(037)
Two figures huddle close on a frosty riverbank, wrapped up, restless and fidgety with their shoulders hunched against the cold, a satchel resting at their feet. Across from them a single tree occupies the other.
“You ready?” One says, his words strained and clipped between his chattering teeth.
“No, not really, but I know I have to.” Says the other, sniffing.
“You don’t–”
“No, but I do, you know.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s just the starting–”
“Yeah.”
“I try and almost like…blindside myself by starting when I’m not expecting it, and then it’s over–”
“Yeah, totally, then it’s over, once you’ve done that first little–”
“The first little motion towards moving, like the little–”
“The impulse feeling–”
“Yeah, exactly.”
A quiet falls between them that starts to crackle and freeze into silence, like the thin sheet of ice that rests atop the water’s surface.
“Some things are easier than others, though, right?”
“Mmm.”
“Like, something where you’re not sure of all the steps, or of how to start.”
“Yeah, sometimes you need to have a plan, even if that plan is knowing the questions you need to answer to make the real plan.”
“That’s it; you need to know your blindspots almost, and that can be hard because you’re blind to them. It’s like you’re lacking the language to ask the question to find out the answer to the thing you don’t know to make the plan to complete the goal.”
“Yeah.”
“‘Cause sometimes you start and you’re halfway through and you catch yourself and you think ‘what the hell am I doing?’ and you truly don’t know what you were hoping for when you started, but you were hoping that you would have figured it out by now at least.”
“Yeah, but it’s not necessarily wasted, you know? You’ve started, and that was the main hurdle.”
“Yeah, but then it’s doing something with that start, I suppose.”
“Maybe, but maybe that’s also not so important? Maybe the point of getting the ball rolling isn’t always where it ends up, it’s just to have it rolling?”
“Yeah…maybe.”
Another pause begins to grow into something more. A deep sigh from one plumes their misty breath out into the air between them.
“Should we–?”
“Yeah, just a couple more minutes.”
Their movements have slowed by now; standing with an unabashed stoicism, both breathing deeply in a manner teetering on acceptance.
“Alright god damnit, let’s go.” One says, unbuttoning his coat.
The ice sheet cracks and separates as the two naked figures enter the water, hooting and hollering as it touches the usually hidden parts of their soft pink bodies.
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