Swimming Upstream

I guess that sometimes the currents of the ocean make it difficult to transcend our little social circles and move to other waters; sometimes it's not so hard. And it's those times that are easy that make us think that all is as it should be. I'm certain that there must be truth in these sorts of thoughts. But there's also this:

Swimming should feel a little like swimming or we, you, all of us, are not making any progress. That is, it can't just be a swift ride through the waters of our past and intermediary seas.

I was recently in a new city, I know you know it well, (kind of well anyway), it's so famous. And, watching the light come up over the mountains and spread across a vast area of new development, new buildings that shined right back at the Sun and an open space where other shiny buildings would soon stand, I thought that this is what the future looks like. And, I exclaimed, "This is the future," or maybe, "This feels like the future." And it did, or it does. But it was only a temporary strength - that feeling - though I can work to feel it working in the back of my mind reminding me that it is the future.

And then soon after I was in an old city - familiar anyway. Now I am in a newer settlement that feels of age; and I feel it. But age isn't exactly right, because it feels like a cycling age. I see the same birds I saw roosting here last year. And a burnt tree from a fire just years before I was born. And older faces that look slightly older (except, of course, their eyes).

But both of these still feel like swimming upstream because there is so much work to be done to avoid thinking of this sea, these currents, my friends and my things, as permenent players in the ocean. (Years ago I was here and found a few aquaintances dead.) But we needn't talk too much of these.