The wind blew through the trees, spreading the smell of defeat and lilac through the air, permeating the nostrils of everyone within a 100 mile radius. The earth shook with terror, lighting hell fires that melted the pavement, turning the streets into rivers of hot tar. We ran, screaming from the destruction of this once beautiful world until we could run no more and faced only more chaos, more disaster. Where do we go from here? Where do we go from here? everyone asked, moaning with a fear they had never known possible. The smell of death mixed with the wind and you started to see the skin melt off of those standing farther away, then closer and closer. Water. Running water. We have to find a stream, cleanse ourselves with cold running water. Purify our intentions, wash away our sins. Let the world forgive us. Forgive ourselves. Look straight through the water to rock bottom and let ourselves lay on those shiny, cold, wet, clean pebbles. Pebbles that have lain at rock bottom for so long that they have become gemstones, ready to be picked up and made beautiful with a little loving care. Picked up from rock bottom, picked up from the pressure of all that clean, pure, perfectness running over them. Beauty can destroy as much as the ugly face of hate and crime. Beauty can push strength into weakness, fun into habit. The joy of being free, being happy, being alive can evolve into the turning of wheels stuck in the quicksand, and the more you struggle the harder it is to free yourself. Just one day, just one day. So we let the water run over us to protect us from the world that crashes and burns and smells of failure and defeat, choking in this pressure of purity and perfection, eroding us down into a smooth pebble coated with dirt and sand and sadness, until we are picked up from above and held, wiped clean, and made into something beautiful again. But we wouldn't have been here unless we had come so close to those rocks at the bottom, and that death in the air.

Labels: free writing, rambling, writing, writing practice