the river. a deep and powerful metaphor

when i ride across the rainbow-lit bridge at gray's lake and look at the modest but electric des moines skyline, i feel like i belong here. des moines feels like home.

but when i look at the ice-jammed, swirling, black water in the raccoon river, i can't help but think that i'm like that river. always moving and churning, stumbling over rocks, swirling and back-tracking.. .on my bike ride this morning i had no less than 20 ideas running through my head. about five of those ideas were great, and i was doing everything i could to hold onto them so i might do something cool with them. but that's really hard when the other 15 things are worrisome, impulsive, and just plain stupid, trying to inch their way in and bully the good plans so they all run away and only the rotten thoughts remain.

the river is always thinking it's going someplace. free and flowing, in control. rivers are funny because THEY ARE going somewhere, but at the same time, they're mostly corralled by the banks and really never change course or go anywhere at all.. .dreaming big but failing to see those dreams amount to anything.

sometimes the waters try to jump the banks and flood out over everything...impulsive, and sometimes they might sneakily try to send a little channel off in another direction to see what's going on over yonder, but interest in the new adventure is often forgotten and the channel usually dries up over time... short attention-span.

the river will sweep things up and do things it doesn't mean to do when it's running fast and out of control...over-emotional .. sometimes it grabs good stuff and sometimes it grabs toxic garbage. it can carry things for many miles without really getting tired, but it's also been known to slide unwanted tote up onto the banks and beaches after while.

the river is almost always cold. the cold can be refreshing on warm, rosy days, but on some days, the cold is just plain miserable.

the river is a sign of life, it can clean things and move things. people can drink it (though i wouldn't advise drinking the raccoon water) :-) and play in it. it splashes and spits and ices over and melts. it's always active...sometimes quick and deliberate, sometimes rushing and pushy, on the verge of flood stage, and sometimes it even slows down, just rolling and enjoying the scenery, and that's how i like it best.