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A dark figure sat on the side of a hill, looking down upon the stillness below. The silence was deafening, you could hear your own heartbeat. MacLeod gazed upon the patterns, like frozen waves, hardly breathing. Zen: the art of becoming so much a part of something that you finally become nothing. Banishing all thought, and allowing yourself to simply Be.
The perfect moment was interrupted by a cough; "Come on Mac, what is this? You said you wanted to show me a garden…" Richie? Memory flooded from the depths of his mind. The boy never had been able to wrap his overactive mind around the concept of Zen.
He spoke to his absent friend as if he were with him; which, in a way, he was. "This is a garden, of a sort. You just have to let go of your preconceptions, don’t think too much."
The ghost-voice was still there, "Only you could think of sand and stone as being a garden. You’re too serious; if you were any Deeper, you’d never get out again."
Duncan shook his head slowly; "Most gardens are temporary; this at least is Real." He looked down at the great stones rising out of the white-sand sea. "The bones of the Earth."
He recoiled suddenly as if from a mental slap. Maybe this wasn’t merely memory. "Snap out of it, Mac. Rocks aren’t Real; rocks are dead. If you start thinking like that, you end up worse than Methos. If you’re going to live forever, then you gotta Live!" Duncan sighed: how could he live, how did he have any right to live, when everything around him died? Darius, Tessa, Charlie; Richie, by his own hand—Oh God!
"Relax, Mac" whispered the ghost-voice; "it wasn’t your fault. Besides, I’d rather spend eternity a part of you than inside any of the creeps we met over the years." He could almost see that lopsided grin. "You can’t keep living in the past, especially you. It’s bigger than you are. Carpe Diem." It was probably the only Latin phrase the kid ever learned; his own personal philosophy, right up to the end.
Seize the day: maybe that was all he
could do. One day at a time; one moment at a time if necessary. With instinctive
grace, MacLeod rose to feet, balancing on the hill as if it were level
ground. He took one last look at the scene below, it was no longer tranquil
and serene; it was sterile, it was conformist, it was boring. A mischievous
grin spread slowly across his face. Suddenly he broke into a run, picking
up speed as he rushed down the slope. Wind whipped through his hair; he
hit the sand at a gallop and didn’t stop. Never looking back, he left a
wild whoop hanging in the still air and a ragged trail of footprints through
the sands of time.
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