Little Roots

To walk through the woods in the rain is a particularly wonderful experience, giving feel to the seen and focus to an instance. It is (in the natural sense) as being the ground, the dirt under the leaf bed, where the mat of little roots feed the forest. Twenty three years ago, I was walking from our Splendora house through the woods to the studio, it was raining hard and the creek was backing up, I tried to walk across the creek on an old pine log, all the bark had fallen off, this left the log with a very slick surface. As I got about half way across, I slipped and fell on my back with my left arm slammed against the creek bank, it torque broke the big bone and it became useless, I had to reach with my right arm and pull my left arm down from above my head and tuck it in close to my chest. I pushed myself backwards up the creek bank with the heel of my shoes. I got out and started walking back through the woods toward home. But on the return trip I had a whole different thought process going through my being. Hello Paradox, what did you do in school today?

James Surls currently lives and works in Carbondale, Colorado and Splendora, Texas.