Last week I stood on the rim of a desert mountain valley, tanning myself in the ultraviolet radiance of a salt lake pan, the existence of which I had allowed myself the luxury of forgetting. This forgetting is either conceit or folly, I know not which for certain. Perhaps the surprise its discovery creates is a product of willfulness, slag and dross generated by a desire to avoid the unknown irrational roots that anchor a soul to the world.
Queries will be met with neither-confirm-nor-deny. Yes, it is there, people know it by its present absence. This is how I myself know it. Explanation is futile. How does the heart describe the strange machines seen at distance, the enigmatic materials moving under darkness, dissections of mythical extraterrestrials? Who would believe it? Who wants to try, for fear of being branded a flake at best?
I cannot answer in confidence. I look at the dry lake in my heart and marvel at its strangeness. My mouth strains towards words to vocalize what my inward eyes are seeing. My hands trace glyphs in the air and I interrogate myself in my sleep. The dreams. I want to understand why I dream what I dream. There is this underlying belief that my dreams would make sense if only my heart had the vocabulary to parse them.
It does not. Not yet, or perhaps more accurately, my mind does not yet understand the language being spoken. So I wander. No, damn it, not I, it is my mind that wanders. The trail it breaks veers from pampas to forest to lush jungles, yet is always taken aback by the sudden bursting into the arid flatness of a lake gone dry so long ago that the vanishing is lost from memory.
Yet, it is there. It is in the diamond core of my heart, like the grain of sand in the center of a pearl. It is good fortune to laminate life with the bright and the shiny. Mirrors and polish presented to the world in the hope that there will be no misunderstanding or misinterpretation by the world around us. By world, read those we love and humanity in general.
But that is the ideal. Too many strange things happen in this heart-that-is-and-is-not. Phenomena occur that I cannot explain to myself, much less to those around me. It becomes a race between what my heart shows to the world and what the world, in its information vacuum, makes up about my heart. Whispers behind hands, looks of concern or affectionate bemusement, irritated impatience: these are the usual currency of emotional trade when discussing my own personal theater of classified operations.
So last week, I stood once again on the shore of that dry lake bed, the one in my heart, and baked in the sun. Black machines moved in the shimmer, far away across the plain. I wondered if there might be aliens here. I pondered the existence of emotional programs so secret that even my own mind would be at a loss to explain why they are or what they do. Officially, this place doesn't exist.
Unofficially, it does. It is vital to my existence, even if there is no way to describe why. I do not ask questions of it as much as in the past, and that is a good thing, I think. The heart has to learn to accept its own terrain even if that spot on the map is marked 'Unknown', and trust the things that spring from it.
14 November 2013
08 November 2013
A Few Words on Transient Grief
7:48 PM CST. Exhaustion and lassitude for dessert. It is dark earlier, to which we are resigned.
There is no meter of which I am aware to measure the suckage of any given day. If there were, it would probably be available at a big-box hardware store, and there would be one in my tool box or glove compartment, right next to the voltage meter or the air pressure gauge where I expect it to be anytime I need to check some voltage or wonder what the pressure is in my tires. Which is not that often, as you might expect. Still, when I want to know if a circuit is hot or the sagging tire does not convince me, it is nice to know that the tool I need will be there.
Except for today. Today, the tool was not there. Come to think of it, it never was, and I am confounded as to why this distresses me so much. Maybe because I was grasping at straws, fighting for air through a dense thicket of gargantuan irritation catalyzed by a Greek chorus of grief that chanted all day in my hind brain.
It is a sunny day in November, in the Year of Our Lawd 2013, and I wanted to call my big brother and wish him a Happy Birthday! He would have been 50 years young today.
He would have been. But he is not, except in my memory and the memory of family and friends. The loss is four years old now, seeming just yesterday and forever ago. It was not until I was pounding on the steering wheel and screaming at the unknowing driver in the car ahead of mine, that I realized why my eyes kept welling up today for no apparent reason.
Big Bro would have been 50 years old today, and I am furious that I cannot call him up and give him some stick about it. He was always supposed to be older than me, and my heart has not yet wrapped itself around that unavoidable fact of our existence. Yelling at strangers who cannot hear me will not change all that, bit sometimes, on a bright November day, I do not know what else to do.
There is no meter of which I am aware to measure the suckage of any given day. If there were, it would probably be available at a big-box hardware store, and there would be one in my tool box or glove compartment, right next to the voltage meter or the air pressure gauge where I expect it to be anytime I need to check some voltage or wonder what the pressure is in my tires. Which is not that often, as you might expect. Still, when I want to know if a circuit is hot or the sagging tire does not convince me, it is nice to know that the tool I need will be there.
Except for today. Today, the tool was not there. Come to think of it, it never was, and I am confounded as to why this distresses me so much. Maybe because I was grasping at straws, fighting for air through a dense thicket of gargantuan irritation catalyzed by a Greek chorus of grief that chanted all day in my hind brain.
It is a sunny day in November, in the Year of Our Lawd 2013, and I wanted to call my big brother and wish him a Happy Birthday! He would have been 50 years young today.
He would have been. But he is not, except in my memory and the memory of family and friends. The loss is four years old now, seeming just yesterday and forever ago. It was not until I was pounding on the steering wheel and screaming at the unknowing driver in the car ahead of mine, that I realized why my eyes kept welling up today for no apparent reason.
Big Bro would have been 50 years old today, and I am furious that I cannot call him up and give him some stick about it. He was always supposed to be older than me, and my heart has not yet wrapped itself around that unavoidable fact of our existence. Yelling at strangers who cannot hear me will not change all that, bit sometimes, on a bright November day, I do not know what else to do.
30 October 2013
Stumbling, Falling
Fall is finally here, tumbling frantically downhill into Halloween after an uncertain ending to summer. Weather cools itself off in a spasm of pewter skies and spitting rain. Enjoyable in its own way even if it carries with it a nervous chill of realization that Halloween is just about here. People will "celebrate" this weird "holiday" in fits of trick-or-treating tinged with resignation or excitement, generally depending on one's age group. Or perhaps on one's willingness to embrace overindulgence in some form of socially accepted vice.
The leaves in this part of the world changed color seemingly overnight, sneaking up on the neighborhood like foliar ninjas. Ninjas bedecked in red, yellow, and orange cloaks twirling through the air to festoon lawns and sidewalks in coruscating displays of chaos theory that induce gawking. Such as it was on my errand-laden drive time today, out in the mist. One tree in particular, crowing to the world in a deep shade of red, nearly caused me to stop my car in the middle of a busy street, just to take its picture.
No pictures were taken, however. The car kept moving. The mind kept racing far out on front of it like a falcon on a long rope. The leaves. The colors. The metallic smell of rain. Sensory impressions gelled on the tongue, which burst into a question ejected onto the backside of the windshield.
"What happened to the time?"
The question shattered itself on the glass and rebounded into dizziness in my head. How did it get to be this late in the year, with summer passing by in a blur? The air in the car had a tang of incredulity in it, temporarily disabling my ability to swallow. How could it be the end of October?
That thought and a few garish displays of fake tombstones, Death and undead creatures clawing their way out of suburban-looking front lawns brought it all back to me in a rush. It is the end of October because the earth spins around the sun, nights elide the days and time marches on regardless of my attention span. Occasionally the fog lifts and notice is taken, only to further engender bemusement at what happens in the world beyond my shoulders.
It will be Halloween soon, a happening that always infuses me with a bit of low-grade anxiety. It is not a social event that ever cottoned to me, or me to it. I know the young ones dig it, my own included. They can celebrate it for treats, and that is the way of the world.
Me, I look forward to the fall as celebration of change in the air, manifested by the entry some years ago of my daughter into this world. She was not born on Halloween, thank heavens, but she sure made fall a treat. I drive on, past the decorations and into the swirl of leaves afloat in the October air. The colors blur into chaos and remind me of the love that is constant through all my seasons. It rises, it falls, it is ever there to catch me when I stumble out of time.
The leaves in this part of the world changed color seemingly overnight, sneaking up on the neighborhood like foliar ninjas. Ninjas bedecked in red, yellow, and orange cloaks twirling through the air to festoon lawns and sidewalks in coruscating displays of chaos theory that induce gawking. Such as it was on my errand-laden drive time today, out in the mist. One tree in particular, crowing to the world in a deep shade of red, nearly caused me to stop my car in the middle of a busy street, just to take its picture.
No pictures were taken, however. The car kept moving. The mind kept racing far out on front of it like a falcon on a long rope. The leaves. The colors. The metallic smell of rain. Sensory impressions gelled on the tongue, which burst into a question ejected onto the backside of the windshield.
"What happened to the time?"
The question shattered itself on the glass and rebounded into dizziness in my head. How did it get to be this late in the year, with summer passing by in a blur? The air in the car had a tang of incredulity in it, temporarily disabling my ability to swallow. How could it be the end of October?
That thought and a few garish displays of fake tombstones, Death and undead creatures clawing their way out of suburban-looking front lawns brought it all back to me in a rush. It is the end of October because the earth spins around the sun, nights elide the days and time marches on regardless of my attention span. Occasionally the fog lifts and notice is taken, only to further engender bemusement at what happens in the world beyond my shoulders.
It will be Halloween soon, a happening that always infuses me with a bit of low-grade anxiety. It is not a social event that ever cottoned to me, or me to it. I know the young ones dig it, my own included. They can celebrate it for treats, and that is the way of the world.
Me, I look forward to the fall as celebration of change in the air, manifested by the entry some years ago of my daughter into this world. She was not born on Halloween, thank heavens, but she sure made fall a treat. I drive on, past the decorations and into the swirl of leaves afloat in the October air. The colors blur into chaos and remind me of the love that is constant through all my seasons. It rises, it falls, it is ever there to catch me when I stumble out of time.
11 October 2013
But Then I Realized I Have a Smartphone and Have Never Been Shot In The Head
I woke up this morning with a head full of angst and remnants of unsettled dreams. I believe both were induced by a dearth of good money combined with a surfeit of bad government. Too much is too much, even when it springs from not enough. I did not face the day with confidence.
Stoic chewing through a breakfast that was so much better than the mundanity it suggested. Having low expectations will do that to a soul. The taste faded quickly, my mind and belly experiencing a familiar disconnect. Normally, food captures my imagination but lately it has been more of a minor distraction in the face of the thought-pressure I cannot cease generating. I ate. Tasted, not so much.
I loaded my gear into my car, trying not to think about the new tires it truly needs, but may not get soon enough. Another money cliff over which I could fall. A deep breath and a shake of the head succeeds in dispelling that particular cloud. I have some work to do, thankfully, enough to make it through the day.
Into the car, onto the road. Local radio for company. The smart phone chirps intermittently, offering directions which veer from helpful to annoying. But I do not turn it off.
The work proceeds smoothly, mostly. Later, when I begin to grow tired and hungry, the fingers grow clumsy. The mind grows dull. Minor errors multiply. Epithets escape gritted teeth. It is done.
Setting off for home I experience some small glitches in the technology I carry. My annoyance is somewhat out of proportion to the severity of the offense. It grows when faced with some truly questionable driving decisions inflicted upon the innocents by a careless boor who must have received their driving lessons via old-fashioned mail. I grow cranky.
Upon arrival at mi casa, the tussle with technology is not over. The computer awaits, it cannot be avoided, so to the interface I must. Cables and image files and downloads and uploads; the party is just getting started. Files are sloughed off, folders created, bits and bytes are pushed around.
It gets close to dinner time when I realize my early-morning funk never quite went away. Partly hunger, I know, because I skipped lunch. A rumbling belly nudges me in the direction of the kitchen, in search of some leftover soup. Disconnected dissatisfaction with modern life hovers about, a thin gray cloak settled over slumping shoulders. The relief was in the technology, though.
Today on the internet, I saw a short video about kids playing musical instruments made out of recycled landfill debris. A cello. A violin. What looked to be trumpets and other brasses. Kids whose families earn a living by culling refuse and recycling it to sell for money. They were playing symphonic music, and playing it well. It was so beautiful it made the filth and trash disappear.
My smartphone was losing some of its shine. I sat there with my bowl of homemade soup, lip quivering.
Today on the internet, I saw an interview with Malala Yousafzai, the young lady from Pakistan who garnered international renown when members of the Taliban shot her in the head, all because she championed the rights of girls and women to be educated. She was composed, passionate and inspiring. Her words were so beautiful they made the violence and hate disappear.
A group of violent reactionaries attempted to kill a 15-year old girl who wanted to be educated. I thought of my own daughter and her love for school. I bit my lip, swallowed my soup.
It was then that the cloud lifted. I have a phone that can access the sum total of human knowledge. I have the resources to make good food to fill my belly. What I do not do is make cellos out of oil drums and cast-off wood. What I do not fear is being targeted for assassination because of my gender and desire to gain knowledge. In those, I am blessed.
And if anyone cannot be inspired by true triumphs of human ingenuity and character, if a "Landfillharmonic" and the courage of a girl who truly had a lot to lose, well, then I am unsure there is hope for them.
As to myself, I wept a little, relieved that I am human.
Stoic chewing through a breakfast that was so much better than the mundanity it suggested. Having low expectations will do that to a soul. The taste faded quickly, my mind and belly experiencing a familiar disconnect. Normally, food captures my imagination but lately it has been more of a minor distraction in the face of the thought-pressure I cannot cease generating. I ate. Tasted, not so much.
I loaded my gear into my car, trying not to think about the new tires it truly needs, but may not get soon enough. Another money cliff over which I could fall. A deep breath and a shake of the head succeeds in dispelling that particular cloud. I have some work to do, thankfully, enough to make it through the day.
Into the car, onto the road. Local radio for company. The smart phone chirps intermittently, offering directions which veer from helpful to annoying. But I do not turn it off.
The work proceeds smoothly, mostly. Later, when I begin to grow tired and hungry, the fingers grow clumsy. The mind grows dull. Minor errors multiply. Epithets escape gritted teeth. It is done.
Setting off for home I experience some small glitches in the technology I carry. My annoyance is somewhat out of proportion to the severity of the offense. It grows when faced with some truly questionable driving decisions inflicted upon the innocents by a careless boor who must have received their driving lessons via old-fashioned mail. I grow cranky.
Upon arrival at mi casa, the tussle with technology is not over. The computer awaits, it cannot be avoided, so to the interface I must. Cables and image files and downloads and uploads; the party is just getting started. Files are sloughed off, folders created, bits and bytes are pushed around.
It gets close to dinner time when I realize my early-morning funk never quite went away. Partly hunger, I know, because I skipped lunch. A rumbling belly nudges me in the direction of the kitchen, in search of some leftover soup. Disconnected dissatisfaction with modern life hovers about, a thin gray cloak settled over slumping shoulders. The relief was in the technology, though.
Today on the internet, I saw a short video about kids playing musical instruments made out of recycled landfill debris. A cello. A violin. What looked to be trumpets and other brasses. Kids whose families earn a living by culling refuse and recycling it to sell for money. They were playing symphonic music, and playing it well. It was so beautiful it made the filth and trash disappear.
My smartphone was losing some of its shine. I sat there with my bowl of homemade soup, lip quivering.
Today on the internet, I saw an interview with Malala Yousafzai, the young lady from Pakistan who garnered international renown when members of the Taliban shot her in the head, all because she championed the rights of girls and women to be educated. She was composed, passionate and inspiring. Her words were so beautiful they made the violence and hate disappear.
A group of violent reactionaries attempted to kill a 15-year old girl who wanted to be educated. I thought of my own daughter and her love for school. I bit my lip, swallowed my soup.
It was then that the cloud lifted. I have a phone that can access the sum total of human knowledge. I have the resources to make good food to fill my belly. What I do not do is make cellos out of oil drums and cast-off wood. What I do not fear is being targeted for assassination because of my gender and desire to gain knowledge. In those, I am blessed.
And if anyone cannot be inspired by true triumphs of human ingenuity and character, if a "Landfillharmonic" and the courage of a girl who truly had a lot to lose, well, then I am unsure there is hope for them.
As to myself, I wept a little, relieved that I am human.
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