I was thinking of how I wish more people surprised me — and how we can often sense what people are truly like without ever really needing evidence of a thing or sentiment.
I often imagine that the reality of people is hiding in the dark behind a strategic heap of bricks.
Stacked in rows, maybe, or diagonally touching, tip to tip, forming a sort of gritty octagon of exposed stone.
But this heap is only ever just a heap. These stones, held in place by gravity; by heaviness; by habit; by form. No glue, no grout, no cement to form graphs of sandy skin or clumps of rock to clog the drafts of cool air shivering across fake-pores.
They are stacks of stone — nothing more. Held in place by the weight of their years, and the excuse passive tradition offers us, and we so humbly accept.
Behind these stones — that’s where the human spark lives. It is quite difficult to see or savor without kicking a few bricks, and watching it scurry — naked and resentful — over sand and pebbles and stones until it disappears beneath a hole in the ground.