I’ve seen you visit from all four corners of the world, which tells me that our sensibilities are similar. We all value beauty, though not everyone may understand how best to respond to it. Some stop at admiration and appreciation, observe and find contentment in what they experience around them. Others never find satisfaction and must stretch out to possess, to try to quench their unslakable thirst. And still others seek to tear down and destroy what their injured psyches refuse to understand.

Why are you here?

Somewhere… here, there, down the street, across the pond… someone wakes up with the dawn, the first light hinting its arrival like a train not yet visible from around the bend. They arise and wander in their mental twilight, knowing they should be up, but not remembering why. It’s the same force that gets us all up in the morning: the expectation that something might change a bit, that things will be just a little better today, a little different, that they’ll understand more clearly, that they’ll fall into step with the world and find that their rhythm matches the earth’s, and they’re home. At least for today. They don’t know where to look or what form it will take. But they hope.

At the periphery of the room, in the margins of their collective memory, the form materializes. As they turn to see more clearly the woman who for an instant seemed so real, she evanesces into nothing and they are startled awake. They’re alert and wonder at what they beheld for just a moment, as in a dream. She was not real. She was also not a memory, at least not a personal memory, nor an amalgam of personal memories. She was evidence—we do not yet understand well enough to despair. We don’t yet have our questions answered so as to lose hope. We’re young; too young to grasp our significance or the forces of courage, honor, fear, restlessness, and love, and others about which we’ve not yet learned. She was the dawn’s herald of the light about to breach the horizon’s gate, on the cusp of chasing the shadows and revealing the full splendor of the morning. She’s hope.

They are those who have not yet heard.

Photo by Zach Rose.