run toward the roar

an analogy i heard once always stuck with me. it said, when a lion is stalking prey, the lionesses flank then encircle the creature, while the lion roars. when the lion roars, the creature turns on its heels (as anything hearing a roar would), and runs right into the claws of the waiting lionesses.

the lesson, run toward the roar. toward the very thing that scares you.

sometimes i feel this is all i do. finding aged toothless lions, a shadow of fear, something that incites a reaction by the imagination more than anything. it's as if someone has a cardboard cutout of a lion and a music box recording and is projecting the sound from behind the cutout, and only by approaching this fearsome creature, is one ever clued in to the fact that it's a sham. fear is a sham.

i have come to believe this wholeheartedly. but sometimes, like a moment earlier today, it gripped me and my blood ran cold.
i sat wide eyed and motionless for a moment, then i pursued it. followed the fear to its inevitable demise as a whiff of smoke.

i do not always have this kind of courage. sometimes i run and run myself ragged before stopping to see there is nothing chasing me but my wild imagination. the idea of what could be after me.

crunched my car this weekend. that car has been through it with me. i hate seeing it in the mechanic's lot, out of play for a few days. but my pony is strong and i'm sure will have at least eight more lives. seeing as this is the first time in all our adventures my dear pony has had to be sidelined.

the thing about it is, i got to do everything i planned and so looked forward to because my car kept running. even after i clipped the suv and took out my headlight, my pony kept running. purring even. it loves me.

that's the thing about this life, connections. i'm so connected to people and things, it's as if there is some great energic network of which we are all a part. i'm sure this is the case. anyone can see.

but cars?

the inanimate?

don't know. i don't ask those kinds of questions because they seem absurd. but tell me don't you feel a kindred to some things, even inanimate things? better yet, to creatures? there has been this hangabout vulture, i don't know what he wants, but i've never been so close to a vulture. and so i talk to him. ask him how he's doing. he just walks away. a large bird, and he's probably only an juvenile.

but his ease with himself, his gangly feet and unappealing profile, the blackness of his skin which i admire. he just walks about like he knows something, something i once knew. we all go down to dust i say, we all go down to dust.

and the vulture flies away, and we are safe in pony, and i trust the lion is just a figment of my overactive imagination. i believe and trust. i will not let that go. not even when i am most afraid.

i will stare fear in the eye, and topple over the cardboard cutout, just to get a glimpse of what is really haunting me.

nothing.