Standing in the middle of the parking lot.

Lots of cracks, heaves, holes, crevices.

Makes me think that the earth doesn't really want to be paved.

Standing under the trees on the riverbank..... the yellow leaves glow like a stained glass window under the sun. The forest is God's cathedral. I don't care what anyone says. All the architectural masterpieces of mankind will never compare.

I like to lean against a tall tree, wrap my arms around it, and rest my ear on the bark and listen to it breath. The branches shudder in the breeze and the long narrow trunk waves indiscernibly and I can hear it..... it sounds like breathing.

In a depression in the bank, where the ground rises up behind me to hide the buildings, and the yellow leaves are a vaulted ceiling above me, and the river flows slowly by in front of me..... always the same, always constant. I drop to the ground, and rest my back against the trunk of one of the larger trees. There I sit, listening to leaves fall all around me, right beside me, trying to discern between the sounds of falling leaves and sparrows in the bushes, squirrels on the ground. My knees are pulled up, and I'm seven again, in my magical secret hideout where time stops and no one can find me.

I think I'd like to be an elf..... like the ones in Lothlorien, because they make their homes in tree tops, tree tops with golden crowns, like these ones. I'm looking straight up as I think this, to the point where the trunks of the trees sprout into a million branches...... that's where I'd build my house, if I were an elf.

Squirrels are kind of like elves. Not that they're beautiful, or elegant, or wise, or maybe they're wiser than they look, I don't know. But they make their homes up there in the trees, they run from branch to branch as though it were a spacious manicured lawn.

What if one of those squirrels was afraid of heights?

It would be a slap in the face of squirreldom. What would you do if you were a squirrel, and you were afraid of heights? The very thing that you were meant to do would fill you with terror, and you'd find yourself sitting here on the ground, beside a thick tree trunk, looking up at the tree tops and wishing you were an elf, or maybe a squirrel that wasn't afraid of heights.

I can draw a parellel to myself here, but I bet you knew that was coming. Figure it out yourself. I'm not afraid of heights. I love heights. The higher the better. There are other things, things that I'm meant to do but I just can't work up the courage.

I'm not seven anymore, and time can't stand still. My lunch break is over, and I make my way along the river to where a path leads up to the property. As the five riverfront buildings come into view, I can't help but think how beautiful they would be if the stucco was only chipped and covered in vines and moss.

I always love the way things look once they've been abandoned by humanity. Like they're finally free to get back to the way they were before they were ripped from the earth and fashioned into cold hard breathless things.

It's so easy to forget what I am, down here by the river. So easy to see what I could be.