About Honor (2003)
I locked the door and began to walk. I walked away form the house and through the snow that kept falling and falling down before my feet. And I stepped on the white flakes, and still they fell before me. I walked down the street and turned he corner toward the park. My heart weighed heavily on me that day, but I needed this. I needed to walk.
Where the stream flowed through the trees, the land gently sloped down to meet it, and there the white hills were broken by a pure black. Seldom can I recall such pure black presenting itself, but there the stream wound its way before me like a vein of onyx. I followed its course for some time, mesmerized by its sheer gravity, until I saw in the distance a group of old evergreens huddled together. They appeared so ancient to me, standing there like a remnant of a once thriving race. And their forlorn darkness, much like the stream, reflected my mood and beckoned me to come. As I entered among their number, my mind found solace, and the cold, icy winds remained outside where I had left them with my bitterness.
I felt gratitude towards these trees that harbored me in the cold. And I bowed my head to them in supplication. Taking out my hand, I placed it on the trunk of the closest tree. I wanted to know, to really know, the essence of my benefactor. Then the old tree stirred, its bark creaked deeply with its years in reply to my call, and a bird, no bigger than my hand, grey and brown and beige, awoke and was startled by my presence and by the tree’s words. It flew away from just below where I was standing, and my heart fluttered with the bird, in amazement, as it flew off. I did not know what to make of my encounter, save that I was honored. For it was then that I remembered a feeling, once thought lost. Or perhaps more of an assurance, of the immense honor that it is to be a human being.
