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Desire and Nothing

Desire originating within, influenced by outside forces, aiming in various directions. Survival instinct can go too far. Self awareness fights insecurities revealed around others.

The desire of the moment or of a lifetime: to create something positive. Driving oneself beyond basic needs can lead to threatening levels of excess. Power seduces and the true self fades away, hides away, sometimes too far gone to be found.

To just be can get lost. The privilege of survival and self awareness are often lost with it, but those who hold onto that basic knowledge are rewarded by the knowledge itself.

Between the Cemetery and the River

Mausoleums on the hill overlook the river and its parallel path, watching every boat race, jogger, biker. The cemetery's west end comes to an abrupt halt like a cliff over the road below: a narrow, busy road on which cars are known to double the speed limit. A high stone wall stands on the side of the road below the cemetery hill, holding the ground in place far beneath buried bones. A much lower stone wall runs along the other side, separating the river path from the busy road.

Large, old walk in tombs and gravestones like these are mostly a bygone tradition. But the winds of chance still blow through them as they ever would. On a sunny weekend morning, the mausoleums witness a car veer off the road below, straight through the low stone wall, across the jogging path and straight into the river.

Nobody jogged or biked past at that particular moment. No coxswains led oarsmen in the place where the car dove headlights first into the water. Hours before the accident, a young family had a picnic on the river bank. A six month old baby lay on a blanket while her two year old brother ran circles around their parents. They're alive and well. Like the rest of us who breathe, they're surrounded by ghosts.

Photo by Erica Smith for uwishunu.com