I am a creekman, flowing to the lowest point, meandering when told to run, babbling around stones and brook trout hidden under log falls.
I am not patient, yet I spend so much time receiving stories that usually the impatience is against myself, to get them told for God’s and f—’s sake. Finally. For survival.
There is cost to keeping memory: to washing out the detritus lining forest floors; to time taken feeding trout and squirrels and hummingbirds; to elephantine musing; to wondering why and when memories emerge. Sometimes they’re there to be told, but mostly not. Mostly they rise up to glance over, so I can feel their surface like a rock collection saved for later.
The water’s movement is often slow, anti-ambitious—the small, loud voice calling for comfort, that the unmitigated world is too much—and then other times the flow rushes in torrent, erodes the banks, rinse away the riverstone atom-by-atom to carve away a newer, deeper path.
Love this so much, Jordan. elephantine musing. The line about feeling the rocks- rise up to glance over. That image is so beautiful and somehow sad.
I loved this piece, Jordan. Thanks for posting it here, too.