On a Bridge, Overlooking an Endless River

Evening digresses, as it will, into sleep and rest and dreaming. And in those moments before sleep overtakes me, I wonder, both at the life I have known, and the one I have yet to meet.

For the most part, I know that what has been, what is, and what will be is a continuous celebration, one whose venues and themes shift to match whatever moment passes through a window called now. The situations are all the same, but the current that runs through them is very like a river flowing under a bridge—the bridge may stay the same from one moment to the next, but the water flowing under it is always new.

I suppose that what astonishes me the most, as I look over my shoulder, standing on my bridge as a bundle of sensations and experiences collected through that portal called now—at least the now that stretches from this moment back beyond 50 years to those moments when my body formed and waited for my soul to enter—is how much my life has been dedicated to the various arts that have washed over me and sifted through my hands, my heart, my soul, and through my expressions of being and doing.

For so it is that I have been, for as long as I can remember, held tightly in the web of the Muses. I know that this is so because whenever I have tried to venture away, it was only to be firmly led back to that consciousness or source that persists in the realm of audiovisual sensation, thought and action that I know to flow within a river of muses. The only choice is to engage with this river of expression, and yet the river offers endless choice.

Perhaps this realization only means that the living of life is a river through which all actions and sensations, all waking thoughts and dreams flow all expressions are indeed art, whether they result in form or are “successful” experiments or not.

As I fade into the refreshment of sleep this day, I know that I will dream about something that will touch my life, or yours, as the river flows on, carrying everything onward in celebration.

Flow on in beauty, sweet river.

Flow through the songs of my soul and the work of my hands. And when it is my time, carry me into the onward.