One

I turned the corner out from the underpass and there it was. The sun broke over the telephone poles that bordered the corn field. It was weird having a corn field there, being so close to the highway and all, but that’s where it was. Someday they would turn it all over and build a mall or something on top of it, but for now it was just a corn field. One night people even went out and slept overnight in protest of a rumor that the field would be converted into some type of industrial park. There was some emotion here. Even with the way I was feeling, I could sense that now. This was not just a bunch of 4 foot high monocots reaching up to the sun on this bright spring morning, the field had a life of its own, and a history and a story it could tell if you had the time and sensitivity to listen.
But now I just didn’t. I had my own affairs. But I tried to appreciate the field for what it was. And at this moment, the field fashioned the stage for a beautiful and vivid sunrise. The corn field was used for research, part of the university agriculture system. It just happened to be next to a highway. US route #1 in fact. One of the oldest and longest highways in the country. Goes all the way from Key West to somewhere in Maine. With countless little points like this field right along side it. It’s an old road, replaced or supplanted interstates like I-95 now.
Personally, I didn’t have any strong attachment to the corn field, although, right now it was saying something to me. I didn’t know the language, and I didn’t go out of my why to try to translate. Maybe it I had, everything might have been a lot simpler later on.
It had been a long time since I’d seen the sunrise. Real long time. Unless you count the times that I never got to sleep before the sun came up. I don’t really count them. When that happens you tend to count it as something you do just before you went to sleep. But now today, this was an honest to goodness, a just got up and first thing in the morning sunrise.
I probably would have missed it but I couldn’t sleep. Not much at all in fact. Laying in bed with the cat coming in and out doing his cat things, and I tossing and turning and just when the mind would stop racing, thoughts after thoughts, and the body would start to relax and begin to drift, more thoughts, more disturbance in the mind. Dreams, or something like them. Visions or something like them. Some surreal and others all too real. Some based on things I could relate to and others so vague and mysterious.. Some things I could control and others I couldn’t. Rewinds and instant replays of the events of the past 36 hours.
While running had the therapeutic effect of clearing and restoring the mind, you also ran the risk was going the other way, to the dark side, to the very thoughts that you’re trying to suppress and escape. That’s not why I went out running this morning. In fact I hadn’t run before noon in years, but that’s what this run was turning into. A recounting and retelling of the previous night which was in fact a recounting and retelling of the previous 36 hours, which, then again, was a retelling and recounting of the previous few years.
And now, the stream of thoughts was coming back. Out on the road, it’s all the same. Like trying to sleep and being restless, the tired body tugs at the mind to let it rest but, ultimately the mind controls all. And out next to the field, the mind took over, and the thoughts came, one after another and steady and strong.
How could it have all come apart so quickly and so thoroughly and all at once? Where would it go from here? What would they do? What would she do? What if I had done this then? And once the dam broke, it broke, for there was so much being held in. It wouldn’t end. I can always trace things back to somewhere in the near or distant future.
I came around to the back of the field. I swore right then and there, that, no matter how it might hurt, and no matter how intense it might get, this would be the last time I think these thoughts and feel these feelings. I would confront them and then let them go, say good-bye and turn away.
So while my legs and arms swept and pendullumed along on automatic pilot, my mind drifted off. Off to places that are and remain very real, yet are no longer realities. Not for the first time, but, as I promised myself, for the last time. And I recounted everything as best I could, not for prosperity, but for myself and, it seemed right now, for my sanity. I knew there’d be others after her, but, right now…
And so I ran down the path, along the cornfield next to the highway, soft cool spring wind at my face, heading into the sunrise.
I was alone with my breath, and my heartbeat and my past and my present.

When tomorrow comes will yesterday dissappear?
Another bland sunrise to reliquish the fears
That I slept with
That I kept with
My heart…

Share on Facebook