Fact and Fantasy

How much is fact, and how much is fantasy?

Winter mornings are dewdrops. They settle like the treble in a song, only to fade away like echoes. 

I can hold them on my fingertips, but the next instant they are gone. Elusive. Just like peace. Just like people you don't really know.

Come to think of it, I realize that everything in this world is transient. The barking of the dogs in the neighborhood. The incessant crying of a baby. The footsteps of the milkman. The steady, tremulous tone of someone making a point over the phone. The chatter of neighbors.

Yet, only a few moments have passed before I can remind myself that transience is, after all, a tricky business. Everything appears temporary because it is warped by time and spaced into a fragment of its entirety. What appears to be a puzzle, is actually just one piece. 

I am wearing the most concrete example of this irony of interconnectedness. Of permanence. Of durability.

It wraps your hands and skin in the warmth of several interwoven strands. Very robust, very- redundant. Wool.

There is so much of it that two strands coming undone don't rattle you or expose a part of you to the frigid mercy of the weather. Which is why and where from, I suppose, pulling some strings was born.

My woolen cardigan gives me a lost treasure. An inherent part of all of us that the cold chips away at, steadily. Warmth. Why is a sullen person said to be cold? Because the warmth has been sapped out of them, but in this case, not by the weather. By something larger. More permanent. More robust. How ironic.

Impermanence is a light thought. The dogs won't keep barking. The same music won't play on forever. Someone will, eventually, placate the baby back to its happy self.

The light wind carrying the chill of quivering air will restore balance. The odor of an open tank will be masked by the fragrance of jasmine. Or soap. 

That nothing lasts forever would be a blessing outright. Not even in disguise. 

Then why do I need that wool? Those crumbs in my cardigan pocket from yesterday's rampage of cookies? A message on my phone that is at least five years old? A 2000s- song on my YouTube playlist? My grandmother's old handkerchief?

I know that nothing about them will ever change. Fixed in memory- firm and stolid. Evidences of times that are past.

Can I change any of them? They are not flexible glass that can be blown into any shape. More like solid wood. Rigid. More mind than matter. 

Wood is not brittle. Neither is wool. Glass is. The cold is. Brittle.

Is warmth brittle? 

If an old handkerchief carries it, if chocolate cookies carry it, if an old message carries it, if stern words carry it, it finds portions of itself in small objects that do not change- then,

Warmth is like wool. Tincturing a part will not taint the threads of it.

Perhaps, permanence is a blessing after all. In disguise.