March 19, 2018 - Twilight

An old man walks down a cold and wintry road at twilight and remarks to himself how everything looks black and white with no color at all.  He knows that dusk has a way of playing with colors, watering them down until they melt away into a sea of grey as if they had never been.  And now that everything is grey, who’s to say that there ever really was any color anyway?  But it doesn’t matter.  He knows it doesn’t matter.

There are enough memories in his head to fill the ocean, and he reflects upon them as he walks.  This country road used to be filled with the comings and goings of many country people.  He remembers the one-room schoolhouse he attended, long since removed and placed in a city area as a “museum.”  Visitors from away come to see the old wooden building where he learned to read and write and do his sums.  He can still see the children running in and out of the school, playing “kick the can” at lunchbreak.

Twilight.

There were many horses going up and down the road with many styles of wagons and buggies, and there were cars and farm trucks, too.  They were newer and much louder, and the horses didn’t like them at all.  Now those vehicles are old and they’re also in museums.  A modern car or truck will still race by often enough, and he must be careful on the road, especially in the twilight, lost in thought as he is, just another grey form in a grey world.

There were farms, small family farms, the kind that fed just a handful of families.  In the spring, there was tilling and the smell of winter’s manure spread upon the fields.  And there was growing and sunshine and abundance.  The sun was warmer in those days, golden and beautiful, and from sunup to sundown his day was filled with work in the fields, from childhood long into his adult years. 

Then there was the work of harvesting and preserving and preparing the fields for winter's sleep.  All the little farm stands on the side of the road bulged with produce.  City people would come by and purchase fresh fruits and vegetables, and there was laughter and smiling and abundance.  There was always a harvest dance after all the hard work, and then came the pig slaughter and the deer hunting.  Yes, they were busy, always busy.

In the winter the farm buildings were repaired, fences were fixed and expanded, and animals were cared for.  A large ice rink was set up in a lower field at a friend’s farm, and everyone would go to ice skate and have outdoor winter parties by the side of the rink, with plenty of small fires to warm frozen hands and toes.  And everyone knew everyone else.  It was a colorful community.

Now the people are distant.  The cars and trucks race by at breakneck speed, never stopping to say hello or wave.  But he doesn’t recognize the faces anyway, so perhaps it’s just as well.  There are still a few tiny family farms, and those people he knows but doesn’t see often.  There are no more harvest dances.  That’s the problem, he thinks to himself, there are no more harvest dances.  That was where anything worth knowing about happened.  Now there are mainly scattered homes, nicely kept, where everyman keeps to himself behind closed doors.

Life is black and white every day now, he remarks to himself, not just at twilight.  There is right and there is wrong and there is everyone’s version of both.  And not one version is like unto another’s.  There are lines drawn everywhere.  Some of the imaginary ones are stronger than the real ones.  But mostly, there’s the just the lack of color, the lack of life, the lack of harvest dances with fiddles playing and sweet cakes to eat and pretty girls everywhere.

He looks at the sky.  Soon it will be nighttime.  And he is ready for it.