Lark Ascending

by Silas House

There was some comfort in knowing that, although the world was being torn in two, there were still remarkable things that went on being, that refused to lose their shine. Some days it was only the wonder that kept us going.

I nodded, which in looking back was an odd thing to do. I should have embraced her, held on to her, said we’d never get separated, told her what she meant to me. But there’s never time for that when you need it.

Almost always there is something in us that wants to live. It might be precious to say that my desire to survive was fueled by some deep love for the world, but the truth is that I got up because I would not allow them to win. “Them” being everybody who had led to this moment for me and my family. All of the people who had power when so many didn’t. I wouldn’t let them beat me. So I started walking.

For two years we were as free as two people can be. To taste and be tasted. Every part of us humming and alive. If you are very lucky it happens occasionally that your body fits with someone else’s in such a way that you feel you are not two separate people but one being, that you’ve gone beyond the physical. To know each other by heart. To sit and be silent with someone else. To feel as if you are alone, yet with someone. To feel safe.

Now that I am an old man, I know that there is much to believe in, although I do not have a single word for it the way some people do. To be too certain about belief is a dangerous thing.

Seamus’s eyes had sorrow in them—this old boy knew what deep loss was, just as I did. Two creatures can always tell that about one another.

There were too many thoughts swirling in my mind when I was still. They were always present, but if I walked, there were more distractions. If I kept moving, the grief had a harder time catching up with me.

If anything in this world was holy it was a tree. This much I knew for sure.

had to go on believing in something. I didn’t know what exactly. A mystery. That’s what it was. Some people called the mystery love and some people called it God. I didn’t know its name, but I knew there was something, even if it was unknowable. I had lost everyone I had ever cared about. I needed something to be tethered to, or some way of feeling like I could speak to everyone I’d lost.

“Zealots are always ready to take over. No one ever thought it could happen here, but we were overestimating human beings. Turns out it’s easy to convert more people to a cause that takes power from others, that thrives on meanness.”

She was a person who was used to always being in motion, yet when we stopped to rest, she allowed herself to relax completely, lying flat and enjoying a patch of sunshine that fell across her face.

We never realize the halcyon days until they are over.

The only thing that carried me through was an occasional surprise of beauty among all of the desolation: the startling yellow of gorse, the glowing green of mossy rocks in rushing streams, the gray skies, the churning sea, the crumbling stone walls. The trees, the trees. But most of all there was the way the little dog walked alongside me.

But I do know that the worst thing in this world is the intolerance that leads to so much violence.

I’ve heard people say, “We destroyed our world,” but I don’t agree with that. Some of us did. The rest of us were powerless. The rest of us are the ones who had to pay the biggest price.

It is hard to say if a place makes people a particular way or if the kind of people who congregate there shape the place.

There is strength in numbers but there is danger in it, as well. Danger of one desiring a rise to power. Danger of many being blinded by one and doing his bidding.

There are all kinds of beauty in this hard world and if you ask me, none of them can be matched by wildness.

I’ve burned, and that’s what I wish for all of you. To burn with anger, desire, joy, sorrow. All of it.

A person does not have one life, but many, all within the same lifetime.

our story was a happy one, because we were together. There were days of hunger and misery that lay ahead for us. There were days of starting all over. We did not give up. We lived. Days of celebration and mourning. Times of quiet and fire, of low storm clouds and skies so blue they stirred up that ache of melancholy that comes with witnessing beauty. Days of simply surviving. But always, there were days of wonder.

I’ve been through many hardships, just like all of us, but most days the grief is balanced out by the pleasures: a delicious meal, the smell of cedar on my hands, the sound of rushing water, good friends. Joy and sorrow are the things of life, the two things always tangled together. Anybody who’s ever lost anyone knows that.