Tangled weed and mangled brush,

Where's the end to this wooded trail?

Tangled thoughts and mangled past,

Where's the end to this would've tale?

I just noticed a violin playing from somewhere in the apartment complex.  It's either a kid or a beginner, probably both.  The player has a good tone though, doesn't scratch much.  And flat notes are quickly adjusted to the correct pitch.  I don't know what is being played, and it is slow and hesitant, but I couldn't help stand by the window and listen.  There have been many moments here when I wished I had my violin to keep me company.  Moments when I would have turned off all the lights and slunk to the back of my room and just wailed and scratched away.  It's something only I could enjoy, really.  I just never got too good and it's been downhill since my junior year in high school.  Often, I'm even sick of hearing myself play.  (If you can call it playing.)  But there's something about just holding the instrument.  My childhood is in that wood.  It was one of the first acts of kindness I remember, and one that probably helped to shape me a little bit: receiving the violin as a gift from my teacher.  It's a handmade one, and feels a little bigger than normal full-size violins.  There's a tiny dent on one of the faces, maybe from my bow.  The bridge was always loose, and I'd reposition it every now and then.  

The player is still plugging away, low notes and slow.  Careful.  Maybe hating it.  Probably unaware that there is an audience and he is being memoried back to before.  Probably unaware how potentially special that instrument might become for him in the future.  Probably, unaware that those low, slow notes are a gift.  But I know.

You know that glow in the morning, when the sun is peeking over the wall with one eye, but you can still sense his big smile?  You know how it comes into the rooms and leaves them a hazy yellow.  It's the morning yellow.  It's when everything has a shiny skin around it—the glazed sheen of sunshine.  You know that?

Me, too.

Sometimes, even though life isn't necessarily hard, living it is hard.  Sometimes you're a battleground between the blessings you know you experience every moment and the inescapable difficulties of aloneness and longings for things you don't have.  Sometimes you're just right in the middle of those times.

Like now.