What Anyone Could Expect

The music of his stroll was measured–a strummed chord over a single beat that pulsed from the ground in sync with his blood. He found his fingers tapping out the landscape, at first not with fluidity, but gradually his gestures acquired rhythm until he could anticipate the slightest breeze or falling leaf like the shrill note from a horn.

People are not used to loving

He remembered reading this line in a book.

People are not used to loving, it’s like scoring the clay to make another piece stick.

He remembered underlining this with red pen in the hopes of drawing great themes from a deceptive simplicity.

The music he listened to was like that, the places where he walked. Deceptively simple. Take the forest for instance. Take the pine and the hollyhock and lichen and morels.

At one time, he too was not used to loving. It was a dull pace, but he could keep his balance. Even stride. Circle in the park.

The line from the book was oddly placed and out of context. This is what initially grabbed his attention. The leaves had been turning orange, but they would fade and fall from their branches. That is what anyone could expect. The spongy dirt beneath his tennis shoes. Worms unbedded after a heavy rain.

The creek in the forest had a thick wall of natural clay. He dug out a hunk of it with a sharp stick and formed a hard ball with his hands. It was just like the store-bought kind, but with bits of silt and debris. He sculpted a tiny figurine and left it on a rotted log to dry in the sun.

Now, the thought of loving someone was strangely tempting. It was a feeling he could not get used to and this is what pleased him most.

There were ways of keeping her in the back of his mind, but he was exhausted from holding her there for so long.

scoring the clay to make another piece stick

He just needed to walk a while longer. Hum a little tune across the ragged slope of foxtail ferns. There were tiny cracks forming all along the figurine as it changed color in the heat.