Scenes from a Storybook

Release that thought I had previously. Sit calmly in this spot and hear the buddhist chant. I'm tired, yes, and I'm sore, yes, but the blood is flowing rich with oxygen and the sun is glinting beyond the large-bark tree. I laugh when I see the lizard climbing on the rocks next to the lillypads. Why is it funny, you ask? I'm really uncertain, I think I'm just thinking about how lovely it is, the lillypads and the lizard. I imagine the lizard making a pitcher of the finest lemonade, grabbing some shades and resting alongside the lillypads, enjoying the hums and ahhs, and the sunlight barely cascading through the palm trees giving him a nice even tan.

As if a scene from a storybook.

It seems as if the visage here is constantly filled in my brain with pages hinted in stories told to children. Ones with talking animals and large-scenic landscapes. Simple and complex. Have I told you about the white crane birds? I'm almost certain that cranes don't exist here, but they certainly are the shape of what my mind recollects as a crane from picture books. White and beautiful in the sky. They fly in the early-morning glory and land on the green-white rice pastures. Yellowed underbellies and wingspans long. They eat frogs and poke at them first, as if discussing what pseudo-political babble the grasshopper just blurted out. The frog jumps, hind legs dextral, ready for his escape once the crane-like-bird can be distracted by the long-windedness of his one-sided conversation.

Then there's the koi fish and the turtles. Tall atop a hill nearby, the kois and the turtles congregate near a Daoist Temple. They lay within a pond, a plastered dragon spewing out a stream of water overhead. They are cloistered together, involuntarily, along with a random pink piggy bank in the corner of the pond. When I arrive, the koi hammer to get my attention, clobbering for air and for possible food, while the turtles just mosey around, heads poking out of the water, getting a peek of the ridiculousness ensuing next to them. It's true that I picture the turtles with canes when I retreat, smoking the finest Cuban cigar and sporting top hats. It's a childish thing to imagine, but fun especially when mixed with the vibrancy of the colour spectra. Wild oranges of the kois and deep forest greens from the turtles. They are just asking to be painted into a book, and maybe, for the turtles, the latest ironic cartoon from The New Yorker.

Finally, the clouds and the mountain tops. Long bike rides bring about many views of lonely cumulous clouds alongside their brethren, the mountaintop. I imagine the clouds teasing the mountains, shouting, "Just come up and play!" All the while, the mountain, wise and unmovable, just meditates softly taking in the air surrounding him, feeding his trees, his saplings, his little creatures and pretty things. "The clouds are just jealous of all of this," he thinks silently. It's true, the cloud is jealous of the mountain. "What if I could just be grounded for a day, with animals wildly romping upon me?" It's true also, that the mountain is jealous of the cloud. "What if I could fly for a day, just worry about the breeze behind me?" They lived in a silent wish to be the other. The only menial compromise being those silent moments on the mountain tops together.