A Commonality of Days

I had finally gotten the computers off to bed, dreaming of tomorrow's currents. The lights had dimmed, and I was reminded of a humming by its cessation. The library floor had an obscure look to it, as if a fireside waited around every shelf.

Then it was that I heard the familiar calling. I walked softly, oh so quietly, so to see the dust gathering upon the old and rarely read. Here I found mirrors to my passion upheld by an age of whispers. Photographed faces ravaged by a time unseen in their eyes.

These patient teachers awaited, all silent but for the leaves turning to the passion of my curiosity. My eye was long held by these lavishly illustrated pages from the Flathead Herald-Journal of January, 1894.


With this evidence of time's passage, I began to realize a commonality of days. Records of births and deaths, accomplishments and misdeeds. Ideas and events bound in hope against ineluctable dissipation. Whatever the morals of the writer, time shows that this will be what we said.

As I walked home past the slumbering citizens of today's Kalispell, I thought back over all those yesterdays, and asked with wonder what it means to be human.