Fleeting Moments

Sometimes, suddenly, everything slips into place, and there is a brief moment of clarity. Observing the world through a pair of binoculars, perched high up in a lighthouse tower, rain lashing at the windows, high winds pound the old stone walls. The ocean scene scrolls past as I look from right to left, until, there, a person alone bobbing in a boat, face filling the circular lens, looking quizzically back at me, and then gone. Was that my face? Is that how people see me?

I pick up meaning like I pick up leaves on the floor. Holding them softly in my fingers I cast my eyes upwards and wonder which tree they came from. Sentences contain words, but words are merely a facade, meaning is not as simple as understanding the words. Words and sentences are just advertising, the product sits within a cardboard box, anemic, fragile, enclosed within polite social decorum. It should never be spoken of, outside of the box it quickly deteriorates.

I’m transfixed by a desire to peal back the layers of unnecessary decoration to

reveal a fundamental reality. Simple, logical, complete. I gather books around myself, unread words that offer an interpretation of other words and sentences, and books. I wall myself in, I try to decide which words are true, and which are a double bluff, but the shifting sands of popular thought make this impossible.

And there you are. There are those who believe they understand and there are those who know they do not. Confidence in knowledge is no barometer for intellect, and intellect is no barometer for understanding.