the clouds, every time I look into a forest, gleam at the flow of a stream, sit at the calm shore of a spring, walk through a meadow after a strong rain, or stare into the night sky. My mind floods with raw emotion, striking me like a blow.

But then, the bell rings, or a car drives by, and my soul and my essence are swept away by the winds of Time, back into Reality. Morosely, I grab my keys, hop in the car, and head off to work once again...

---<Blue Drake>---

---<Lost Orion>---