“They were people who had no special interest in religion or God, in expanding their minds or reaching a new level of consciousness, until one day they simply decided to change everything. The most interesting thing about the book was that it told of how, in each of those lives, there was a single magical moment that made them set off in search of their own vision of Paradise.”—Paulo Coelho, Veronika Decides to Die
When the world finally turned, it changed fast. From a cool spring that seemed as if world would never warm or dry—it did. The full ditches cut between open fields and raised gravel roads went dry, and their bare mud bottoms cracked, skin peeling upward, in the almost-summer heat and sun.
Dormant corn, waiting for the heat of the world, woke and shot—dark green—into the sky. Bean fields waiting to dry, to be worked, and planted shone now in symmetric, fine-laid lines of light, fresh green breaking through the soil.
The dark, saturated earth of before dried into pale brown. White rock roads ground and broke into chalk beneath the wheels and weight of traffic, rising in after-wake as plumed contrails suspended in air, showing direction of travel to every movement in the distance, before settling back from sky and blanketing roadside foliage in its dust.
It was a time of transition—from spring into summer, near the longest days of light—and in the warmth and light of the world, all existence seemed alive.
Orange daylilies spread in full bloom throughout the countryside, their orange petals unfurled revealing sunburst centers with pollen-coated stamen waiting forwind or visiting bee to stir and move the life-dust from anther to awaiting stigma.
Ryan’s thoughts were drawn to the lilies. In this annual window of time, they appeared coloring every roadside, ditch, and fence row of the country.
They were relics of homesteads—once present and since reclaimed to open space—living testaments to a former dispersion of rural community of families, farms, and lands that became ever smaller and more homogenized as families give up, take the money and leave, and fields grow larger and more open: fencerows, ownerships, and histories removed for the sake of modern utility.
This was the romance Ryan imagined. Maybe there was truth to his imaginations, or maybe it was all only story, a created fiction to shape meaning and romance into a living world as viewed.
Still, to Ryan, the lilies represented more than imagined history. They spoke of more than a past. They held a romance. To him, they symbolized an ideal and future, too. In their presence and bloom—long stalks, orange petals and sunburst centers when revealed—he thought of her.
He imagined them as her favorite flower. That was as his mind believed. Maybe he read and remembered right, or maybe it was all imagined. Either way, he wanted to know. As they drove together down the road—white contrail rising in their after-wake—Ryan’s eyes held to the lilies beyond her face and window.
As he stared into their color, Rya asked, “Are these your favorite flowers? I thought you shared once that they were, at least these where what I imagine as a memory. I thought you shared that once, and that’s how I’ve remembered and believed ever since, but maybe I imagine wrong.
I’ve never asked, but I’d like to know. What is your favorite flower?
I’ve wanted to impress you for a while. I’ve wanted to share of me in a hope for chance to learn of you, but maybe I went about it wrong. Maybe I talked too much and asked too little.
What are your favorite flowers? What are your favorite thoughts? What else do you want in life? What do you want to experience? Where would you like to go?
Do you want children? When you were little, how did you imagine the family you dreamed?
What gives you the greatest reward when you experience it lived? What do you want, right now, of life? What is your ideal of a future?
I don’t know any of these, but I want to. I want to know you.
That’s another reason I share. I thought, if I shared of me, maybe you would like who I am and, one day, maybe you would want to share yourself with me.
Maybe I went about it wrong. Maybe I should have asked from the start and simply listened. I want to know who you are, not just your face, your name. I want to know You.
I don’t know what you think of me, if you think of me at all, but I think of you. I wonder. I want to know You. I’ve rarely been the first to start a conversation, but I want to with you.”
Ryan slowed and gazed on the flora of the roadside as it rolled as backdrop to her contemplative face. In company to the orange lilies, sweet clover rose tall and opened in flowering panicles of minute white blossoms adorning the tops of branching stalks. Violet colored wildflowers opened too. Indian paintbrush blotted as dappled orange in the distance across a canvas of native prairie.
Brome rose in stands of open heads draped loose with large seed. Fescue held with tighter tops, smaller seed, and orchardgrass shone with rounded tufts like small, broad paintbrushes as each grass matured and set seed in accordance to their own lifecycle.
Of all the flora, Ryan fixed again to the lilies; some with yellow veins running from leaf to sunburst centers, like rays of light stretching outward from opened flower-heart. He discerned the fine detail of pollen-dusted stigmatas, whole flower hearts blanketed and covered in fine yellow—life conceived and future affirmed in the filling and transposing of life-dust into opened flower’s womb.
“Maybe this could be the start,” Ryan spoke. “Maybe this could be the start to learning. What’s your favorite flower?” Ryan asked again. “I imagined it was these, but maybe I imagined wrong. Maybe I invented it entirely in my mind. Whatever it is, I’d like to know…”
She smiled. The gold of the falling sun absorbed into her eyes and warmed the glow of her tanning summer skin.
She answered, first, with a question. “Yesterday, you shared a passage of magical moments in the lives of common people that led them to set off in search of their own vision of Paradise…” she paused in contemplation. “What is Paradise to you?”
Ryan thought of a Dream, a Vision, and the moment that moved his soul to search. He knew the Vision, his Paradise.
He answered, “A sunset and a smile shared with a soul that sees and knows me for all I am. Does that sound crazy?”
He believed he could sense her soul. She glowed, not in the light of the world but, of an energy and aura all her own.
“No,” she responded, smiling and still glowing. “That sounds like Paradise to me.”
Ryan listened, spellbound in her light.
The sun was falling, and she was there. Maybe Paradise was more than a Vision: something real, manifest—attainable in this life after all.