Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!

No Idea

ekthorp's picture

Every week, I have tried to do something drastically different with my posting. This week, I feel like I have run out of something different to do. When I was talking to Sara about this, she said that maybe that was the point. To keep returning to our spots until we run out of ways to describe it, and have to innovate a new way. I'm not sure if I achieved this when I went out to just exist in the ourdoors, but it was something very different for me.

The wind pushes the pond, and the pond does not push back. Instead, it pushes forward. It glides over the slightly rippled edge of its existence, creating a new texture, unseen before. The new images on the surface remind me of impressionist painting; the trees and grass seen there are not unlike their reflected realities, but are not quite the same either.

I want to push this boat I use as a bench into the water, just to see how far I can get without a paddle.

A deer is staring at me, as I write this I am making eye contact with it. What is it staring for, what does it expect me to do and when will it move? I will not break this bond I have with its retinas. It is a buck, I can tell by its antlers. But it is still young, small, for a male deer. And now it is moving, disappearing into the greenery surrounding it. I can see traces of the movement where it once was, and now, it is gone.

(I originally wrote this and then had to translate it from a bunch of nonsense words because I wasn’t looking at the keyboard)

It came here for life, for water, to feed itself, to continue surviving. I am here because… why? To survive in this class, yes, but it is a privilege for me to be here. For him, it is a necessity.

The pond means so much more than my view of it. Just since I’ve started observing it, I’ve seen so many different purposes its been used for. As artistic inspiration, as interpretational muse, as subject of scientific analysis, and as a source of water for thirsty animals. What else can I use it for? What can my miniature impact existence give back to this never ending inspirational spout.

The trees literally creak above me, as if the two braches were battling to see which one can stay up. Or like how the centuries old dorms creek in around me when I attempt to sleep during early mornings and windy nights. The wind moves us all. It is not bigoted- it can topple trees and towers, and pushes against them equally. What changes is not the wind, but how much a structure pushes back. Whether that push-back is temporary, natural, or constructed, it is the true essence of what that thing is.

Cold fingers, cold limbs, warm abdomen hit by the sun. Where are the summer days, the humidity, the heat? Where do they go when I can feel nothing but frigidity in my fingertips? Where do the deer sleep when it snows?

 The birds shake the low brambles, the bees make small flowers tremble. They are tiny, mysterious monsters that stumble through the grass, never stating where they’re coming from or where they are going. I can only see where they have just been. Not the present, not the future, not even the past, but the just-happened. The present moment realized is that- the past that is not quite completed.

I can see the hill, the yellowing trees, the path, and the people crossing that path, but I don’t know if they see me. I’m sure they can, but do they look?

Leaves fall around me, not from any designated tree so far as I can tell. They sky above them is open, the wind pushing these tiny kamikazes into my line of vision for a brief instance before their plummet ends upon the ground or the water.  

Groups: