Beautiful Blue

The air was heavy. His hands were heavy. They were pulling down his whole body. He didn't have the strength to lift them. His body was being pulled down. Deeper and deeper he searched for the strength to keep walking, not to stop, not to think. Just keep walking. Don't stop. Don't think. Closer and closer, bit by bit, the ground crept. That hard, unyielding ground, with its yellow grass creeping ever closer. There was no excaping it. He leaned forward more and more, anything to keep moving. Each and every moment, each step, more of the blue disappeared, only to be replaced by that horrible, dying yellow.

But then, the yellow grass gave way. He stopped, wobbled for a moment, and then looked around. A tiny stream, no wider than a foot, broke the ground in two. On each bank the yellow grass became greener and greener until it touched the flowing water. To his right, a little wooden bridge conneceted the banks. On his left there was a line of trees. It was quiet, too. All he could hear was the flowing water. A small smile lifted his face.

I'll rest here for a little while and listen to the water.

His weary legs were happy to oblige him and slowly, but surely, his body came to rest on the ground. He spread out, with his hands above his head, and focused on the water. He allowed no other thought to pass through his mind.

Just listen to it, he thought. Always moving. Never stopping. It doesn't even know where it's going. It just goes with the flow. A slave to gravity. All it knows is to keep moving. So unaware of its self. It thinks everything will be clear when it reaches its end. It doesn't even know why it flows. It has no idea.

He stared upstream, where from a canopy of trees the water flowed. He chuckled to himself.

It's like looking into the past. Always flowing. Never asking why. Just flowing. And soon, very soon, this water will empty into some stagnant lake, and there it will stop and wonder why it kept flowing.

I'm stuck. I'm stuck in the lake. There's nowhere left to go. There's no stream to follow. Nowhere left to go.

He sat upright. The grass, which at first had tickled, now itched. What at first had been green was now brown. Where at first there had been silence there was now the sound of cars rushing by. Rusting pipes jutting out of the ground. What at first was appealing was now appalling.

He was surrounded by death. It was all decaying. It would grow no more. From birth it had been doomed to death. From birth it was doomed to decay. From birth, all life could bring him was closer to nothingness. From birth, he was bound.

A lump in his throat began to choke him. A sob escaped his lips and his heart began to hurt. He put his hand to his heart and pressed hard. The landscape became blurry as he closed his eyes. His breathing steadied and the pain passed.

He leaned back and, with a great sigh, looked on into the limitless, that Beautiful Blue.