Читать книгу an inkstorm summoned under live oak we dreamed - daniel boonelight - Страница 10

from the time that i met her, she was always so defiant, so peculiarly against the grain of what most people considered acceptable or true. she pointedly disliked natural-formed hearts in art. she ducked out of pictures taken for the wrong reason. she needed heaps of alone time in hikes with a dog chosen for her spirit as voracious and independent as herself. and one battle she always saddled up to was the subject of wishes. adamant as an evening storm, she'd say, "don't waste your time on eyelashes and dandelions, on numbers that string together on a clock. there's a lot more worth your energy." this roiled up the places inside me where my favorite childhood songs cast their lighthouses, where the fanciful part of my dreaming head felt comforted in the joy of picking dandelions once spring hit and i was good and outside.

so one day i asked her, "what's the difference between wishes and hope?" her answer seemed to imply that the latter was noble, and had a sense of trust lain into the providential, the order of the universe that superseded everything. while the former relied on tradeshow tricks, the smoke-and-mirror show of superstition. and the whole thing made me think about belief, and where it came from, and if all the bright shining wishings of my carnival-sugared head throughout my life were betrayed by my sheer want for better, my desire for the unexpected to knock me silly with luck borne out of my willing, or if my scars shown with the knotted shapes of disappointment. i had to wonder where we all keep finding the will. where we store all the heart chips to bet like the universe's casino broker still might have a wink in our names as though he owed our father a favor from back in the gold rush days. somehow i keep singing, because it's all i know how to do.