The Terrible Difficulty of Having Even a Moment of Genuine Happiness
It was morning and I was listening to my several news services stream their most important stories of the day. An 18-year-old boy that had been made fun of for the way he talked had shot to death 19 children far younger than him who had never said a word to him, whom he didn't even know. This in Texas, where I came from, the name of which comes from the Caddo tribe and means friends. All the services had this story so I had to listen to it several times, as well as several repetitions of the latest atrocities committed by the Russians in Ukraine in their 3-month old invasion there. Then, as I was getting ready to go out on the ocean for some peaceful contemplation, a songbird crashed into my sunroom window. I put it in a box with some birdseed and water and left. It was stunned. I hoped it would recover. I left the sunroom door open and gambled that the neighbours' cat wouldn't dare to intrude. I had a nice cruise. I had my camera along but hadn't seen what I wanted to see. I hadn't wanted to see a wrecked sailboat either, but it was there on the unforgiving granite of the breakwater just outside the harbor back entrance, so I gathered its image because not doing so wouldn't make it go away. I remembered that the friend who had posted about the wreck days before said screaming had been heard aboard the boat even as a rescue was being carried out.
The little bird was gone. I didn't see any carnage. Had there been, I wouldn't have taken that picture, my reasoning about the sailboat notwithstanding. Even a person who knows that life is like a dream doesn't need too many nightmarish memories, and I love my little songbirds.
It's funny how one can know peace and still be heartbroken, eh? I think it isn't easy. No wonder so many people avoid such a state of mind, otherwise known as being genuinely human, and pick up their guns and put on their body armor or their mental armor or their heart armor. They're afraid, and they're afraid of being even more afraid, and misery loves company, eh?
25 May 2022
Texas Jim
Prospect, Nova Scotia
www.granitecoast.ca