Drifting

Bamboo raft.  Pole.

A splash of color moves by, never to be seen again, but to show up around the bend.  The peaks and valleys of the lush growth around the river almost mimic music in its reverberations – up, soaring, your mind lifting free, cushioned by soft ferns, by the brown water, only to fall down, down the slope, eyes following the random logic of the growth.

Once music is released as sound it dissipates with only an echo in your mind – as you pole along a river, senses open, eyes open to the tune of life – “forward, forward” it says relentlessly – “forward!”  As your eyes follow the river, the vegetation, the bugs, butterflies, gusts of moist air, pushed forward in the strong current – it is time to pole.  Pole on the left, our guide motions, pole on the right.

You go through a rapid, the bamboo raft temporarily submerges, almost to your knees,  falling is a possibility, the music swells – and we are through – but not done with the river.

The mystery of a river is a cliche.  Rivers are simply time.  Their essence would not be possible without that capability to move both in the classic three dimensions and in the fourth – time.  When you are standing on a river, pole in hand, listening to the quiet symphony, it is as if you are temporarily removed from time and are able to feel its currents and sense how it moves you forward.

When a butterfly lands on Jenny’s oar – a bright orange little thing – it is an incongruous visitor from afar, a nomad stopping for a spell, stopping time, stopping its wings so that a hurricane would not form, so that a breeze would blow on quiet hills, so that a mist would fall in a swamp, and so that a snowflake would form in the highest reaches of the atmosphere.

Then your eyes catch another splash of color, and the music starts again, your brain and senses lost in another storm of notes.