I pulled into Reno with nothing but time to lose. What will happen, what shall I do … I don’t know, but I’m about to find out.
After two days in a town with a name I couldn’t ever quite seem to pronounce. Not until I found myself on a rock beside an alpine lake on the top of a mountain peak encapsulated by utter serenity, soaring gray eagles, and the first moment of peace I’ve felt in what had seemed a lifetime. I sat there with my fate, each of us together but alone, but we both dipped our toes in the icy blue water as a windswept susurration that presented as a cataract rustled through the pines abound. Where they urged forth in their path a feathery wisp of a cloud through the firmament as if it were drawn from a child’s breath. “It’s odd,” I regarded later that night, lying awake in bed at 3:00 a.m., my mind amok, my body rigid in a paroxysm of spasm after attending what may have been the longest wedding ceremony that was ever construed, “that the instant I finally decided to give up the chase, my thoughts cleared and the quiver subsided and I gleaned the answer to the question I was looking for but hadn’t considered to ask.” That contentment is the state of being I am choosing for the rest of my life irrespective of her multitude of contradictions and vagaries. To slow down and embody and harness my energy on each specific circle I live as they make themselves known. To then stay in them long enough to bring the conception to its ultimate fruition. In truthful circuitous perpetuity. A pure illumination of circularity as opposed to the fallacious pursuit of what is next. This realization, that there is no race, for the race is over—if there was really a race to begin with—was worth the price I paid from my years of anguish and strife. Arriving at a conclusion that shall propel me henceforth.
I was startled at first by this euphoric vision of a dream. “Am I dreaming or am I awake,” I begged to no one but the dark. But then, uncannily, what washed over me might have been the gentlest blanket of acceptance I’ve experienced to date. That it moreover might have been the most content I’ve ever felt in my life. “I could have died, I could have slept, I could have lived,” I announced in the light of the gloaming at dawn. And thus proclaimed that my only hope and ambition is for this monumental understanding to remain embedded in my psyche. Minute to minute. Day upon day. That whenever I get to feeling like I want to run or as if I’m coming apart at the seams, I will return to the night of the circles and remember.
Hours before I walked into the saddest museum of wonders on planet Earth and had yet another epiphany on the topic of life, art, and how creation should be more than doom and gloom and shining a mirror on the human stain. One story at a time, we can rebuild what we have marred. Through the acknowledgement that we all, each of us, have played our individual parts in the corruption. Through either negligence or rapacity. As victims, villains, and perpetrators of the same. Next comes the acceptance, which can lead only to forgiveness. Because contentment is a circle without limits. Where peaks and valleys are recognized but are not the pursuit. Just a life well lived in the sweet spot between exhilaration and despair. With enough room inside to correct for the totality of humanity’s errors to date. We are but a blur … who nonetheless reverberate for generations.
Look, behold, a great white lake devoid of water but filled with crystallized sand and dust. I wonder where the water went. Somewhere high above or lost beneath. If it would only rush once more to cleanse our sins and nourish our souls. Alas, there are some dreams that no matter how hard we wish them, they will never materialize. And that’s okay. It has to be. It has to be. For what’s gone is gone but cannot be forgotten. Nor should it be reproved.
Dylan Night is a former medical professional and multi-time published author. He resides in San Diego, California, with his partner and stepchild. He is currently working on his most recent novel.
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Picture Credits: Raahima S.
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