And with dialogue:
"Why doesn't this stupid piece of crap work?!" I mutter, disconnecting and reconnecting the USB plug of my external hard drive, "how am I supposed to store data on here if I can't access the damn thing?"
In the midst of my "personal legend" (which currently consists of sitting around the house, working at a law firm, and making preparations for my seemingly distant travels), the foremost plight concerns the preparation of my new laptop for a semester abroad. It's amazing how a piece of slightly confusing technology can become your arch-nemesis when you've got nothing better to do. However, mundane frustrations aside, I am trying to take advantage of this time and soak in the more fundamental beauties of life.
I am floating lazily through a calm spot in the proverbial river of life. I'm still a little weather beaten from the white waters of the past semester, and I think maybe I can already hear the rush of the rapids ahead, but for now I'm just laying back, basking in the sun and watching the sky and trees drift past. I have always felt that boredom is a neglect of the simple joys.
From my perch at the kitchen table, I can see my own backyard, as well as the backyards of two houses on the next street over. To the right, is the home of a very kind older lady. She, and her husband (who passed away some years ago on Christmas Eve), mean more to me than she probably realizes. I remember Trey and I traipsing down the hill, across the creek and through their back yard many a chilly december night to deliver a loaf of cream-cheese bread to their door. I remember walking over with my dad to help her get a squirrel out of her attic. I also treasure many vivid stories about the escapades of their sons and my uncle when he was a boy and living in this very house. He once chased a bear that had escaped from the Circus through that backyard. I love picturing this as I peer out the kitchen window.
Tonight, however, as the sun casts golden lines through the trees, I'm watching the silhouette of a boy on a rope swing streaking back and forth across the amber tinted grass. Although I can barely make him out through the trees that obscure his yard, the shadow he casts grows to fill the whole length of the yard before it diminishes away again. It reminds me of jumping on the trampoline when I was a younger child (for I admit that I still consider myself a child). After eight o'clock the motion light on the back of the house would come on, creating the perfect setting for shadow art. I remember the strange thrill it gave me to watch my shadow soaring across the stretch of all the backyards belonging to the houses that line my street. It was as if the neighborhood suddenly became my very own amphitheater. I sometimes imagined that all our neighbors were gathered at their kitchen or sitting room windows, watching my shadow dance across their yards, engrossed by the story which my movements unfolded.
I don't jump on the trampoline anymore. We gave it away years ago because Trey and I stopped using it. I guess we got too grown up. But as I watch that boy swinging through the leafless trees, it seems as though I've lost something. I've lost that sense of adventure. Or at least, it has become dull.
Adults don't seem to live in the same world as children do. I no longer explore the wonders of the creek behind my house or the oak tree in my front yard. You don't see adults out on the lawn building forts made of umbrellas and raked leaves. But I think we (or they...) still have that same thirst for adventure, the same explorer's spirit. Are we ashamed or simply too jaded to admit to it? or is it that we have grown to look beyond our own backyard, and the backyards of our neighbors?
As I contemplate a coming semester in the UK and Europe, that familiar thrill returns a little. The sense of terror and excitement and beauty and discovery I once found in my own backyard now lies across an ocean in rolling hills and ancient walls. It is vaster, more subtle and less innocent, but it still tugs at my heart and tells me that the universe is a magical place, that God is creative and beautiful, and that Heaven will be an even greater adventure than my heart could begin to imagine.
