Dreams Truths Secrets

- I am not exactly sure how I got here. I hadn’t been to the park since my school days. All of a sudden I had this enormous desire, an urge, to get to New Eden Park as soon as possible. So, here I was, getting out of my car, walking toward the end of the park where there was a bench in front of the river, where the currents divide around the park and then merge again on the other side. New Eden Park is a small island in the middle of the river. The air was humid and charged with anticipation, as if something out of the ordinary was about to happen. So much had changed since I was here the last time. The trees were so much taller and many more had been planted. There were flowers everywhere. Perhaps they had been there all along and had just become more noticeable to me. The green grass made for the perfect background to the wonderful gathering of tiger lilies, daisies and dandelions. I walked the route to the bench that I had always taken while in school, which was the route along the west side, mainly because it was so close to the river – you could touch the water if you wanted to – and also because of the sound the water made as it calmly murmured its way through the rocks. It sounded like familiar music to me, so melodic; it had a calming effect on my mind. As I followed the path through the trees, I remembered so many of the things that I had experienced here. I realized that I really didn’t know why I had rushed here, but for the moment, all I could sense was a feeling of comfort and familiarity. Memories of a time long gone flooded back to me, and yet, they still felt so very real, so very close to me. It seemed as if time had stood still in my mind for that moment, and I could see the faces, hear the laughter and observe the events that had taken place so many times in this park in the past. Friends, concerts, picnics, the river, the trees, the green grass and of course, the bench. There, finally, the bench. Although to others it may have seemed like just another used park bench, for me it was anything but ordinary, for I had experienced some of my most treasured memories and moments in my life from there. It was there that I had written my first poem. It was there that I had had my first kiss, and also my first broken heart. It was the bench that held many secrets. I was comforted in knowing that it could not speak. I had worked myself back to the bench, and I hesitated, now, before sitting down and I gazed into the river. Slowly I lowered myself onto the bench. I was overwhelmed. I had thought I would never be here again. Nevertheless, here I was, looking at the reflection of the cloud formations as they moved on top of the river’s face and then watching them disappear again, as some of them would take the flow of the river’s right side and others would move towards the river’s left side. I often wonder what might have happened if I would have taken the left side, instead of the right side, in my own life’s river. So many times I have thought about all the decisions that I have made, that brought me to the place I am today, in this river we call life. It seems as if I have been running so fast for so long, and yet I don’t even know exactly where it is that I am going. It seems as if it was just yesterday that I was flowing effortlessly through the trees of this park, running, laughing, living carefree and loving every minute of it. It seems as if it was a few hours ago I was graduating from high school and running off to college. It seems as if it was last week that I graduated from college and I was now interviewing for my first job. It seems as if a few minutes ago I began my first company and only seconds ago that I learned it had gone bankrupt. It seems as if the last twenty years had just disappeared, gone with those clouds, down the river. I did not really know where those years had gone. That is probably the reason I have worked myself back to this place. Somehow, I wanted to feel as if life could be fresh again. After trying so hard to succeed for so long, and not having attained a lot of what I had wanted, perhaps coming back to where it all started with so much promise, in some innocent way, would help me capture that awesome feeling that life is on my side again and that everything could go my way once again. Maybe, just maybe, that was what I need; to go back to the beginning; to get a new understanding; to get a fresh new perspective. After all, what have I got to lose? The house is in foreclosure. My retirement money is spent. The company is bankrupt. The cars will be gone next week and the worse thing of all, my darling wife has had it. As she told me just yesterday, “I didn’t marry you, Jack Kingsley, to struggle.” I don’t have anything else to lose. Almost everything I cared for is gone. Perhaps the river could remind me of a secret or two and make it all right again. The irony of it all is that I am losing the people and the things that were the most important reasons behind which I chose to live this life of mine, and yet I am losing those people and things precisely because of my work and my efforts. Not only have I lost all my money, but I am also losing those relationships that are the most important to me because of the pressures of not having money. Life can be a funny thing, you know. It seems that the more you want something, the more elusive it becomes. So much for work hard and your dreams can come true. In so many respects I was more successful as a teenager than what I have been so far as an adult, and much happier also. If I could do it all over again, I would begin by following that which made me feel joyous, not by following whatever I thought could make me money. Money is a fact of life, but it can make things either very right or so very wrong.