Lanes

I like alleys, the way they curve beyond sight offering worlds of optimism and positivity in the unknown. I like the way that an alley is only something you can see when you are not in it, which is conversely what frustrates me. Like that fresh fall of snow that looks so pure and enticing because it's untouched; it's only as cool and deep before someone sets foot in it, and then the appeal of it goes away. The trick here is that the alley, like the snow, beckons to be walked in. At the very moment you enter, it's gone. The alley is only as appealing as when you are looking down the lane, when it is still in the distance. Anything you do to get nearer to it and it starts to shorten in distance, in actual existence, and conversely in options. 

Alleys and lanes and tucked away corners and creeks that stretch in rounding curves offer worlds of the unknown. That's what's so exciting. Around the bend, the unseen provides the chance for the best to happen. These unseen stretches, the ones that are just hinted at, are brimming with possibilities; you can't see what's there so there is a chance for something amazingly unexpected and special and rare to be hiding around the corner. And the fact that you don't know, means that the optimism and the positive possibilities are at their highest. It's the idea that the best in life is unknown and hiding beyond sight, so when you get there, the surprise bowls you over. 

For all of my words, nothing quite adequately describes how I feel about these profound spaces. It is as if every time I try to explain what I like about alleys and lanes, the farther away I get from placing my finger precisely on how to explain what I like about them. Perhaps that is why words, like the bend around the corner are so enticing; I am constantly feeling for the right way to communicate how I feel at any given moment in the best way possible. And I think that I will know a success when I am able to utilize the right words in precisely the right spots, in the right lengths and meter to communicate what I am feeling or thinking in as good a way as I think it or feel it. Until that day, I will be staring down the road, scattered gravel, muddy water, lane-growing foxgloves and poppies, dappled-sunlit tree in my view. And then my view disappears, rounding the corner, where a whole world waits out of eye-sight.