Moving On

We were at war. Threw stones at each other, hurled barbed insults across a school yard. Walked home from school together, but not, together. Teased and tormented one another attempting to be liked - or not. The battle raged, every recess a skirmish, lunch a logistic seating plan, dismissal a “Dunkirkian” escape to the purity of play, the touch of “tag – you’re it”, the subtle favoritism of Dodge Ball, complexity of Hop Scotch, impossibility of Jump Rope. We were at war. Engaged in the battle of the sexes, not knowing how to get behind enemy lines, how to dance, how to ask the enemy “Would you like to dance?” We were growing up, feeling the urges of our hopes and the hopes of our urges, “testing the water with both feet” venturing into the unknown. Adventurers on a quest - to find ourselves. We were at war with all that stood before us, unable to accept the “status quo”, unable to accept status as a defining quality. We fought “Quixote’s” windmills, wrestled with the values of life, of living, of things as they were. Each ignoring the poet’s warning, trying to be an island, to achieve oneness. Oneness, with or against, any and all who would take our stones away, leave us as we wished to be. Free! to throw stones, to hurl barbs, across life’s schoolyard at all that was and wasn’t - at who we were and weren’t, while wondering how we became who we are – and aren’t. 9/6/2014