online: 13 october 2014
modified: 26 september to 13 october 2014

24 september 2014 good and evil



in a secret valley... as soon as i start writing a short-legged dog with golden hair jumps half onto my lap... trying to lick the touch screen... leaving paw prints on a piece of paper... as i sit amidst the first fallen yellow leaves of autumn... this warm and sunny afternoon... of indoor difficulties soon diminished as cool air from the arctic enters lungs and nostrils... also windpipe... and as spontaneous thoughts change direction from abstract worry to unworried present...

...at which a woman pushing two babies in a twin buggy says 'good afternoon'... and then there come a man and a woman walking side-by-side... each with folded arms... not talking but looking downward... while peacefully passing by...

...in which all this... the million leaves of trees and million leaves of grass (or at least hundreds of thousands)... all this is peace today as conflict disappears...

i arrived somewhat shocked by a randomly selected story ('William Wilson' by Edgar Allen Poe) in which the dualism of a Christian education led to a life of apparent evil portrayed as two persons nearly identical... one of whom kills the other only to find he's killed himself... what would Jesus think of that... or think of Poe... i guess he'd see beyond literary skill to a noble attempt at unity in describing profound disruption...

...while i wrote that a teenage girl in school uniform sat suddenly beside me until a boy pulled her off the seat and led her to rejoin several others in the same uniform strolling with arms round each other beneath the trees... as man and woman no longer boy and girl...

...after writing that i look up from the screen to see that a lady (well-dressed) is waving in a friendly way... (as if seeing someone writing in a public place makes the writer and a stranger into friends?)... she smiles... and i wave back... or did i also smile?




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