Unplanned Sitting

     It was one of those thoughtful Winnie the Pooh kind of days where one really isn’t walking as much as ambling, never lifting your feet too far from the ground. One of those days where you’re as apt to walk head on into a telephone pole as you are to trip over a crack in the sidewalk or step off the curb in front of a bus. You are nowhere and yet you are somewhere. In that somewhere you are very, so very present that now does not exist.
     Like the leaves that gave birth to many of Pooh’s rhymes, a piece of notebook paper drifts into your path. If it were not a thoughtful Winnie the Pooh kind of day, it probably would have gone unnoticed. The jagged perforations from its original spiral cover are tattered and uneven. The upper left corner has been torn. The wrinkles betray a piece of paper that must have been wadded up into a little ball and upon further reflection, restored. The writing almost fills the complete page, though the words it seems are few. And on this thoughtful Winnie the Pooh kind of day, you, of course, pick it up and begin to read.
     “I don’t know what I believe. I only know…” and there the message ended. The page was intact so the message was not lost. The ink looked full, not thin or blotched to make you think the rest of the message was engraved into the paper and not inscribed. No, the message was incomplete, or at least its written version. It had been torn out of a notebook and crumpled. Was there a completed version more pristine and profound? Was this just a warm up exercise or perhaps the question of the day, an assignment which was completed elsewhere? Or, was it a doubt briefly acknowledged whose humming was too shrill and swatted away like a mosquito?
     Since it was one of those thoughtful Winnie the Pooh kind of days, the message deserved a proper ending or at the least a proper disposal. Torrents of possible endings flood your mind, transforming the ambling into a sitting. Pulling a pen out of your pocket you complete the message.
     Looking around to see if anyone would notice, you return it to its journey like a bottle upon the sea. Your mission completed, you return to your ambling. After all, it was one of those thoughtful Winnie the Pooh kind of days. One of those days where you’re as apt to walk head on into a telephone pole as your are to trip over a crack in the sidewalk or step off the curb in front of Life.