Laying on the forest floor

In talking with a man I barely knew, but have come to think of as a friend, I began to realize that I rarely have deep conversation these days. Following his train of logic I found the rusted edge of my analytical self, brittle and lacking in polish. Silly me, tending my kayak but not my intellect.

The people in my circles speak of kayaks, symposia, trips. We talk about gear, and technique, of rescues done poorly and well. Rarely do I have the chance to be questioned about my beliefs, the private center of myself. I realized, laying on the forest floor talking with him, that my intellectual interior is mostly unvisited, even secret these days. It was startling.

Another friend has said I am "like a bright ray of sunshine," that I enter her life "like a summer day." Sweetly flattering, I thought "well, she does not really know me." It does please me that I please her. There is that, I suppose.

The strange dark questions of life and being I do not, have not, spoken of these in a very long time. Lacking the back and forth of discussion, I could visit these questions on my own, and once did. But I moved away as I have become distracted by the physical world, the everyday grind.

Now I am mid-life, and I find myself turning back to those questions. The paths into those places in my mind are overgrown with hedges of assumption, and dead-fall of losses and failures. I am ready to cut this clutter away, and rediscover the deep thoughts I have left untended. Time, I suppose, it is time.