I am breaking down into the bedrock. It is tedious work at first, chipping away at the layers one by one, the layers worn smooth by wind and sand and time. They blend together, barely discernable from one another unless you look very closely. Unless you get up so close that you can see where one era ended and another began on top of it. All that separates them might be a thin line or the slightest shift in color. But they are there, and they are different and distinct, and they are built one on top of the other nonetheless.
This is what makes the work tedious. You have to go slowly, layer by layer. Moving your brush across the dust, stopping at each tiny fossil or gemstone to brush it off and examine it and squirrel it away for cataloguing and examining and reminding.
You have to go slowly unless some natural disaster or phenomenon comes along and shakes the Earth and splits it right in two. Then each layer is cracked and open and exposed for you to see, along with the shell or the remains or the skeleton at the bottom. The one you have been looking for. The one you always knew would be there.
This is lovely imagery. Your use of words is eloquent and captivating.
Posted by: Shannon Acton | May 04, 2011 at 07:54 PM
Thanks Shannon! :)
Posted by: Noel | May 05, 2011 at 06:34 AM
There is a certainty to this post and I find it really comforting. I think it is the last lines: "The one you have been looking for. The one you always knew would be there." There is such beauty in that.
Don't ever, ever tell me you are not a storyteller again.
Posted by: Roxanne | May 06, 2011 at 05:07 AM
Lovely!
Posted by: Dragonfly | May 06, 2011 at 06:39 AM
Sometimes I need that seismic crack. I go brushbrushbrushy careful most of the time; I'm always afraid I'll screw things up. But a cataclysm is what helps me see the big picture. And I need that more than anything.
Loved this. So much.
Posted by: Kim | May 09, 2011 at 10:58 AM
Sugar, my daddy worked in a rock quarry, so I've long had a thing for going deep and bedrock and the occasional blast. Love this post!
Posted by: wholly jeanne | May 20, 2011 at 06:08 AM
This reads like poetry, Noel. Eloquent, tender and lovely and so very true.
Thank you for sharing this.
Posted by: mark | May 20, 2011 at 06:35 AM
I am so late in responding ... sorry all!
@Roxanne and @Dragonfly--thank you!
@Kim--me to RE: the seismic crack. I need to be shaken once in awhile.
@Wholly Jeanne--that is so awesome!!
@Mark--thanks! You are the poetry master so that means a lot.
Posted by: Noel | June 07, 2011 at 04:31 PM