10:2

Meredith watch the dust slowly drift off the road and obscure the slowly settling sun. The bright yellows briefly twisted into burnt oranges and deep golden hues as that ephemeral veil of tiny rock and soil swirled through the air, creating a momentary diversion of the sunset’s stately progress and marking the passage of something more than just another car.

A passing. That’s what it was. Another moment gone and forever out of reach. Such moments should always be cherished, no matter how awkward or painful they might be. We all to often closed ourselves off from those moments that defined us, pretending instead to be a creation of luck or karma or influenced by some greater power. But what makes who we are is always in front of us, swirling around us in our own personal cyclone of thoughts, memories and images of the past. And so we try to forget.

But Meredith wasn’t going to forget. A change was upon her and it would still be there in front of her long after the fragments of earth settled to the ground and the light reemerged. Darkness was coming, as it always did after the light was done, but Meredith had no intention of closing her eyes and sleeping through its ascendancy.

She stepped off the porch and walked towards the barn. First steps were always important and she’d made plenty of them in her life. She’d not always gotten it right but she had always done it anyway. Change was upon her and with her eyes bright, head high and the spring still in her step, she was going to take these moments and add them to the canvas of her life; bright strokes of immutable gouache to catch and tease the eye and lead the observer to new and ever-changing movements and structures.

Meredith paused in the middle of the farm yard and breathed in the cooling night air; she watched the suns rays emerge from the the cloud and then slowly transform to the fading, heavy tones that would merge into the dark and heavy earth, signalling the coming of night. Change was hard, yes, but it was new, restorative and would always make the morning something to look forward to.

She stood there for a long time before finally walking on to the barn and the chores that patiently awaited her.