Stacked Stones

When I walk in the woods, I pass by a rocky outcropping that looks like a low wall. Some of the stones are embedded in the earth and others are lying loose next to the trail.  I started stacking the stones into a cairn on the day I took my first walk--one per day. Then  a few days into my stay,  I discovered half of the tower had fallen over and I began rebuilding, once again at a stone per day. A couple of days ago, I noticed someone had started his or her own cairn.

This morning, I had a discussion with a fellow writer about structure and order.  She had a flashback in a piece that was so long it distracted from the present moment of the story. I had a story that I'd recently revised and in the course of the revision, I told her, I'd used almost every sentence as it had originally been written, but the order of the sentences was now so rearranged that it was as if I'd put them all in a bag and shook it. I didn't even know it was possible for that to happen, I told her.

That's how things seem for me right now--out of order, knocked down and stacked back up in some new precarious way and maybe someone else is doing a bit of the stacking.  I'm "boy crazy" at a time in my life when I should be savoring everything  I've built. A time when I imagined love would be indistinguishable from commitment. A time when  passion and comfort would have the same heft.

Instead, I'm estranged from a huge chunk of my own history, walking in the woods and wondering who the hell moved the trail.