Changing view

Wait a few minutes and the weather will change. So does the view out my windows. I notice when my nose isn't buried in the computer screen as I scan and edit what I type as I listen to dictation after dictation. I have had to stop putting the camera in my office because I want to pick it up every few seconds and photograph another change.

Each moment something different passes outside. The sounds change. People walk by. Sometimes the same people walk by at the same time every day in their own personal groove along the pavement, moving a little differently each day that tells me what kind of day they're having. I've noticed the elderly keep to a schedule, determined, no matter the weather, to maintain their schedule and structure, maintaining their health at all cost. Then I think of myself at that age, clinging to health and life and forcing myself to keep moving, afraid that if I stop I might die. Or maybe they keep moving because they need to feel alive and the movement, even in the face of arthritic joints and limited range of movement, is at some proof they are still able and haven't given in to time and age and motivation.

For me, the proof is writing. As long as I can string a few words together into a coherent sentence, make some sense of what I see and feel and experience, I am still alive. There may come a time when I will have to give up typing because my hands have succumbed to age and arthritis or because a stroke has paralyzed me, or part of me, but then I will seek out technology that will allow me to think or say the words that will be typed or inscribed so that even a prisoner of a damaged or recalcitrant body I can prove I am still alive, still functioning, still writing.

I understand those people who walk by every day. I choose a more mental path, but I am still moving -- at least in my mind.