It was autumn,just the beginning of fall.The park wore a deliciously leafy look.The leaves as if expressing their anguish at parting from their abode were just starting to wear that pale crimson look.Some were totally their,some not quite.
The impermanence of it all always struck him.What was really constant?Change?The more he thought about it,the more sense it seemed to make to him.So much had changed yet so much still remained the same.The old order changeth,he mused to himself as he watched the leaves scattered in that peculiar pell-mell fashion so typical of them.Just look at them,so content yet so sad,like siblings unbound and unfettered yet longing for the chains that bound them to their erstwhile parent.
Or maybe he was just thinking too much,he thought to himself as he sought out the solitude of a lonely corner where few would even care to look at him and the only passers-by would be couples too madly in love to even cast a passing glance or elderly people who were just content to let life move along at their own pace.
As he took out his pack of cigarettes and lit one,he thought that his life had reached a strange but very concrete deadlock.The twirling smoke was indicative of the state of his mind at that very instant.What was it that he really wanted?Fame?Money?A stable family?Self-gratifying material pleasure?Or did it really matter in a world where all you carry forward to the next existence is your karma and your soul?A broad grin stretching from ear to ear was a clear giveaway that he found great amusement and pleasure in these ruminations.Far removed from the daily grind and enveloped by Mother Nature,he could at long last give the fullest expression to this twirling thoughts without reserve and without being accountable and answerable to anyone but himself
So engrossed was he in his own world that he failed to notice that the edge of the seat had by this time been occupied.His alter existence,his world was one in which everything was static.Change and more change till you got sick of the running and found your shelter beneath the clear blue skies with the gurgle of the flowing stream over the pebble providing the perfect antagonistic foil to his agony and angst-ridden ruminations.His comfort zone.Where everything was perfect.The bliss of it all made the fullest extent of his escapist tendencies shine and blind him from theharsh realities of outside.
With another smile,he lit another cigarette.
"You shouldn't smoke,you know.You won't be alive for much longer if you do.It's a real shame that your generation wastes its life thinking that there's no hope for humanity and that self-gratification and alienation is the only solution"
The voice,though soft and mellow and spoken with a quiet self-determination seemed to shock him out the self-gratifying trance he had invariably enveloped himself in over the course of the past hour and a half and brought him back to his senses faster than ice cold water on a freezing winter's day.The face was kindly and seemed to speak volumes of the trials and tribulations every human being is bound to undergo over the course of a long existence.Weather-beaten,tanned and burnished yet etched with those lines that gave him all the appearances of a fighter.His eyes had a strange twinkle as if all that was worldly wise could be found in the infinite depths of those fathomless tunnels.The piercing gaze seemed to rip apart all the pretence of our youngster we have just witnessed thinking out loud to himself,much to the consternation of the fellow denizens of the park who so much as even cast a passing glance at him.Like an arrow to the heart,his words shot him to the quick.
"Was I really that loud?!",he exclaimed in consternation.
"You don't necessarily have to be loud to catch one's attention,child".Nevertheless it is getting dark and I have to be home early today.Not like the good old days of yore when I used to happily sit in your place and roll joints and drink to absolute merriment and with gay abandon with like minded company!"
"You're a hypocrite,sir"
"Well you might call me someone who just thought it best to utter friendly advice in your favour.Nevertheless I'm off.See you tomorrow"
"How're you so sure?!"
"I know the ways of youth"
With that said,our elderly character casts a kindly twinkle at the pudgy youngster and strolls off amiably at a leisurely pace befitting his advancing age.We'll leave our youngster at the point where he thinks of this strange encounter and prone as his mind is to wander uninhibitedly,arrives at more than one possible conclusion to this strange and chance encounter.As he strolled home,he thought to himself..."Who was this benign and strange fellow whose acquantaince I seemed to have made just by chance and who seemed to read my thoughts to perfection?Will I meet him again if I come again to this very same place,like he promised?"
As to whether these two characters actually did meet again is quite another very interesting story and desereves telling in a different time and space continuum.For now,we can only think,watch and wait.
