River and Ocean

On a fresh September afternoon, covered by a shiny powder of sun falling through the clouds on the coast, River looked Ocean in the eyes: "Your greatness, I'm just a tiny river like all of us, so many on the planet. Every day I flow into you, yet every day on the journey I miss you. All rivers want to be oceans. Is there anything you would wish to be?"  Silence. 

   

River, listening to the cold wind that blew fiercely, said to herself: one day, I will remember that forgotten wisdom; he didn't know what that wisdom would be, but he had faith, and kept flowing. At times River was wondering why her way this one, why the line she was drawing on earth was so precise. She then remembered something called destiny and saw her borders all along the way. At other times, when she could raise up in the sky like a bird, she could see how tiny she was at the source, how powerful on the path and how full of memories towards the end.

The end was not an end, he saw, but a melting with Ocean. Rare were the moments she could raise her spirit that high. Mostly he was caught in dizzy vibes, slipping quickly between sharp stones or caressing round ones, or stuck in a slum, sleepy pond, where people came to wash their bodies or to play. Back home at the source, she could hear stones falling down the mountain. The great mountain had an age too; he still had long to live and yet, he had an age. On her course, she was mostly chatting with the wind, asking him to take her again on his wings, as she so much liked to see her body from a distance. 

Feeling and seeing were two different things, she noticed. Feeling was there to show her the different taste of each moment. Even though she knew she was the same in nature, she felt different here and there, as she always melted some bits of the road into her being. Seeing would only happen when Wind was kind enough to take her up with him, so that she could see both her source and the place where she was heading at.

There is still something, she noticed, something different from seeing, different from feeling; something that made her ask the wind to take her up, something that made the wind decide to lift her, something that carried the memory of the taste of her source thorough the journey, something that reminded her the taste of the melting with Ocean and all the moments in between, past or still to come. And that something she didn't know how to call. Not everything needs a name to be called upon, she decided; everything that had a name was a reflection of something, and the name itself was part of that reflection. 

Tired by this much thinking, River got down to its benches and returned to indulging the awareness of feelings: the fish, the stones, the humans, the birds, the wind, a brother river joining in. The moon was rising, bright and warm like a banana pancake soaked in thick honey. River fell asleep smiling at his fantasy and his waters kept rolling, not caring much whether River was asleep or awake.