there is a place by the river where i sit and where i think and where i watch the water and the trees. there was a person there today - he had long hair like a boy who used to love me, and he was playing a song on his guitar that i knew, and it carried down the river, down from the rocky spot where he was to the tree-rooty dirt spot where i was. in places like that a stranger's music, it seems natural. it made me remember that i am young and joyful and that the world is vast beyond my imagining. it made me feel content and whole and it filled me with things i've felt my whole life and still don't have a name for. and later, when i saw him walking up from the river, carrying his guitar and singing still i thought, he and i were, for the length of a few songs, the same. that's what places like this do to people, and it's why i come here. and i walked home and i felt all the peace you can imagine. i remember good things, and this place is a good thing. the boy who used to love me, he is a good thing. the sun on the water and all my small joys, those are good things. a stranger's music, a spot on the river, it can remind you that things are good more often than they are bad. it takes a certain place and a certain headspace to think like that, but today i did. there is a place by the river, and that's what it does.