Last year, I took some photos which I've always very much liked. They're not great pictures at all, it's just that I love Kelly Drive in the Spring, when the cherry trees are blossoming. Last year I was living in the area and could run and bike there daily. This year, I'm far away, off in the soulless corporate suburbs.
This morning, an ex with whom I very infrequently communicate wrote to me and said, "Whenever I see cherry blossoms, I think of you." It was a bittersweet note, but appropriate: they are lovely for a time, breathtaking, really. But they're gone soon enough, and then all that is left is pictures, memories, and the impressions of the moment - warm breeze, blue sky. Scent wafting off the blossoms, the burble of the placid river. A touch, a glance. A memory of the feeling of hair between my fingers; of empty-blue eyes looking into mine. Of the way she pointed her toe when we kissed.
Everything pleasurable is so brief. The nature of the world is suffering, and even those things where are joyful are tinged with sorrow because we know they can not last.
And so she thinks of me, when she sees cherry blossoms.
Everything pleasurable is brief.
