Consolation

Too much, too many, a waterfall of little transparent beads, spheres, marbles not made of earth or clay or stone, solid until you touch them

As they are to your eyes, such are thoughts to your mind, until words and letters, print and syllables, catch them, grasp them, carry them out into the world like spirits made children through a woman's body

And yet so many pass you by, so many little beads fall silently into oblivion, to the endless depths of the darkness of your mind, where the waterfall scatters them, shatters them, and turns them into a slow-flowing river, silent, vast, persistent

That short moment they pass before you, though, and you know that they are there although your eyes cannot see them, although all you see is the strength and might of the waterfall -

- that is the only moment they have anything in common with emotion.

A shadow passing silently over endless fields, the spread wings of an enormous, invisible creature blocking out the sun, that is what emotions are

Sometimes passing so swiftly you never knew it was there, like a whale passing you beneath the sea unnoticed, or sometimes covering the entire lands in shadow until it is the only thing on your mind

Waterfalls fall in the shadow of this creature the same as grass and stone and sea does, and the many tiny little beads, both the ones caught and the ones forgotten, seem insignificant -

but it is not the shadow that sustains us, or the world around us. It is the sun it blocks out, and it is the water.