Further and Farther

When seen from a very great height, the line of a river is not a gentle S-curve but more like messy, off the line handwriting with scribbles and scrawls and serifs. Like a loopy string laying on the floor, if you stretched it out straight, a river would cover double the distance but would be featureless and dull. If life is like a river, and so much more distance could be accomplished in the time given yet it is both boring and impossible to do so, then the lesson must not be to get better at accomplishing but to follow life’s unexpected meander and search out its infinite possibilities.

Murray sat on a granite rock, the size and shape of another man curled into a ball. He was completely surrounded by the greenery of poplars, maples, and spruce as he dangled his bare toes into the cool swirl of a small creek that followed the bottom of the city ravine. Looking around, one would never know that a metropolis spread all around him, just outside this hidden crooked alley of nature. He’d come here to sit surrounded by trees because the dull ache of depression in his apartment had become too much. He lived alone in a bachelor unit and worked from home processing a tedious variety of government applications. Nothing much had changed in the past four years, having gotten the apartment and the job around the same time when he moved to the city from a small prairie town.

There were the daily challenges of life (which even Murray would agree) that he met rather poorly. He neither enjoyed nor hated his job; he did enough to get by and remained largely unnoticed at work. His self care was rather basic, shaving and showering every second day, getting a haircut every other month, and replacing worn out clothes when actual holes appeared. His tidiness at home was subpar as well, having never really learned how often or properly to scrub a toilet, shower, stove, or windows so that over the years, the missed grime had accumulated to a degree of general shabbiness throughout the apartment. He didn’t trust himself with pets, having first lost a hamster and then flushed a goldfish that had begun to swim upside down, and the plants he brought home were always over or under watered and eventually tossed out. He both longed for and avoided social contact, awkwardly text flirting with online female colleagues and never feeling quite up to answering or returning his mother’s weekly phone calls.

If Murray’s life were a river seen from on high, it would be written in a small unsteady scrawl, no loops or exuberant capitals, just constrictive cursive with small serifs when a pet or plant died or another flirtation went nowhere. Murray did not know quite what was wrong, nor did he know quite what he wanted. When he had moved to the city, he thought he would figure it all out. He would find the right career or the right person and things would fall into place; his life would eventually make sense. Every step of the way, he had done what he thought was the next best thing but his small world had slowly stalled until he was trapped in this lackluster life of despairing complacency that had been raveled from limited thoughts and safe decisions. He had little desire to be rich or famous, aiming only to be comfortable and happy. He thought this made him modest and more likely to find contentment, but here he sat in stifling discontent, reprieved only for the moment by the warm breeze ruffling the leaves and the sound of burbling water. Unbeknownst to Murray, this reprieve was a glimmer, a will ‘o the wisp, to be followed. It was a signal beckoning him to go further and find that life offers more than just moments of tranquility. But, would he—could he—see or hear it?

Murray had forfeited his lunch in escaping his apartment’s miasma of despair, and yet a small interior part of him felt incongruent with this peace and stillness, this remission from steady and familiar discontent. He looked at his watch. If he left right now, he’d have five minutes when he got back to fix himself a peanut butter sandwich or microwave a frozen cheese macaroni meal before he’d have to clock back in to his computer.

This is the moment, right here, between looking at his watch and making the next “right” decision, for all around Murray there are a multitude of possibilities that he is unaware of. What if he knew that three minutes from now, a rarely spotted deer will come carefully down to the creek for a drink only a few yards from where he sits on the rock? Would this elegant creature spark the artist in his heart to take a photo or try sketching it when he got home? What might he think, if he laid on his belly on the rock and put his face down near the water, of spotting the shimmering green patina of a rare 1982 copper penny that has been lodged underwater in the crevice of a split rock for forty years? Would it inspire the collector or treasure hunter in him? If he looked over his shoulder, more carefully, he might see the top of a homeless man’s stick and tarp teepee and follow the bit of smoke wisping up from a roasting rodent. He would meet Hollis the Hermit who might offer to share his lunch if Murray cared to try a bit of squirrel. Hollis lost his wife and two small children when two SUVs collided in an icy intersection. He makes his own tree sap and apple wine and can name every branch, berry, and critter in this meager trail of woods.

There is also Lara, who too is a bit awkward and lonely and works from home as well, and decided to take the afternoon off and venture twice as far from home today. In the pocket of her bell skirt, she has a small killing jar that already holds two common bluish spring moths while Lara holds out hope of catching a Karner Blue butterfly one of these sunny afternoons. In only two minutes, she will arrive at the man-sized rock and find it an enchanting place to sit by herself too, never knowing that Murray was here or ever existed. Unless.

Murray still looks at his watch, time paused on a point which may or may not tip toward happenstance, all depending on his next decision. There is a reason Murray has never met his metaphorical whale, that marlin or moth that harpoons his excitement into joyful purpose and drags his river line all over the page. Murray has set his inner sail to the safety of comfort so he will decide to go home for those extra five minutes and he will choose the macaroni for quick convenience, and tomorrow his day will go more or less the same. His comfort zone will continue to shrink, and he will keep returning to it until there’s no room to stand (in) it.

Hemingway’s old man ventured out to sea on the eighty-fifth day, farther than he had ever gone before, just as Lara has gone farther today. She will miss the underwater penny, but she will see the deer and when it turns to go back up the bank, it will disturb a stem of milkweed that a Karner Blue is feeding on. It will flutter up into the sunlight and Lara will leap from the rock and splash down the creek in haste and jubilee, soaking her skirt and almost slipping on the rocks, and she will catch that rare blue treasure. Tonight she will smile in her sleep, one of countless rewards for following whimsy all the way to adventure and glory.