You cannot look to the beginning without looking at the end. Eyeing both warily, as though by measure of arc and shadow you might determine the distance from one to the other, and know where you stand in between. The end, of course, is elusive; intent on not being seen, or known. You tell yourself: nothing is predetermined — but knowing it is there, somewhere, is enough. The anticipation is enough.
Playing the odds is a loser's game. But you study the numbers and weigh the variables and realize that here, now, on this day, the odds tell a story: of the road behind suddenly stretching longer than the road ahead. The sensation of climbing is still strong - each day, every breath, feels a labor of love and struggle - but the numbers whisper that the crest may already lie behind, lost to the restless tumbling of hours. You picture them a night sky alive with stars and snowfall: each intricate, drifting moment weaving its way through the darkness, hoping to catch the light and - in that instant - attain significance for its strange geometry and immeasurable weight... before collapsing upon the landscape below. Transforming it, tiny moment by tiny moment, with mounting and relentless certainty of purpose.
You had imagined that sky infinite, in its motion and capacity for beauty.
Numbers are hateful things. Unforgiving, where language may be shaded by nuance and sculpted by careful hands into gentler instruments, so even the brightest blades may feel like a mother's touch, brushing the hair from your face, soothing as they cut, deep and true. They are absolute and yet offer no absolution — the immaculate faith of numbers on a page, the wicked angles of one contrasting with the smooth, self-fulfilling prophecy of its mate, clean and clear and pure and revealing, if only in half-truths. Knowing: the distance traveled is only half the equation.
Or more.
It is February, a harsh and bitter month in the midst of harsh and bitter winter, and as you step outside you hear the trees sway and moan and ache in the weak sunlight, straining against the compression of ice and time toward the sky, and the promise of warmer days. Days when distance is not measured but savored, with an explosion of joy and potential and the sudden rush of wind in your hair and the laughter of your children and the sensation of speed growing with each breath that fills your lungs and the pounding of blood in your ears and beneath your skin and your wife at your side her eyes so blue and huge and wondrous and all is in the moment in the becoming in the journey
the world spinning, drifting, beautiful in such small and lingering ways
passing the hours before that long night, when your children dream a sky empty of stars.
