Placid Turbulence

Its a moonless night and you are sitting on the banks of a still lake. Alone. Your feet creating ripples on the surface of the water that dance and shimmer in the dark light of the stars. And your hands clutching the moist grass on the sides. All you can hear is the rustle of the leaves as the trees lining the bank sway ever so slightly. All you can see is their dark silhouettes against a darker background and their slight reflections far into the lake. All you can feel is utter aloofness. You look up to the sky and it dazzles in a brilliant arabesque of divine order. Millions of specks painted on the black backdrop. Each silently twinkling. Each helplessly cognizant of its own loneliness. Their combined luminescence failing to reverberate in your eyes as the dreariness of it all weighs on your eyelids and you are forced to look down at the lake again. And it has a deathly stillness to it. Like a deserted home in a middle of nowhere. Like an anachronistic gramophone that is shocked into muteness. Like the quiet reflection of a boisterous crowd.

The scene should have been beautiful but there is something wrong with it. And I cannot put my finger on the reason. Its like an unfinished painting that has nonetheless been framed in a hurry. The underlying sadness is both exquisite and slightly disconcerting. Its a metaphor for life I suppose. Not quite perfect but strangely beautiful nonetheless. And subdued at the same time. The aforementioned scene invites me. Almost sinfully. And I feel like putting down the baggage for a while and resting. With my head down on my bent knees. With the sensation of passing time reduced to the slight movements of my hair in the breeze. And all the excess energy manifesting itself in small motions of my right feet. Slowly caressing the dead water into unwelcome waves.