Observations and Stories

Mind’s Masonry

Ruxandra Papa (Romania)

Time taken on a hill leaves little to yearn for, the realization of all aspirations have already been cast in stone. For some, thoughts still become surmised despite the acquisition of most bodily needs. The mind wonders and evades the visceral comforts of home, showing not only the past but also the present, converging into a fickle future of right from wrong. To try to understand the world as it holds now is akin to drawing what a mind looks like in the midst of depressive illness, differing only in chemistry from what such constituents would coalesce into happiness. The day casts rays within my consciousness and in the hallowed halls of knowledge from which I glean nothing but words along spines high into the heavens, the roots settled deep into the stone with bounded leather. I find comfort in looking at an auburn colored leaf adrift on the masonry, blown in thorough the arched window parading its beauty among the monochromatic landscape lit by pale golden sunlight. The flame of the tree dances to the subtle rhythm given by life’s mother as if to provide show of delicacy to all that seems eternal. My head turns and my gaze averted to a sharp shadow in the corner cast by a prominent keystone along an adjacent wall. Endeared by man through show of craftsmanship, the angular darkness holds remembrance to engineered artifices foreign and malignant to its surroundings. Rays lengthen the room and touch my face, glistening the beads of sweat along my brow as I cogitate. I relinquish my hands from a loose grip and pluck the leaf from the stoned ground, letting it fall from my palm outside the arched window, watching it drift slowly to the safety below in the greenery. I am left with only but the shadow, from which its shape has phased into growing longer and wider, a figment of a waning moon.