The following is a small excerpt from one of my writing projects. I have been working on this project on and off for several years and will be posting more excerpts in the following days/weeks. For now I won't give to much away. Its pretty raw and I haven't edited it much so its far from perfect, but I feel its a decent sample. Enjoy...
There existed an old album, of
which her husband was unaware. Contained within were the typical photographs
which ones parents feel the obligation to take when one is small. The ordinary
baby pictures, the photograph of the little one splashing naked in the bath
tub, the first day of school, the Christmas play. All such photos of a young
Rosie Anthwar existed within this album as they exist in the albums created by
millions of individual families. They are seemingly all the same, but the
individual memories and countless stories they tell are unique. The photographs
took special meaning to Rosie, they reminded her of a time when she had known
bliss, or at least this is what she believed. Do we all not believe such a
myth? That there is a place in which our lives once flowered where we knew the
true meaning of our destiny and if only we could journey back to that point
then we could achieve the true happiness that has worked so hard to elude us.
It is a lie, but a sweet one, a falsehood that is not told to oneself with ill
intentions, but is purely believed. A place in our minds truly does exist where
we were pure, innocent, and joyous. And perhaps we were in the naivety of our
younger days, before we were thrown to the cruelty of the world or became aware
of the facts which in our innocence are hidden from our eyes. Why are we told the
sweet lies of the promise of life by our elders? Why is it that we so readily
believe them and then continue to seek them even when they have been smashed
upon the shores of life? Is it because though they have been lost to us, we
pray that these dreams of fulfillment can be true for another?
Yet,
there are the forgotten ones who are never possessed with such hope. They are
never told the innocent lies of youth, never know that the deception of
happiness is on the table. These are people, humans, just like us, who are
never given the same chance which many of us know. Perhaps you are one of these
unfortunate souls? A person who never knew love, did not have the opportunity
to grow up in a home with people who showered them with love and affection. You
look upon a person such as Rosie and long to be in her shoes and when you
become aware of her secret, that she is unsatisfied, that she longs for
something else, you are puzzled. In fact, it is puzzling. Why humans long for
what they cannot have, whatever it is we seek we are never completely
satisfied, never totally fulfilled, yet this almost obvious fact is hidden from
so many of us. It may be that if we could come to grips with this fact of life,
that our dreams in some way will always be beyond the horizon then perhaps the
weak among us could better come to grips with the reality of their lives. The
disappointment could ebb and the resultant self destruction would never occur.
Rosie had a good life if she had only known it, her husband was distant, in
many ways a morally bankrupt monster. He did not care for her in the way in
which most humans wish to be loved, but he did take care of her. This was not
enough for her, but she could have lived with it and had a good life, however
coming to grips with the facts as they stood never crossed her troubled mind.
Do I give poor
advice? Advising a young girl to lay aside the dreams of love and tolerate a
reality which is less then stellar. Perhaps, my advice is poor, maybe I am just
offering it to her because I have the advantage of time and the question of how
her life would have turned out had she left well enough alone weighs on my
mind. But history cannot be erased, we can only learn from our mistakes and
missteps. Improve our condition, and raise our stock. At times the tone of my
writings may seem to have no hope for humanity, but that is not truly the case.
There is a glimmer of hope in the story of every soul, and lessons to learn by
which we may improve the fate of ourselves. One should not observe the life of
another to cast judgment or to be entertained, however the importance in
observation is that by watching the lives of others we may develop a pathway
for ourselves. Wisdom is a complex and difficult gift to master, but if we are
able to harness that power in our mind we may use the lives of others to
formulate a path for ourselves, never experience the pain of life’s lessons
when the point could have been processed by heeding the tale of another.
Within that photo
album whose pages Rosie often browsed appeared one picture in particular which
was her favorite. It had been taken in the summer when she was a toddler, a
little girl no more than two years of age. She wore a cheerful grin on her plump little face, her blonde
hair pulled back in braids and her hands stained dark by the chocolate ice
cream she was eating. She was sitting at the kitchen table at her families home
in Mission Springs, it was there first home before it had burned. A happy
place, humble, but built through the love, determination, and hard work of her
parents. The sun shined through the dining room window and the picture is lit
by its warm rays which even on the darkest of nights she could feel reflecting
off that photograph. Her papa is seated next to her, he too is wearing a smile,
his beard is dark and his eyes sparkle with pride as he watches his first born
child happily scoop the ice cream out of a bowl making a mess as she does. It
is a simple picture, but in the moments she spends with it Rosie is transported
to a different place and a different time. She is Rosie Anthwar again, her papa
is young and alive, and she is happy. For a split second she is there, two
years old again on a summer day in a home that no longer exists. The warm
afternoon sun is streaking through the window on her face which drips with
melting ice cream and she hears the laughter of her father as he sits next to
the little girl whom is the fulfillment of his every dream. At the time she is
unaware, but she knows now that what love was present in that moment, she was
his dream, her papa is happy, his eyes are sparkling.
Then reality sets
over her, Rosie can still see the sparkle in her papa’s eyes, but it is distant
now, a mere memory set before her on paper. Other visions of her father come to
mind. Dreams that torment, scenes in her mind which she will never shake, but
would give anything to forget. The memory of the day on which he was laid to
rest forever. Those trips down memory lane always end the same way, melancholy
takes over and the picture which at first represents happiness becomes the
emblem of a lost paradise. A dream of which can never be replaced. Tears well
in her eyes as she sees those sparkling eyes of her papa, and her heart aches
to see them but one more time. Many years have passed since she saw that same
spark of life in the eye of another, for a time she believed that twinkle her
father possessed was unique to him, that he was the only man who had that
quality hidden in him and shone only through his eyes that through it all there
was something indeed to love about this life. Then one days she saw it in
another, that spark, a sign in the eyes of another beyond the dull norm, a
twinkle which may have gone unnoticed by all others say for her. It was just a
fleeting chance instant, a minute on the high banks above the Willamette
that she saw this, years would pass but it was a moment she would never forget.
