I love stone. Don't you?
We forget ourselves for
a moment when we stand
beneath
a mountain. A true experience
of a mountain makes us
feel small, which is right.
Because we are. But
we only forget for a moment,
really less than a minute, and
soon we cast about for a little
sharp-edged rock to carve our
names into the cliffside.

Once, a person lost
their faculty for emotion.
That turned out alright, though.
He wasn't ever sad.

But it was sad. It was tragic.
Because we listen to our
little voices, and grind our names
haphazardly into the rock,
and it's really very silly
to try to be immortal. Even mountains
know that. And we live
with these very silly
voices drumming all the time in our heads,
and we think that's us.

We think that those voices are us.

And that person? The tragedy
is, I don't know if he ever gets
to be corrected. Do mountains
interrupt him? To forget ourselves
for a moment beneath a mountain.
Does he ever get the chance to ask:
Why do we forget ourselves,
anyways? Who is it that made us pause?
The mountain? It didn't move.
Our little voices? Ha!

It's something else. Something powerful.
It shuts up your internal monologue,
and in those moments, you are at your
most agile, most eloquent, most true.
On stage. In a sport. When you read
a set of words that hold power to change
your life. Does it have a name? It has many.
"Soul" is only one of them.

And that person? Yes, it's sad.
But ask yourself this: you've seen
your mountains. They made you
step back. I know they did. There
was an instant that your little voices
were completely, utterly hushed.

That moment happens, and it's
entirely out of your control. The
next moment is truly up to you.

So what do you do? Take a picture?
Carve your name into a rock?