Second Day

 

 

I stand with my bare back against a rain-scented pillar of stone, my feet planted in the ruins of an abandoned house. Gray rock soars high above me. Fluffy Cloud People crowd the sky. I can feel their floating souls—as though clouds live in my heart.

How strange this freedom feels.

All my life I have believed in a wall between inside and outside. “Real” things only happened inside. I alone possessed true awareness. Everything outside had a shadow reality. Other people, the stars and animals, seemed vaguely alive, but not fully.

That wall was a womb that nourished my pride and allowed me to turn my head. To escape responsibility and relationships.

As I gaze across the endless undulating mountains that spread around me, I see a landscape without walls. A place of utter freedom.

But when I look down, I see carefully smoothed stones. What a fine mason she was, the woman who built this house. She hewed the gray stones to the size of her palm, then rubbed them together until they fit so snugly no mortar was necessary to keep the walls standing. She used the curved base of the pillar as her back wall and built out around it, constructing three fine rooms. One for her immediate family, one for storage, and one probably for elderly parents or grandparents.

She made walls outside.

I make walls inside.

I use my bare toe to flip over one of the fallen stones, and wonder …

Do the stones in the hills crawl down at night to look at the enslaved stones? Do they howl, the way coyotes do, at dogs in cages?

Do the unfettered Cloud People howl at me?

Wind whimpers in my ears, bathing my face with the sweet fragrances of newborn flowers and grass.

I smile and gently pet the stones still imprisoned in the standing walls. Then I bend down and begin pulling them apart, one by one, breaking the stones loose … freeing them.