Yesterday; walking up the shallow slope of the street, following the snaking line in front of me, feeling like a wave in a racing river breaking into white foam. The rain pelted through my skin, through their skin, through the dark skin of the pavement and into the ground. A scream went up around me and gradually rippled through the entire crowd, filling my ears with excitement. I was in the noise.

At the top of the slope I turned my head, fighting the racing stream, and gazed upon a thousand waves moving behind me. More than a thousand...more than I could ever count, because counting the waves on a moving river is like counting the exhilaration in a single scream. They flowed past the buildings, the rocks by the stream bed, and around the swirling eddies of people recognizing old friends and turning back to find them, only to be sucked back into the current.

No one was behind me, no one was beside me, we were not people but parts of the flowing river. It is impossible to really know the river unless you are in it, a crest among its many waves. When I left the water I became a tree upon its bank, just as alive, but finally rooted.

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