 |
| More thoughts from Joe Brooks |
No matter what
the season, we often find a reason for lifting ourselves from the couch of ease
and wending our way unto the presence of the Pharaoh’s.
It was with this sense that I entered the
other day into the garden at my friend’s home and saw the beauties of nature
unrolled. It was a pleasure, just once
in a while, to become one of the gifted-treasured unto heaven and walk among
the blossoms of spring; to touch the budding promise of eternity and laugh at
what the Romans called, “the fear of happiness.”
The day had been cloudy and threatening of
rain, the hour of the “Sheep” had passed and nothing promised to make the day
become more cheerful. In my friends’
reasoning it was simple that I should be happy so he invited me to visit his
home.
As I passed along
the walks, I saw the flowers blooming with a promise that was eternity; that
budding promise, swollen with the flush of life. Within the ponds the tiny, golden fish
flickered back and forth from shadow into brilliant light until they adorned
themselves with incandescence of rainbow flame.
Watching them I envied, for the moment, their contentment to be confined
within the narrow bend.
I talked with my friend and we wondered of
the past days and the coming hours for our beliefs. What of the hope of freedom and enactment,
the prayers of liberation, the dreams of self-acclaim. This tiny emerald dream within its pearl-jade
setting was more than just an island, so we said. This land must be an inspiration for the
greatness of mankind, the assurance of the oppressed that someday they, like
us, might wallow in the trough of happiness.
And as we chanced to past, just once again
the pond of golden fish, I saw one – that renegade – jump and try to flee the
borders of his home. He lit upon the
mossy bank, and in his landing flattened two or three small ferns which grew
among the lichen green of lacy fen upon the stones.
And in the wake there followed others, bravely defiant of the boundaries which life had set upon their way of life, seeking a moment’s daring; a short and garish span of elementary heaven among the foreign fields which hemmed them in.
And in the wake there followed others, bravely defiant of the boundaries which life had set upon their way of life, seeking a moment’s daring; a short and garish span of elementary heaven among the foreign fields which hemmed them in.
And watching them, I began to know the
reason for this feeling. Here was all of
mankind, hemmed within the dry and brackish water of our daily life and feeling,
striving, wanting something which is always beyond our touch. This, then, is our life. Passing back and forth unto our daily work;
our hemisphere a bleak and barren landscape of nights and days.
But there are those among us who are
daring, who will chance the fate and breast the currents of the day, and
leaping forth will land among the strange and untrod banks that border our
narrow lives. There are among us who
have visions and dreams of other ways.
How lucky we are for these, the pioneers
of our society, who knowing our restrictions, strive with might and life to
thrust themselves through the barriers of their existence into those wild and
untried fields of other life.
This then is progress; civilization upon
the march. It is our purpose and our
background; the long and sorry history of man, that measured inch by inch upon
the printed page, becomes a soliloquy of waste, but taken in the whole reflects
the progress of the ages.
These several hundred words or so, are my emotions
penned upon the visit through a friend’s spring garden walks. They are nothing but impressions, and as such
are vague and elemental as a touch of fog that kisses the curtains of our open
windows upon a cold and elemental night.
I love to walk in gardens, for there we
find a digest of our lives, comparable to only that which challenges us within
our days. I love to walk in gardens, but
sometimes I find it frightening to know my limited existence, don’t you?
Reprinted with permission.
COPYRIGHT 1955 BY JOE BROOKS
******************************************************************************************************************
******************************************************************************************************************
Joe Brooks wrote a column for the China
Post newspaper in the mid 1950s.
This story and other articles found in this Blog came from his book,
"From A Yankee Notebook in Taiwan"
No comments:
Post a Comment