Wonder……

In my best moments wonder follows me wherever I go like the wispy trails of a jet oh so high. It’s those magical times when I imagine life as if for the first or last time.
A time of great wonder in a little music, a little poetry and visualizing vistas unimagined. In order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful implanted in the human soul we so oft miss in our mad rush toward what?
Those rare moments when wonder’s tendrils tell me a rainbow is never found by looking down and curiosities reason is self fulfilling in due time.

Wonder, oh wonder….being the beginning of wisdom as I sit alone under the stars twinkling above. What about the galaxies inside my heart? I truly wonder if anyone will ever want to make sense of all that I was, am or will be.
 I oft realize we are nothing but impossibilities in an impossible universe looking for miracles. When our very existences are miracle enough if we were to simply shut the raving minds for but a moment.

Have you ever wondered that we’re going to die and that makes us the lucky ones? All those not born will never die. All the people who could have been here in our place but who will in fact never see the light of day or the wonder, outnumber the stars above.
It’s the wonder of the stupefying odds that you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here now, we privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds stand in our wonder here now.
And how dare we whine at our inevitable return to the prior state from which the vast majority has never stirred.

We the lucky ones can stand on the edge of a stream in the mountains, watching the brook trout in the amber current with the edges of the fins wimpling softly in the flow. When caught, they smell of moss in our hand. Polished and muscular, with backs filled with patterns of the maps of the world in it’s becoming. In the deepness they live, where all things are older than man and they hum of mystery and wonder benign.
They and all living things we share this blue ball’s oh so temporary stance with destiny’s grace are all wondrous things indeed, especially for those who learn to shut the monsters within.

In my best moments I think us here to wonder. To wonder. To ask. When wondering and asking about the big things, we learn about the little ones, almost by accident. It’s quite possibly true that we never know anything more about the big things than we started out with.
We’re all in a sea of wonders. We doubt. We fear. We think strange things, not daring to confess even to our own souls, rather having minds opened by wonder than closed by belief.


Wonder can be a wretched guest. It’s not careful with what is most fragile. If it breaks you, it shrugs and moves on. Without asking, it brings along dubious friends, like doubt, jealousy and greed. Together, they try and take over. Rearranging the furniture in our minds for their own comfort.
Oft times speaking odd languages with no attempt to translate. They cook strange meals in our hearts that leave odd tastes and smells behind. When they finally deem to go, are we happy or miserable?
Truth as patience is always left holding the broom.

Our oft times futile attempt at language is our way trying to explain away the wonder and glory of the world. To deconstruct or dismiss all that’s amazing and unexplainable. We can’t seem to deal with how beautiful the world really is. Nor how impossible it is to truly understand.

Isn’t a child’s world fresh, new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement? Unfortunately, that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is awe-inspiring, is dimmed before we reach adulthood.
If I had any influence with the Goddesses above and Gnomes below who are supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I would ask them to gift each child with a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the oft times boredom and disenchantment of later years. Would that that might be possible, I could proudly claim a small measure of victory and accomplishment to my life’s resume.

To my sometimes-great dismay, I’m no longer a child but still want to be, to live with pirates. Because I dream of living forever in wonder. The difference between me as a child and me as an adult is this only. When I was but a child, I longed to travel into, to live in wonder. Now, I know, that to travel into wonder is to be wonder. So it matters little whether I travel by plane, rowboat, book or by dream. That is what the pirates knew. There is only seeing and in order to see, one must be a pirate again.
Wonder is after all, only a spoonful of elusiveness beyond imagining for most.

My coffee gets increasingly better the more I drink and the closer I come to the bottom of the cup, where all the sugar is. I wonder if life is the same way as we approach the end.