Evanescence

The words of the English language were disappearing one by one. First the eccentric ones like “periodicity”, “quixotic”, “rhomboid”, and “hiatus”; then those frivolous ones, such as “petulantly”, “puckered”, “innuendo”, and “scandal”, faded into the gray haze of non-existence.

Next to go were those marvelous, imponderable ones – “cosmos”, “atlas”, “eon”, “odyssey” – followed closely by those too coy to offer much resistance – “whisper”, “degree”, “caress”, “veil”.

Soon the language was relieved of its most onerous words – “pauper”, “hubris”, “melancholy”, “murder” – only to be crushed again by the betrayal of those endowed with a subtle beauty – “fragrance”, “porpoise”, “lattice”, “fugue” – as they evaporated into obsolescence, forgotten forever.

One by one, like a convoy of pilgrim ships sailing off the edge of the world, the last essential idioms were engulfed by oblivion. “Time”. “Spirit”. “Way”.

“Truth”.

She awoke gasping for breath.

Gloom

“The sky is thick with artichoke dip…”

“What was that?” pressed the detective.

“Oh, nothing,” he replied, elsewhere. “Just the murmurings of a tired old man.” The lowlands slithered away like a silently foaming stream into an impenetrable mist.

“Well, better get back in the cab. No sign that Huxley went cross-country here.”

The frail red glow of two tail-lights ebbed hesitantly back into the dusk.

Desolation

“Wheretofor has gone the fire that fuel’d the soul? Have then the muses and nymphs deserted the temple in its act of sacrilege? Are the cries of agony muffled by the abyss of the night? What is the crime, that the silent jury hath seen fit to punish by exile in the depths of hubristic despair?”

Contemplation

Young Otetiani asked the Elder, “When the air is still, is the image in the mountain lake a reflection of the world above its surface or is the world above its surface a reflection of the image in the lake?”

The Elder replied to Otetiani, “When you awake from a dream, do you pass from the dream into the waking world or from the waking world into the dream?”

The pebble tossed by Otetiani kissed the surface of the water seven times before disappearing into the depths, leaving a crescendo of ripples in its wake. Then the Elder said, “Just as the cormorant transitions effortlessly from air to sea, so too must you learn that truth has many faces.”

Burgeon

“It was another summer of love.” An uneasy dissonance fluttered between his topic of choice and the feelings that lurked beneath his stoic façade. The resulting mediocre verbiage fell far short of recalling the exquisiteness of that day of majesty and intimate companionship. Beyond the stars and an eternity away it now seemed!

Tranquility

Grow. Hope. Flourish. Challenge. Persevere. Create. Submit. Accept. Transcend

Transience

Clouds hurtle across the atmosphere, chased by barometric gradients like woolly mammoths filled with helium tied to balloon strings. The air laughs with a playful exuberance as it seeks out each nook and cranny for a speck of dust to pull by the hand into the colorfully-lit world around it. Fate holds its breath. Reason suspends its thought. Only time caresses the gently-sloping curves of existence.