i hope for things sometimes.

A giant once ate me.

I had met him on top of a hill near a lake. Apparently he too had seen how close the clouds looked to the ground there. I still want to touch a cloud. And I want it to feel like nothing else (unfortunately I don’t have the imagination to dream of what that cloud might feel like).

Thinking I might be able to finally reach up and touch the clouds, I paddled my little rowboat from the opposite shore of the lake from where I spotted the hill and the clouds. I landed on a rough beach below the hill. I clambered out, pulling the boat a little further up to make sure it didn’t float away, and eagerly traversed the hill. It was far more tiring than I imagined and by the time I got to the top I was dead tired.

Laying in the grass with a cool breeze blowing over you is like nothing else.

As I reclined in the grass, I reflected on how romantic it is to think about laying in the grass but when you actually do it it’s itchier than you remember and you feel a little damp when you get up. That’s the last thing I remember thinking anyway.

The next thing I knew the clouds were gone and there was nothing beyond the sky but sky. No space. No stars. No redshift of fleeing galaxies, and nothing more than what is here and now. It was contentment, but in a fettered way. I wanted there to be something more than this context to aspire to, somewhere to put my head and yet I was comfortable no longer needing to fit that place into my head.

Just then a booming voice announced in shockingly distasteful language a certain disappointment that the clouds were as far away as ever and that there’s still no reason to lift your little hand or mine to try to steal the stars.

The giant was saying this to me.

He realized as I did that we were both hoping for the same thing: what we knew was unreasonable. It was a masochistic pursuit as we anticipated the sure disappointment to follow.

And he realized this, and he recognized that compassion comes in many forms.

First he tried to raise me up as high as he could reach.

Then he tried to throw me (I was actually pretty close).

Finally he suggested I close my eyes and imagine what it would be like, that that is perhaps as close as we will get to realizing such an unreasonable dream. And as I closed my eyes, I felt my hand close around a star and I realized that my dream no longer was to feel that cloud. My dream was to capture that which no longer existed, something beyond experiencing the cloud. I wanted not to touch the cloud and allow it to remain, but I wanted to cage the star.

And as I put the star into my pocket, the giant released me from this captive world in a mighty crunch from his jaws.

And that’s when I woke up, my small boat rocking with the waves as a light wind stroked my face.

I still want to touch the clouds.

And close my hand around a trembling star.

And while I close my eyes and see these things,

still reason takes hold.

But I must allow myself to be released from this captive world

time and again.

But everything must belong somewhere.