The Impossibility of Not Marinating

 

            Clarence, old by anyone's definition, sat on his front porch that particular Monday morning, like he did on every morning, reading the newspaper and watching the neighbor children walk to and stand at the bus stop. As the bus departed with its semi-willing occupants, a line of heavy construction vehicles passed by his home to begin, as far as he understood, the creation of a new road just beyond the end of his own. Less than thrilled at this new development, he hated the idea of more homes, more traffic and more neighbors disturbing the relative peace that he and his neighbors enjoyed.

              The weeks continued on and unable to stop himself, he left his porch, traversed the sidewalk, and entered the now paved and curbed street, but still missing sidewalks. He begrudgingly acknowledged the beginning of new homes, three as far as he could tell, overly large houses on overly large lots, which would most like be completed by the arrival of summer. Somewhat tired and overheated by his walk, the eighty-five year old man, returned to his porch to enjoy a lemonade and a cool breeze.

              Over the next several months, he watched the sidewalks appear, the houses grow like a cancer on a once beautiful neighborhood, and lawns planted. Eventually the construction stopped, the trucks and heavy equipment stopped arriving and over the course of one week, three moving companies appeared followed by a variety of families, each with a distinctive look and attitude. He slipped back into his own home and called for his wife, "Hey Martha, better get some cookies going. Looks like the new neighbors are moving in, " he said, "we really should be the friendly neighbor, I suppose."

              Giving the new neighbors a little time to settle, eventually Clarence and Martha approached the first home with a plate of homemade cookies and introduced themselves. A thirty-ish aged woman answered the door with three children of varying ages drifting in and out of view, and she invited them in. Clarence made the best small talk he could with Martha supplementing and keeping the conversation going. After a few minutes of friendly banter, he and she excused themselves and shared their thoughts on the walk home. "Okay, help me remember, they said their name was Golovsky, right?"

              "Yes, dear, that is what she said, "she and her husband, three children and a fourth on the way. Did you notice the garden, the chickens, and the goats in the backyard. It looks like they are pretty normal, productive people. She seemed nice enough," she said. "I can see myself spending time with someone like that."

              The following day, just before dinner, Clarence and Martha visited the second home to experience a radically different interaction. After ringing the doorbell, a heavily tattooed teenage girl with multiple piercings answered the door, repeatedly checking her phone as they tried to engage in conversation. "Thanks for the cookies," she said to them promptly close the door, leaving them standing on the front porch.

              They returned home with little to talk about other than a reasonable contrast between the first neighbors and the second. "Well, that was unpleasant," Martha said. "I guess we won't be seeing much of them. What a rude little girl and I can't even imagine what her parents must be like."

              "So, I'm guessing you don't see yourself interacting with that family much?" Clarence said. "Granted, only the horrid little girl was there, now we only have one more house to go, so we'll see." Clarence lay in bed that evening, listening to Martha gently snore and he deeply dreaded making the final visit to the third new neighbor, uncertain as to what to expect. He preferred to limit himself to his front porch and simply wave at neighbors as they drove or walked past. Being friendly was one thing but imposing his awkward anti-social behavior and lack of conversation on others simply out of social norms seemed counterintuitive. He woke late the following morning, dragged from his sleep by the combined smell of coffee and cookies, feeling not quite rested but not tired either.

              The day dragged by in a combination of reading the newspaper, listening to Martha talk about just about every topic imaginable, and drinking coffee while watching game shows. Martha slid a small roast into the oven and pulled Clarence from his chair to accompany her on the walk to the third neighbor with her plate of her world-famous chocolate chip cookies.

              The third house was the largest of the three, graced by an all-black Rolls Royce in the front drive and a bright red foreign sports car just inside the open garage door. As Clarence rang the doorbell, it was quickly opened by an older gentleman in a tuxedo, clearly a butler. The man invited them inside, to excuse himself into another room to be replaced by a middle-aged woman holding a martini and a small, white, fluffy dog.

              Clarence introduced himself and Martha as "neighbors just up the street" and the woman offered up a stiff and seemingly painful smile, placing the dog on the floor and thankfully receiving the cookies. She apologized for her husband's absence, inviting them into the sitting room for more of the same, inane, awkward, and typical conversation. "At least this one is talkative," Clarence thought. As all three of them engaged in conversation, pretending to be interested and avoiding eye contact, a young man stumbled down the open staircase and began rummaging through a side table in the entryway.

              "Jeffrey, come here," the woman said in a sharp and cold manner. The boy released as exasperated breath and entered the room, extending his hand toward Clarence and presented the same thin smile as his mother. "Clarence and Martha live just a few houses down from us," she said, "they brought some homemade cookies. You should have one, they look really good."

              The boy brushed his jet-black hair from his eyes to reveal heavy black eyeliner and an eyebrow piercing, both of which shocked Clarence's conservative approach to life. "It was nice meeting you both," he said, "but I need to leave to meet some friends for dinner. Thank you for the cookies." As the conversation continued, they listened to the front door slam, the engine of the sports car roar to life and squeal from the driveway.

              Clarence jumped at the first chance to close out the conversation and used the roast in the oven as an excuse to hurry home. "Please say hello to your husband for us," he said as they departed. "I hope you have a good evening."  They crossed the threshold and slowly walked back to the peace and quiet of their own home, thankful for the familiarity. "I suppose that was better than the second home," he said. "But certainly not as nice as the first. That young man seemed very much out of place compared to the elegance of his mother. She looked like something from 'The Great Gatsby,' and certainly acted the part."

              In what became a sad but comical but also ridiculous pattern, the second and third neighbors made regular appearances throughout the neighborhood as screaming arguments, drunken wanderings, or vulgar displays of semi-nudity. After several months of this chaos and gratuity, the appearance of the police became a regular part of most evenings, usually ending in domestic disturbance charges, teen recklessness, or disturbing the peace.

              Clarence eventually lost count of how many times he watched the older neighbor boy pass by his home in the back of a police car, eventually resigning himself to the new normal of noise and chaos. He watched in disgust as the tattooed neighbor girl in the company of several other girls just like her wandered around the neighborhood, giving his once peaceful cul-de-sac the feel of the inner city. Martha began to recluse herself to her kitchen or the friendly neighbor's backyard, enjoying the hobby farm feel and the well mannered children that busied themselves therein.

              Clarence and Martha transferred themselves to their own backyard with its clear view of the small farm next door and enjoyed coffee and cookies as the sun began to set behind the distant mountains. "You know Martha," Clarence said, "I am not surprised in the least with how those other neighbors are behaving. Just looking at the two of them told me the story I knew would be coming. You can't soak a steak in cayenne pepper without making the meat spicy. You can't leave uncooked meat out in the heat of day without it going rancid and you can't neglect your children or feed them garbage from the corruption of the world without expecting some influence. At least we've got the Golovsky's. I'll take their company any day."

              The next morning Clarence sat on his front porch and watched the father from the second home drive away in a U-Haul truck, not surprised in the least with the noise and anger that frequently streamed from that household. To be followed a few minutes later by the daughter on the back of a large, rumbling motorcycle, leaving, he presumed, the mother alone in the large home.

Depletion

 

            The creature lay at his feet, twitching, terrified and seeking to escape, one leg destroyed beyond repair and the other struggling to push the bruised and bloodied body away from its attacker. Raphael had been outside hitting small rocks with his brother's aluminum baseball bat, as he had no ball with which to distract himself. His mother had taken away his phone, his sole source of connection with friends at school, as he and his family lived in the center of a large meadow in the deep woods, so he begrudgingly escaped the house and the inevitable chores that would become his responsibility if he remained within shouting distance.

              He had specifically positioned himself out of line of sight, cracking rocks into the woods, each blow leaving a small dent in the bat, but he didn't care as his unrelenting energy needed an outlet. This pointless exercise went on far too long, causing him to pause, to look at the bat accompanied by a feeling of shame and regret for ruining something that wasn't his. Eventually he lay down on the grass to begin balancing the baseball bat on his forehead, finally succeeding at standing the tool straight up from his face. He began counting as it balanced, reaching a count of five before it fell, to then try again, reaching a count of ten, and then again, reaching a count of twenty.

              A sliver of a feeling of accomplishment came over him and he gloried in it for a few moments before realizing just how silly he was behaving, to find joy in such a menial accomplishment that accomplished really nothing. He lay for a few moments, motionless, staring into the empty blue sky, momentarily distracted by the occasional bird in and out of his vision. He wondered if the birds had any thoughts or acknowledgement of his existence, looking down on him as just another potential threat.

              Bored with his mindless looking, he rolled to his hands and knees, stood to his feet, and began flipping the bat into the air, counting how many times he could circle it on itself before catching it by the handle. First two, then three, and finally with a particularly robust heave, he reached four. The occasional bird that flitted past relatively high overhead, began dropping lower with each pass, until a rather morbid idea came to his mind. Holding the bat by it's handle, he waited, watching, mentally calculating the timing and motion of each bird, eventually flipping the bat, and knocking the bird from its trajectory.

              His attention switched from the bat to the bird, to watch it drop, motionless to land several feet away from him. The spastic motion of the clearly damaged creature brought a sick feeling to his stomach as he watched it struggle in terror, trying to escape from whatever had happened to it. He squatted down to get a closer look and could see so much damage, a bit of blood, and malformation of what was once a beautiful, peaceful creature that had done nothing wrong to receive such an injustice.

              He stood up, paused, looked upon the small creature as it struggled and hurried into the house to try to find something to assist the creature from the suffering he had inflicted upon it. As he should have expected, his mother seized upon him as soon as he entered the house, which transformed into a lengthy conversation trying to explain what had happened. After far too long, he hurried back out with a wet rag and a shoebox to find that the bird had somehow disappeared, just how he was unsure.

              There was no trail of blood, his family had no cat that would have loved a quick lunch such as this, and he stood in silence gazing upon the empty space and feeling empty, hollow, twisted up, and guilty all at the same time. Every day of the next six months were identical. From the first moments of sunlight, Raphael's time was spent scouring the meadow and the edge of the woods, daily crushed by the damage he had inflicted until he finally came to terms with the fact that that which was once beautiful and good was now gone, removed from any existence that he or anyone knew.

              The days eventually changed as less and less time was spent with moments of hopefulness, diminishing until they were completely gone, and his focus turned elsewhere. He began to undo other damage he had done. He replaced the baseball bat, apologized to his brother, apologized to his mother, and began pouring more time into being actually productive and interactive, spending less time in isolation and more time interacting with others.

              Though there was no undoing the death of the original bird, he reached out to others, building houses, hanging feeders and waterers, and coming to understand the nature of life in general. This exercise in understanding and connection took a strange turn as the more time he spent with people, the more he appreciated his time and connection with animals. A full year had passed, and he stood in the back meadow looking at the feeders and waterers, seeing an eerie correlation between their depletion and the depletion of his connection with people, only growing more and more disappointed in the direction of the culture in which he lived.

              "Depletion, depletion," he muttered to himself over and over, wondering if anything could be done about it but understanding as well that his inability to connect with that which was shallow and inane was actually a good thing, even if it moved him away from his fellow man. Like listening to colors, or tasting words, the dissipation he was feeling was a necessary discomfort and dissolution, confusing and unavoidable but appealing as well, as it was a move in the right direction.

Sleeping in Chaos

 

            Gladys suffered under her self-inflicted agony, a strange, twisted interpretation of a dream that never actually existed, a vision of greater times that likewise never existed, her thoughts ever vacillating in an analog clock like manner, the large brass pendulum in constant movement unable to make up its mind. Living in opulence, she loved the comfort, the ease, and the never-ending interaction with those she loved, but she had built an odd device in the backyard of her home that sat unused, unloved, and ignored for years on end, with the thought that one day it may be useful.

              She would spend her days pacing from the kitchen to the living room to the bedroom and back again, a cycle of unproductivity and distraction, doing her best to not think about the decision that ultimately would need to be addressed. Eventually her vacillation stopped, as well as her pacing and she stood at the kitchen window, leaning against the edge of the sink, staring at the object for hours on end, wishing she could think it into activity.

              Mid-week arrived and she slipped on her shoes, crossed the deck, and stood before the aforesaid object with a lighter in hand. She checked the fuel level, the air filter, and the concrete pad upon which it stood and then pleased with the state of things, she lit the fuse, sat on a deck chair, and watched the device rapidly propel itself into the clear blue sky, punctuated with one or two fluffy white clouds. As it disappeared from sight, she re-entered the house to be interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell.

              Greeted by two police officers, she feigned ignorance of a recently launched rocket and presented a surprised and disgusted face when presented with the details provided by multiple neighbors. The officers searched her backyard and when questioned about the small concrete slab, she explained it away as the stand for the tetherball pole. Seemingly satisfied with the answer, the officers apologized and continued on their way, approaching each house in the neighborhood.

              Still bored and needing a distraction, she turned on the television to watch a news report of a pending hurricane in the area, which was unusual, as hurricanes were certainly not native to this part of the country. Within the next thirty minutes, a warning alarm went off from the nearest fire department and she watched as every neighbor around her fled, leaving her alone. A second knock on the door startled her but she did not respond, knowing full well that it was probably some well meaning neighbor or a disaster response person there to offer help. She muted the television and read the text floating across the bottom of the screen, refusing to act, or be even slightly concerned.

              "The rocket has done its job," she thought, knowing that as it reached just above cloud level it released an abundance of nano-particles to stimulate activity in the atmosphere, prompting the disaster that would soon touch everything with a one mile radius. She retreated to the basement to turn on the television there, again with no sound, to listen to the ensuing devastation as her house was torn apart, leaving her completely and totally alone.

              When the sounds stopped, she ascended the basement stairs and sat in an open space that once was her house, surrounded by debris, broken glass, splintered lumber, sparks, and sputtering waterlines. She kicked aside a few boards and sheetrock to uncover a book of poetry, knowing that reading would distract her from the reality of this situation. Everything had fallen silent as she sat surrounded by destruction, loss, and chaos, all power and water having been turned off.

              The occasional car entered the cul-de-sac to release a few occupants who would spend a few hours digging through the rubble of what was once their home, looking for something of value, something that would trigger an emotional response, to only leave shortly thereafter. She could hear the calls of the disaster response workers, the cries of neighbors, and offers of help but she ignored them all, content to distract herself with her silence and poetry. "You have to destroy in order to rebuild," she told herself.

              She turned her chair in order to lift her feet out of the pool of water that had been building beneath her and continued her self-imposed, self-deceiving destruction, to be joined shortly thereafter by a very large frog who mirrored her silence, with an odd, content, blank look on its face, as if it had some question to ask but was lacking the vocabulary to do so. She closed the book, looked at the frog, made eye contact and maintained that eye contact until it became too dark to continue.

              She picked up her slimy companion and began walking away from the house, away from the destruction, away from the neighborhood, and toward the lights of the downtown that she formerly despised so greatly but now she was content to embrace it as nothing else remained. The walk was a simple one, following a slight decline toward the bright and shiny tinsel of the clearly depraved city, she paused, looked back the neighborhood, the only stretch of land touched by the hurricane she had created and released.

              She lifted her small companion up to eye level to block out the devastation that sat upon the hillside now in front of her but soon to be behind her. Suddenly confused by the odd combination of variables that flooded her mind, she turned once again and descended into the city with a constant stream of monolog to the frog, it merely looking at her and unsurprisingly non-responsive. It had no advice to offer, it had no input or suggestions to guide her on this strange descent.

              After three nights of sleeping beneath cardboard in an alley, her hunger became unbearable, motivating her to find employment as a dancer, despite the numerous "Now Hiring" signs across a multitude of vocational possibilities, it was money that moved her to descend to this new low. After a week of work, the frog began to talk to her, to offer up advice, and to make suggestions about next steps, as he too was a bit leery of the current trajectory.

              This odd couple found an apartment for rent that barely met their needs, though unfurnished and dirty, it was close enough to work, to shopping, and to other likeminded city dwellers. Like a fog drifting in from an unexpected change in weather, the once glorious past faded into obscurity and confusion, leaving her remembering nothing but the first day she rescued the frog from the wreckage of a previous hurricane, details of which she could not remember.

              She sat on the floor, staring into the frog's eyes, second guessing the wisdom of listening to an amphibian for life advice, surely one not licensed in psychology by the state, but she couldn't help herself, finding solace or guidance from nowhere else, from no one else, at least no one she was willing to consider. As abruptly as the frog had started talking, it suddenly ceased all guidance, no matter how frequently or aggressively she tried to interact. The following days, weeks, and months descended into lengthy stretches of thoughtless distraction that led to blatant disregard for anything of value, until the authorities were called, and her emaciated, unkempt body was extracted from the empty apartment floor. 

            The beautiful house and peaceful neighborhood that once housed her now sat rebuilt, revived, a beautiful restoration of what once was.

There and Back Again

 

            Lucian clocked out at exactly five pm on that Friday late afternoon nearly giddy with the text notification he had received earlier in the day regarding the book he had put on hold now being available. It had been another uneventful day in the warehouse, receiving truckloads of lumber, filling out paperwork, and loading each bundle into its proper place. The walk to the library from his bus stop was in the opposite direction of his apartment but the night was warm and still somewhat lit as summer had begun to arrive.

              He reached the door just fifteen minutes before closing time and retrieved his book from the older, grumpy woman behind the counter. Despite her sour demeanor, he thanked her profusely and began the walk home through streets that looked like something out of Grand Theft Auto. More beggars than he could count appealed to him for help, and he deliberately avoided eye contact, quickening his step as they approached. More than a half dozen prostitutes called him baby far too many times, prompting him to hurry that much more until he reached the entrance to the apartment building.

              He triple locked his apartment after entering and turned on the stove to pre-heat it for the pending frozen pizza that waited for him in his undersized freezer. He sat at his table to begin reading his treasure, his precious, his far too long in coming latest novel from his favorite author. The oven beeped, alerting him to the fact that it had reached its predetermined temperature. He slipped a butter knife between the pages of his book and slid the pizza into the oven in order to read for another twenty minutes while he waited.

              In what seemed like moments, the oven beeped again, coaxing him to extract his dinner, to roll it up like a burrito and eat and read until sleep overtook his fatigue ridden frame. One hundred pages in, he couldn't have been happier with the strong characters, the solid story line, and the potential for a stunning climax, of what he wasn't yet sure.

              His next morning started far later than he'd hoped, with the sounds of someone yelling in what sounded like Arabic, stirring him from his sleep. A taste somewhat akin to the smell of unwashed feet and flatulence danced about his tongue as he sat up, forcing him to hurry to the kitchen to overpower the death inside of his mouth with a swallow of orange juice. After a quick shower and a light breakfast, he slipped on his workout gear and his trainers to walk across the street to the dog park to combine fresh air and more reading.

              He quickly scanned the environment to see only three people with their smaller-ish dogs, which likely meant there would be little to distract him as he read, his legs crossed out in front of him as he immediately immersed himself into the story. The main character had just completed a food delivery across town and returned home to watch a movie about a group of teenagers on a sleepover. Disappointed with the sudden odd turn into the mundane, he continued to plow forward as the main character launched into a detailed explanation of the movie.

              The four teenagers sat huddled together eating pizza, popcorn, and Twizzlers, binge watching the latest season of their favorite show on the streaming service. Lucian leaned back and watched two dogs across the grass get into a bit of a scuffle and he vigorously rubbed his face, hoping that his story would pick up a bit, reading about someone watching a movie about someone watching TV wasn't exactly the most exciting plotline. He stood up and began pacing and reading at the same time, to read that the four teenagers suddenly stopped what they were doing as someone knocked on their front door. They sat in silence, waited, and a middle-aged man, one of their fathers, stumbled down the stairs to send away whoever it was that was disturbing him at this ungodly hour, as he put it.

              They resumed their show to watch the main character walk out of the restaurant at which he had been waiting for his date, realizing that he had been stood up. Not one to sit in a restaurant alone, he canceled his reservation and began the short walk to the auditorium, picking up a burrito on the way. He had already purchased tickets for a modernized version of "West Side Story" and wasn't about to waste that much money, so he sat alone and enjoyed the show, wishing he had someone to bounce thoughts off of.

              Not too thrilled with the singing and dancing, he muscled through it to be further amused by the music that made up the foundation of the story. The main character in the play later sat in his parent's library listening to deathcore collection on his streaming service, whistling along with the sounds. The playlist came to an end, and he wandered into the kitchen to find a snack, enjoying himself on the front porch watching cars drive by, groups of kids playing in the street, and a murder of crows harassing a cat trapped between two garbage cans.

              The boy continued to whistle the last song he had heard, trying to remember the name of it, prompting him to google the name of the band. This send him down a rabbit trail of when their latest album was recorded, where it was recorded, and who produced it. A boatload of information filled his brain with details that he didn't really need to know but felt like an itch that needed to be scratched. He pulled up an image of the studio on his phone and tried to imagine what kind of work and time went into creating this much music.

              He leaned back onto the steps of his front porch and imagined these musicians hard at work, priming their creative juices and interacting with one another to reach even greater heights in excellence. The musicians completed their tracks and the vocalist stepped up to the microphone to layer his voice atop the music, motioning for the engineer to turn up the volume just a bit, as he needed to be moved and motivated to draw out the sound of anger and aggression so necessary for their work.

              Three and then four hours passed, and he looked at his watch to realize that it was already nine a.m. He always hated starting their recording sessions at such an early hour, but they really had no choice, being forced to take whatever hours the studio had available. He finished the fourth song and slipped into the engineer's room to announce his need for a break, a short walk, a breather to give his voice a rest.

              He grabbed a bottle of water on his way out and walked for several blocks in hopes of finding a park with trees and shade under which to rest. Block after block passed and he caught sight of an open green space with plenty of trees and dogs running about, chasing one another, and chasing birds. He walked its perimeter to find a small gate allowing him inside. Though his music was violent and angry, his message was that of restoring the damage that man had imposed upon the earth, cleaning up the oceans, the open spaces, and the air with its myriad of toxins.

              He slowly walked past a singular bench on the edge of the dog park, catching sight of a young man reading a book, an actual book. Frustrated with the lack of technology in the young man's hands, he wondered why someone would cut down a tree just to make paper to make books, instead of just reading off of a phone or a tablet. Unable to control himself, he walked past the man and slapped the book from his hands, cursing at him for killing a tree.

              Lucian was tempted to shove the man after he passed but he realized just how large and aggressive the man appeared, forcing him to reconsider his response and pick up his book with one eye still on the attacker. "It's just a book, geez," he thought, rising to his feet, and crossing the street to return to his apartment. He let himself in, opened his window, feeling frustrated that he lost his place when the book was forced from his grasp. Looking back out occasionally at the dog park, he watched the man eventually leave and disappear back into the city, wondering just what kind of anger would move someone to behave in such a way.

Explosion

 

            The figure only grew smaller as she walked away and he could feel his soul shriveling with each step, wondering at her final destination and wondering as well if she knew it either. A million images passed through his mind but like looking into the fog, he had little clarity but great hope as well. Like someone pulling a pin on a hand grenade and forcing the now active object into their mouth on the false presumption that everything would turn out alright. Like someone throwing themself off a cliff and assuming they would walk away after impact. Like someone eating rat poison and hoping that extra doses of vitamin C would counter the effects.

              He called out many, many times but the figure only continued to grow smaller until eventually the tiny shape entirely disappeared from view. He waited for several minutes or possibly days, he wasn't sure until his legs grew tired, his mind grew bored, and the lack of stimulation drove him to act, taking the first opportunity to look a different direction and formulate a new plan. With his back now facing the direction he had formerly faced, the foggy surroundings slowly began to dissipate and revealed a flock of Canadian geese overhead, strangely flying in circles.

              The path before him actually splintered across several different directions placing him at a crossroads of sorts with a multitude of variables to entertain and weigh. The path to the immediate left was wide and smooth and seemed to curve back around behind him, offering a clear vision, an easy journey, and the simplest of opportunities. The path in the direct center was a bit narrower but seemed to wobble as it faded into the distance as a slight angle but not as smooth. The path to the right was narrow, laden with jagged stones and lined with thorns, weeds, and treacherous angles toward ditches on each side.

              He spent the next several moments pacing from the beginning of one path to the next to the next and back to the first, being thorough and thoughtful about each one, a struggle he never imagined would be taking place in his mind. He stood at the start of the path to the left, carefully studying the surface, the surroundings, and the direction, particularly grieved by the direction it was taking, reversing back on itself. The stepped to the center path to perform the same mental gymnastics, again troubled by its wobble, as if it didn't know which way to go, a circuitous route that gave him a feeling akin to heartburn. And finally, he stepped to the third path, to the far right and though it was a difficult road to walk, it presented struggle rather than comfort and ease. He loved the direct and unflinching commitment to a single direction, and he understood that the travel would be a struggle, but hard work always pays off, he thought.

              He stepped away from all three, sat on the ground and continued to wrestle with the decision before him, wondering if that much struggle and angst was worth it. It was a balance of loss, of separation, and of change, all three with their positives and negatives. He stood up again and looked into the distance behind him but continued to see nothing, no one, just emptiness, he stood in solitude and finally came to understand that reverting back to that path would lead to nothing good.

              His heart brought him to a place where he ultimately rejected the far-left path with its reversion into the backward distance. He stood at a midway point between center and far right not knowing the correct answer until he made the decision to move forward. To the right he went, moving very slowly to avoid a decline into either ditch, the narrowness and the sharp angles made his motion difficult, requiring slow, methodical progress, paying attention to every detail and every inch of the path.

              "Hindsight is twenty-twenty, they say," he thought to himself, feeling his thoughts vacillate between the ease and comfort of his former path and the struggle and growth of the new. He created a new rhythm to his life as he grew to recognize the value of such struggle seeing his strength and balance increase on a daily basis. Feeling like a video game character, he leveled up as he met a small group of people also struggling on the path, they encouraging him and he they, doing his best to encourage them, the interaction resembling a finely choreographed dance sequence.

              The group interaction made traversing the path slightly easier and definitely more encouraging and he felt as if he could see the bigger picture, a longer history, and the totality of the path as if from a thousand-foot view. Learning and teaching, guiding and being guided, speaking and listening, this beautiful sequence of interaction created an entire new reality that even a year prior he could not have imagined. Stories were shared, history was explained, and tips for response and reaction were freely given, removing the terrible weight of his previous individualism from his shoulders.

              The temptation to look back to the way from which he had come sometimes became overwhelming but those in his company urged him to continue forward, to be faithful to the path before him, and to practice that which would lead to greater success and further growth. He noticed that the longer he walked and the more carefully he followed their instruction, his efforts at traversing the still difficult path became more successful. "It isn't as if the path has gotten easier," he thought, "it is simply a matter of using the tools and techniques my friends have provided."

              His heart still burned within him as he thought back to what he had lost, to what he had walked away from him, and he could do nothing else but grieve these things. As the group progressed as a unified whole, a definite change came over them with excitement about a large group of newcomers who had joined them. He slowed his pace and allowed these newcomers to catch up to him, thrilled at seeing many of them he had known from his previous life. Nearly bursting with joy at this glorious change of events, he worked hard to balance moderation with teaching and help just as he had been helped.

              While it was twelve that joined, the one that he had the greatest hope of joining failed to do so, which grieved him deeply, bringing confusion and unhappiness into his soul, but he knew there was nothing that could be done about it, as each person has the freedom to think, speak, and act as they wish, with no amount of dialog or offers of help making a difference. Like someone in a barrel rolling downhill, there was no stopping some people, and he understood this, which brought him only more sadness.

              Focusing his attention on the ever-growing group, he could feel a lightness, a joy, and a bliss coming upon them all, bringing an increasing sense of success, beauty, and recognition of progress. Soon the path opened into a massive, glorious, lush green field that presented a future of endless reward and joy for the hard work of taking the narrow path, the difficult path, the path of restoration and growth.

              As the last of his group entered the seemingly endless field, he realized that the group was no longer the small number with whom he had traveled but instead become a small portion of millions or more of others who also had traveled this same path. The temperature was perfect, everything was beautiful, whole, complete, and fulfilling, making the difficult path that much more understandable. With so many people within immediate reach, he had never experienced such joy in social interaction and friendly banter, a context in which he never could have imagined himself navigating so easily.

              Boredom was a word that had no place for all those here, he connected, interacted, and loved everyone he approached or who approached him, like an unlimited family at a never-ending Thanksgiving celebration.