The Pursuit
It wasn’t a road per se but it was her line of thought, and if she thought too hard she lost her way. Not thinking exactly—more like swimming in air, stroking through medium blue, cloud chambers, crosscurrents, streaks of light…Not really swimming but snaking through long grass, tucked under horizon, parting the new blades. If there was shade, she curled up on its pelt; if there was sun she stood in a vertical trance like a tree and dreamed of intent. She wandered “as the new shoots need water,” neither for nor against any alternative way, but for alternatives per se. Language seemed to rise in segments like bamboo—footholds in a forward zoom of telescoping phrases she climbed into speech—and she gathered her purposes by coming upon them in pursuit…So she walked or swam or thought, on a boundless summer day slow as redemption, following the trail or the groove or the wave. The leaves in the park whirred like feathers, as if the entire hillside were a bird—wing on the wing of the breeze. She leaned into a gust as though it were an idea forming inside her, and for futurity, for discovery per se, surrendered her lead to the wind as the hill fluttered and leaves flew…