There are certain places no matter how many times you visit, how much you see, how used to it you become, they still tickle you when you get there.
Places where you walk around and find yourself grinning like an idiot but don’t quite understand why. Places that remind you of your family, forgotten heroes, best friends and lovers.. yet you don’t know why.
Maybe it’s because you see a little bit of them in your surroundings. You find a piece of them in everything you see. You feel if they were to experience it, the feeling would be mutual.
Pure. Unadulterated.
Or maybe its because you find a beautiful courtyard, where you can sit down in the grass. To feel the solid Earth beneath you, rolling as it will around the sun. Enamored by the scene. Silent for once.
I’m not silent often enough..
These places inspire and awe those lucky enough to find them. The field at the top of the hill, the hill with the pond, the pond in the park. Downtown, uptown. One side of the river, the other side of the river…
You will know it when you find one.
It’s like falling in love with a person at the exact same moment as they are falling equally in love with you. Tripping over the same moments of happiness and stumbling into bliss together. Seeing every aspect of life in a brand new light. Being unequivocally happy.
You may come to find a place like this to be home. Over time you will pick up the same mannerisms. Your vocabulary, your verbiage, your vitality. You will become one. You will embody the same life. It will be like a dream.
In dreams, I’m silent often..
She stood still, looking around and taking it all in. It was a beautiful scene by the river, two slick sets of steps barreled into the water. Adjacent, a grass littered courtyard.
A statue of some forgotten hero heaped in the center. Beside him, two clock towers stood in charismatic fashion. Birds passed in slow motion, softly floating in air.
An orchestra sounded from the university window. She could hear the crescendo as the symphony approached the final moment. She and time held their breath.
The final note came and with it, everything went. The world around her was being torn apart yet she was frozen. Trees tore out of the ground flying upward.
Birds dissolved into nothing. The river sucked into the sky and the clock towers pulled from the earth.
The final note persisted louder, louder, louder. Then suddenly, she woke.
Breathe.
Jack Rupple, Untitled
