Breaking

I’ve been battling some severe writer’s block the last few weeks. Everything I write feels forced, and all I want to do is drink myself silly. Well, today, I decided to go outside. It’s been raining off and on, so I set up the gazebo, brewed some tea, went outside, and started fooling around on YouTube. Confounded internet connection. How am I getting a better connection outside my own house than inside?

I went outside because I felt a change, any change, could help. I often like to write out here, and it’s a perfect day. The crows are crying overhead as the little chickadees hide in the bushes, calling to each other in plaintive chirps. In the thickets there, silent and unseen, I’m fairly sure the rabbits have quietly stolen away, leastways, that’s where they usually bed in the summer.

There is nearly no wind, and the trees stand so still, almost like a painting of trees. They are magnificent, standing as sentinels with their green clothed boughs covering their dark, nearly black flesh. I want to cry.

I have been like this for days: Overly emotional, everything pricks my heart to the nth degree. I know it’s depression, a minor wave of senseless sorrow.

In clouded heaven, an unseen plane passes, circles, returns eastward. The roar of its propeller, cutting the air, strikes at my selfish brooding, pulling me out of myself. I hear the birds again, the airplane is distant.

There was, some minutes ago, a white spider climbing an invisible strand of web, up, up into the tent of the gazebo. I watched his little legs reach up, searching the air as he ascended. Finally, he touched the beige polyester. He disappeared, so pale; I can’t see him, but I love him. So beautiful, so small—a breeze might have thrown him farther than he could imagine. He crawled up that invisible thread, such a faithful creature, and he ascended like Christ, up, up into heaven.

Would that I could have this simple faith, even as small as that spider.

Looks like the sun’s just come out.