Poop Shute

A Strange And Beautiful Metaphor

I was just thinking of the great many people who, for one reason or another, have left my life over this last couple years. In my ruminations I came up with a metaphor that I just had to record before it vanished back into the ether.

Imagine yourself a land mass of whatever type, shape and size you like. A continent. An island. Whatever. Now imagine that all the people in your life from past present and future are all acting on that land mass like water.

Maybe sometimes a warm, gentle rain will wash down over your island. It refreshes and invigorates, and draws your eye to the return of the sun once it has passed.

Maybe you've got this river that just cut right through to the core of you. It rushed through hard and heavy, carved a deep canyon through the middle of you. Then one day, a dam was built and the river completely dried up, never to return.

Maybe another still was more like a stream. It etched some lovely details into the landscape, but was just as temporary as it's larger counterpart, the river. Gone without a trace one day.

Then we have the vast majority of all the people you will ever know. The ocean itself. It surrounds you on all sides. Each wave that insinuates itself on your shores leaves a distinct impression. It takes something, or it leaves something, or maybe both. Then it recedes like it had never been there, leaving only change behind. Some waves are slower in going than others, but they are still only waves. Some waves are larger and/or more turbulent, depending on time of day and season, but nevertheless, they all return from whence they came. Some waves may lap across your shore again. Some may not. It's impossible to know.

And then there are all the lakes and ponds and even puddles. Forces who are ever present on you, to varying degrees of size. Always there, whether you know it or not.

Strangely most of us tend to focus our attention on the waves and rivers, and worse yet the streams even. We take for granted our lakes and ponds, and develop ridiculous and complicated stories for ourselves to explain away the beauty and joy in all the water we see. Instead we focus on the scarred and torn canyon walls, the dried lake beds, the eroding coastlines. And stranger still, some of us, myself included, mistake a river for a lake and vice versa. I've just done both recently, and thankfully had it all straightened out for the better in the end.

We fail to see what we can take from all of these. Missing what lessons we could learn. Choosing not to grow.

Grow... I'd much rather do that. Wouldn't you? A synthesis of land and water together. Life.

I picture my land mass with a great big oak in it's center. A lovely, healthy, gnarled old bastard of a tree. Sturdy. Good for children to climb on. Plenty of leaves and branches for birds and frogs and squirrels. This tree is planted firmly overlooking a deep valley. Or, to the untrained eye, it might look like a valley anyway. But the tree knows better.

The tree knows that one day this valley will flood and become a flourishing lakebed. A gorgeous, serene and shining lake, teeming with energy and life will fill this valley, and our tree will be there. The strong, scarred old oak will proudly look out over the waters, and perhaps see himself reflected in it, connecting with it, and finding peace and joy with it.

Maybe it's a little sappy, but when you're high on life, a little sap is good.

Sap, get it? That's a tree pun people. Ha ha.