What are you looking for?

Sometimes the thought of a thing desired is better than that which is obtained. Expectation will almost invariably exceed reality.

There is no purity of thought manifest. The stains of other people's experience color our own perception; the season of eternal hope will persist in our mind, yet the cold lines of winter will bite and fragment any romantic notions of safety and endless immortal security. To live in this constant dream is probably the closest we, as humans, will ever get to heaven, or any utopic landscape of individualized perfection.

As soon as we've gotten a nice strong grip on what we've pursued so desperately, an immediate sense of disappointment will settle in. The cracks begin to show, sand castles reveal empty brown rooms, piece by piece steadily drifting off into the wind. We gaze into our hands, and at what is before us. "We've done it wrong, something is missing. Something we need to get ahold of that we've not yet found."

And so we gather and sift and arrange, trying to fix and make permanent what we think is broken, but which is in fact not real at all. Or perhaps we abandon our dream of stable and solid comfort; we laugh at those mucking about endlessly, devoutly dedicated couples or in groups of loosely-tethered familial bonds. Those links, whether of blood, or lust, or self-sacrificing solicitude, are no more impermeable than any of our other dearly held illusions. Inconvenience, pain, the tattered bits of our damaged psyche will eventually show through; worn, ragged versions of ourselves will be known and those bonds will be as tenuous as autumn leaves.

Perhaps instead we run to the shore or the woods. We dive into the cold, awakening surf, or disappear into the sheltering shadows of trees. We need nothing and no one; arrogantly self-assured in our role of fulfilling our potential, entirely special and entitled to everything.

We stand and rejoice, staring into endless freedom. Staring until freedom is revealed as yet another misconstrued fantasy, another crumbling slice of delicious and unfulfilling substitution of what we thought we wanted, and who we thought we were.

The ocean will steal our self-importance; trees will look down upon our willful obstinance. We will drop into the earth, grainy images of a projected future that never came. Salt water will seep into our bones and what is real will finally be known.

photo taken in Lincoln City, Oregon