I have hit a wall. A large brick wall with some gum stuck to it and a few weeds growing out of the cracks. This wall has been there for a long time, and it grows stronger and taller each year. I can't seem to scale the darned thing, it has no place for me to wedge my fingers in, and no foot holds either. I am convinced that if I could get over it, life would be much better. For such an old wall,it is astoundingly well built. Nothing I do to chip away at it makes a mark.
On the other side of this wall is the rest of the story, the continuation, and the road I need to get back on. If I could get around it, I could get back on course, and possibly I could accomplish the tasks that I need to on this quest I have undertaken. What quest, you may ask? Ah, there is the story in and of itself.
The desire to follow the quest was given to me a long time ago, when I was a child.
It came to me several times, and each time the longing was stronger. The first time was when I looked out of my window at the stars and I wished, very hard. I wished to find something, a treasure, something wonderful, something miraculous. But, I knew, in my logical, empirical mind that wishing on a star was silly and fruitless. Never the less, the desire to find that miracle was sparked.
The next time was when I was standing on the front porch of my childhood home. I was ten years old, and it was summer. It was warm, the kind of lazy summer day crooned about in songs. I could hear the far off sound of a lawn mower, smell the warm sweet grass, and hear little bugs zzzing throughout the stagnant air. As I stood there,an odd feel overcame me. I suddenly could not figure out if I was awake or asleep, if this was a dream or reality. I was frozen for a moment in the thought that dreaming and waking were difficult to decipher and how was one to know what reality really was. That is when the desire for the quest took hold, and I knew that somehow I had to find out what truth was.
Then, in my teens,it happened again. I had not gone to sleep all night, and at sunrise, I went out and stood on our old wooden picnic table to watch the sun rise. It was summer again, and it was a cool, but not too cold morning. I stood on the table because I wanted a higher vantage point, and somehow, just those few feet up changed the overall perspective. You could see the world from a slightly different view. I was filled with the sensations of the dawn, the sweet air, the coolness, the light as it kissed the trees, the house the grass around me in that honey morning sheen. I was enraptured, that is I was until my father looked out his bedroom window to behold his daughter, in her nightie, standing on the picnic table doing the sun dance. He said, "what in the world are you doing?" and it scared the sacred moment right out of me. But I did, for just those few seconds, feel the desire for the quest pour over me.
So, here I am in later days, the haze of midlife, that autumnal time when you start to panic because winter is on the horizon. And I have tried to follow the desire, have attempted to stay on the path, but now have come to this wall. If I press up and put my face against the rough brick, I feel the warmth, I smell the sweet air, but I cannot seem to be able to get around to experience it. I am weak, exhausted from my journeys, my encounters, the hills I have had to climb and the dark valleys I have been tangled in. I sit myself down and ponder. I know I must get past this wall or the quest is lost. Like Percival in search of the grail, I will not let the world distract me. The quest must continue until the goal is accomplished. The wall will come down...if only brick by brick.
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