Breakwater Thoughts, by Bella Souza

Breakwater Thoughts, published in the Burlington Free Press March 6, 2015

 
A penetrating gust of an ice cold gale hits my face. Snow crystals glow in the early morning light, as if to say follow us. The light breeze buffets me and as I stumble, the snow crackling under my feet, the snow seems to create miniatures crevasses running across the sheets of snow that cover the breakwater I’m walking on top of.
 
As I walk, I take in my surroundings, with thoughts tumbling around in my head. Soon I will be at the edge of the lake where the foot of the lighthouse touches the frozen waters of lake champlain. But the closer I get to end of my walk, thoughts about flowers from my surroundings. Thoughts about life, and how there is a common truth that we all have to face. The truth of how all things has to end whether you like it or not.

I have always disliked endings. The last day of summer, the end of a book, the finish of a morning stroll, parting ways with a friend. All though an ending is always just on the horizon. Leaves fall, you will close your book, you will take your final step, you say good bye.

And as I walk along the snow covered top of the breakwater, I wonder why things are the way we are. I by that don’t mean just the way things are perceived by one singular person, but perception itself, and the way we see things like power, joy, malevolence, beauty, acceptance, freedom, knowledge, mystery, goals and expressing your self. But why does everyone see everything so differently?

In the time I have been thinking, I have reached the last rock of the embankment. With the clear Vermont morning sky ahead of my eyes, and the green hills of grand isles. I slowly sink down onto the rock, and sit there for a while.

Thinking.

Gazing.

Thinking.

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