I was out walking, and it was spring, a glorious marvelous spring evening. A little too warm earlier, but by then it had cooled, and the breeze was blowing. I was just walking around the neighborhood, feeling the day, taking in the trees and houses and flowers.
The feel of things seems often to be one of the more important things to me--I just wanted to revel in the weather, in the light, in the sounds and pictures. Today was such a spring--not that I do not love the other seasons, I actually prefer a perfect fall day to spring--but this was such a radiant day, it was almost out of a dream. In truth, it was like walking through a dream--it was more about the senses than the dialogue, for I did not speak, and did not think about what was in my life, my now-life--it was all of the future, or just a dream-world, just a hundred different possibilities existing for five instants in my mind, before I passed each by for another.
All my futures, they are images, they are imagined feelings--they are not actions, they are not events, they are simple useless cherished images, steeped in different feelings, yet all with that sense of utter peace--an unspeakable peace, never to be interrupted, though inevitably it would be.
That was the feel of this evening, the bare perfection infused with the air. And it had to end, I could not float about forever, just an observer of the world, but I wanted it to never end, I wanted to have such a feel forever.
Yet there is nothing one can do with such a feeling. You can exist, wrapped in it for maybe hours, maybe even days, but it will end. End, and though you may remember it forever, you cannot fall back into it whenever you please. And that is the frustrating part--the beauty and perfection I felt today, the gentle breeze, the light in the air, the clouds in the sky, the flowers in the trees and the trees against the sky--I cannot have it. No one can have it. It is attainable while in the moment, and you may fall back into a similar moment, but you cannot capture it--a picture does not hold it, no picture holds what I felt standing there, and words cannot do justice to it, they do conjure up a memory, but they would not bring me back into it.
And while within it, content to be the invisible part of a perfect picture, an inconsequential person experiencing the feeling, I didn't want it to end, but it seemed to call for something more: maybe it was just for it to continue, but I feel like it was that I wanted more, I expected it to go somewhere. Did I want it to intensify, or did I simply want to be able to secure the moment, secure it as it could not be, and have it, just have it.
And then I wanted to come back to it, someday return to such a scene, and share it with someone; share it with someone who not only would understand it, but would make it more perfect, add to the feeling. Maybe that was what I wanted, the more and further that I seemed to feel the need for.
If it were shared between two people so together, it would always be real.
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