Through An Avenue of Open Branches
by Edward J. Atkinson
April 3, 2007 — Published in Accounts & Glimpses
I’m sitting on a hillside, only a few minutes’ walk from my good buddy’s birthday party. Not a birthday party that’s a party, however. The word “party” generally refers to a gathering that exhibits the qualities of social enjoyment and stimulation. I suppose this is a gathering, but I would call it neither social nor enjoyable. It may be for celebratory purposes, but these people have a funny way of making merry. This complexion of the personably inept involves eleven pasty nerds who have experienced too much muscular atrophy to kick around a soccer ball, let alone engage in pleasant interaction.
My posterior has hardly been pressed into this hill for four minutes. This grass is itchy. I’ll take itchy grass over nerds, I guess. At least for a while.
Behind me is a housing development. Lots of showy wooden fences, ornate landscaping owners pay for and never touch, a few decorative trees. In front of me is a bike path: uniform asphalt laid out in a mild twist to satisfy the day dog walkers of the neighborhood. Due to the convenience of nearby forestry, it’s also a great place for the local teenagers to do things at night that are illegal in most countries.
It is good here, despite the artificial suburban surroundings. The woods on the other side of the asphalt path, not far from my sitting place, are what make it so. Not serene. Just a taste of peacefulness in this scripted environment.
I’m just glad I took a temporary leave of absence from the Nerd Colloquium. I need a little solace.
A deer just craned its head over the brush at the edge of those woods. This doe sure looks funny, half in the woods and half out like that. She’s stepping out into the grassy patch between the woods and the path, gaiting through dried leaves. The sounds remind me of the first crunch of cereal in the morning, before the milk has set in.
She’s moving in a lopsided lope along a grassy route precisely fixed between the bike path and the woods. She’s a bit gray in the fur.
And then she pauses. One foot again clumping down in front of the other, she’s kind of clumsy. And then pauses again. Why does she just stand there, looking around? This doe seems to be peering into this world for the heck of it with no particular purpose. Her eyes look dull and flat. Just looking, undecidedly. Rather like a visitor in a strange building that doesn’t have the slightest clue as to how the corridors work, nor the know-how to figure it out.
Now she’s moving forward again, her rump shifting upwards and downwards in a jerking motion. Not in an injured limp. It looks more like arthritis. I’m going to crawl forward a bit, to keep the doe in a better view.
Some 20 yards from her first exit, the doe shambles back into the woods with no noise.
This grass scratching up my legs is more annoying than that kid who likes to obnoxiously repeat back whatever you say until your ears start bleeding. What damnable qualities grass can possess in a hot summer sun. I suppose there’s a reason man invented the chair. And the blanket. Although blankets need brushing off after use. Does that make the chair superior? I suppose in one regard, unless of course the chair is constructed of blankets.
A rustling movement in the woods.
It’s soft, but still brings me up to a heightened sense of consciousness.
Directly in front of me, through an avenue of open branches, the doe is once again peering around. This is the same doe, but something has changed.
She stands in a frame of the green and brown under a roof of translucent leaves, behind a rotted log. She is in nature. She is nature. Her eyes are changed. They are wild and dangerous looking with a sparkle I can’t quite understand.
Just a few minutes ago, I saw this same doe. But she was so different moving through the manmade world, striding into my environment, touching what surrounds my life. She had appeared dumb and aimless.
But now. Now her movements have point and purpose. They have vocation. There is a glinting freshness in her eyes peering into life all around.
Suddenly a splash! A rock had slipped into the brook and collided in a watery-muffled bash. The deer’s muscles rippled down from her neck and sang like water down her velvet fur. She bound out of sight with the slightest, most divine rustling of brush.
I can’t stop thinking about that deer. I saw her out of context in a strange place, and I saw her in her true world, full of life and purpose.
None of us ever stop looking for that world where we belong. It was strange and surreal to see another’s. I envy the deer. I want a world like that: a world of my purpose and truth. We are all seeking the great love and vocation to which we will give our life.
But we treat it as a choice to make or a responsibility.
Truth is, it’s neither of those. We were given free will and a life to live, but all of us know (and vehemently deny) how little of life is actually under our control.
I once saw something strange in a candle flame. It soaked up the wax growing steadily in length. A flame that burns for a long time will eventually cede into a slow dance of deep orange. But if you watch closely, for a brief time before this, the flame skips and jolts, without meaningful direction. It was formerly docile, but now picks up. Jumps up and down, spitting flame faster and faster. Dark smoke sputters from just above the flame. The flame is stabbing the air with heated color, the smoke swirling. Then all of a sudden the flame is calmly burning with a contented resignation and ordered sophistication. It burns within itself in peace.
Sometimes I feel as if I’m stuck in that middle state of the flame, spitting around energy in unfounded hope that something will come along and be my purpose in life.
I want the fulfilling purpose that I saw in that doe’s eyes. I want the peace of that lasting flame. It won’t be my choice to find it. It will happen to me, not because of me.
The world of purpose and truth, the great love, the vocation that I so desperately seek will not be found in even the most vigorous and undying flames of ambitious exploration.
I don’t wish for a grand solution or cosmic elucidation. I desire that world I saw, whether it be magnificent or sourly unpalatable. I suppose I can take action and make principled decisions in a great number of ways, hoping to achieve my purpose. But there is really only one action I can take that will truly change anything.
And so I will take a leap of faith into an opaque future and surrender to life.
Illustration by Anatole Upart.
Edward J. Atkinson
Edward J. Atkinson is a Canadian graphic designer living outside Washington, D.C., operating the small design firm Rapscallion Designs. He is currently the Executive Editor and Creative Director for Mind Sprocket. Edward strongly believes the answer to life is food. He favors pirates as a close second.
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