Stream of conscienceness

Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' But conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but because conscience tells one it is right.” Martin Luther King, Jr

It was the right place, the right time, where everything went all wrong and ... right.

The peacefulness of the night ride found mine and the borrowed kaiila, Gevalia's way to the stream. I am not a woman to take an easy route through life, preferring to navigate the slopes if need be to get where I want or need to be. The taloned claws of the gray bit the side of the embankment as we headed for the level of the stream itself. There were just those quiet sounds of nature surrounding us until the paws found the water. The added splash told the gait was even and in no hurry.

I think I heard him at almost the same time I saw him lift his hand and call my name. Maybe it was the spread of his smile in the moonlight; I kicked my heels in to set the kaiila to a run. I bore down on him with torrents of water spraying up behind the animal. At the point I was almost on top of him, I leaned down holding out my hand and all in one fluid motion caught his as he swung up into the saddle behind me.

Is this any way to treat your Ubar?

The flick of leather straps and a new tap of my heel in the stirrup would urge us harder and faster along the shoals of the streambed. He would either hold on or topple off. Somehow, I had faith he was up for the ride.

Would you wish anything different?

Not at all.

As the animal stretched out in the wind I felt his touch ease around me to take the reins and my grasp eased so that he held control of the reins, control of this particular slice of time. I lifted my face up into the light of the moon, into the breeze, to inhale the moment. There is nothing like the wide open feel of the plains and adding the beauty of the stream touched by the moonlight can be breathtaking. The length of his long legs wrapped around mine and the sheer forward motion of our speed pressed me against his chest, and I marveled at how natural it felt, how the world around us slowed until it simply no longer existed. Perhaps he felt it too and began to slow our race against the plains, perhaps the inevitables. His breath was warm and soothing along the side of my cheek, warming the outer shell of my ear and those delicate inner places a woman keeps reserved. I wonder if this still falls under the rules of my getting to know you at the fires?

We jested of possible answers that stretched the margins of truth without breaking it. I'd saved him from a runaway kaiila or vice versa. Perhaps one or both of us deserved reward for our heroics. All that I knew to say in answer was that we had the night. Consciensious woman that I am, I offered to return him to the camp to save his honor. We didn't return right that ehn instead he guided the kaiila up the bank, slowing her gait to simply walk alongside the meandering waters.

Whenever you take a step forward, you are bound to disturb something. You disturb the air as you go forward; you disturb the dust, the ground. You trample upon things. When a whole society moves forward, this trampling is on a much bigger scale; and each thing that you disturb, each vested interest which you want to remove, stands as an obstacle.
-Mahatma Gandhi

There is very little, he said, that he find more beautiful than the night sky but that recently he had found something that rivals it. There was a beckoning in his tone, in the way his chest rose and fell behind me that turned my head and the vista of the night was all there painted on his scars and his features. You are beautiful, so delicate but still strong. How hard it was to tear my gaze from his and motion to the heavens above us. The stars were bright and clear with a full softness around them that created luminescent halos. I wanted to share them with him. It simply felt unfair that he not see what I saw. In that one segment of time and place I wanted him to see what I saw and I wanted it to be the same sky.

His nearness set my blood surging through me, brightening my cheeks with aggregate hues of warmth. His mouth so close to mine that I could taste his breath and my eyes closed in anticipation of their first touch to mine. I do not possess the ability to describe that next moment as the plains themselves inclined on their axis and even the shadows in his eyes changed their course. Distance. It sliced through everything with such crafted precision that it lay the whole night gaping open deep and wide.It permeated the breeze surrounding us and it took everything I had within me to hold onto the slope I was sliding uncontrollably down. He slid from the kaiila, holding his hand out for me to dismount with him then stepped back once he was assured I had my footing. Did I?

Self-recognition is necessary to know one's road, but, knowing the road, the price of the mistakes and perils is worth paying. The following of that road will be all the discipline one needs. Discipline does not mean being molded by outside forces, but sticking to one's road against the forces that would deflect or bury the soul. People speak of finding one’s niche in the world. Society, as we have seen, is one vast conspiracy for carving one into the kind of statue it likes, and then placing it in the most convenient niche it has.
-Randolph Bourne

There is something I must tell you.

This was not news to me. He had mentioned this time would come. Query and assurance came with as little effort as it took to reach out and feel my palm meet his. All he wished to share of what troubled him so, I had promised I would hear and I would. I held his hand and I listened. I heard all of what he held inside over the past decade. It came rushing to the surface, infections bleeding their way from the depths.There was a connection on a level that was beyond all I had ever experienced.

If I were a different woman I am sure I would have washed this wound clean with understanding, disinfected it with forgiveness nd bandaged it all in tender professions of love and adoration that would heal and leave no scar. I wasn't a different woman. All that I had just heard and all that I had just seen inside the vision of moment and all that I had ...

felt ...

grayed

the edges of my staunch defenses of right and wrong. It made me accomplice after the fact in the very knowing.
My inability to channel these things into a reservoir safety of apathy and detachment overloaded the virtues of my ideals.

And everything just went ...

black.