15 More Stories from the Oak

Whatever Your Labors

Day 346- Whatever your Labors

“And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace in your soul.”

Far away, in the outer reaches of the sky, there is no quiet. Birds flapping to and fro, clouds constantly in motion, they make the eerie sounds of nomads of the sky, never a place to sit and rest. More than the inhabitants of this desert in the sky, the King of the land is the noisiest of all. He hangs over the terrestrial terrain blowing and huffing, all hours of the day. Pushing one direction to dislodge his minions from their positions one moment, and in the next reversing directions just to spite them. Little cyclones of movements are created, descending like the extension of a finger from the desert of the sky to gently push the ground. Wind, everywhere.

Dropping down out of the sky we land on the soil, with two feet firmly planted like roots. Here the King still has domain, and the trees echo his calls, the reeds mimic his cries, and the gravel moves with his tune. Great cliffs are shaped by his call, his beconing, “Be beautiful. I demand it.”

Noise of the earth, the gurgling of creeks never stop, the crash of waves, the crack of things giving in to the urge to fall down. All around words, as well, come out like these effusive rivers and whispy clouds. A constant stream runs between the two lips, tramping about in the dry and arid fields of the sky. The ears constantly being pounded with this, all this.

A small boy stands in a crowd, hearing all these things at once. The Kings of the sky, the Kings of the earth, and all the echoes in between, reverberates between the two sides of his skull. Go down one more level, through the throat were rasping noises come with the wind, to a more basic level. There it is. Silence. Thump. Thump. Thuds that threaten to take the pain away, thuds that give rythem in a chaotic symphony of wind. Heart, beat, heart, beat. Pro, tection. Pro, tection. I set words to my thud, and everything melts. It will forever tell me “Go, go, Go, go, Go, go” until one day it says, “stop” and then I will be no more.

Until then, listen carefully to the inside, the outside is a lot of wind.