Between Everything and Nothing

October 1st, 2011. 9:52 p.m.  Cool, rainy, quiet.  In other words, almost perfect.

This weather makes me want to smoke.  I don't know why.  Tobacco smoke makes me physically ill, and I loathe the smell of it.  Yet here I am envisioning myself with ciggie in hand, massaging my temples and blowing a thin stream of second-hand out through my nostrils.  That will not do.  Not tonight, not ever.  I shake my head a few times to make the feeling go away.  All at once, I am tired.

This house is quiet, much quieter than I can recall any other place in which I have lived.  The last place that approached the level of quiet here must have been my boyhood home; both houses have masonry walls.  It has been decades since I have lived at length inside the ones in which I grew up.  The neighborhoods are similar and they both possess their own peculiar quiet.  My current one seems to have a bit of an edge.  Or perhaps it is my imagination only.

This room I am coming to enjoy.  It is the largest bedroom I have ever called my own.  The room in which I slept in my old house was larger, but I rarely was alone in there.  Psychically, my current room seems expansive because it is just me.  Well, me, memories and anticipations.

Rain falling.  I turned off the air conditioner yesterday.  Tonight, I leave the fan off so I can soak up the imperfect silence.  I hear that rain through open windows, gentle hiss on the leaves and grass, backed up with a faint chorus of crickets.  The sound lulls me.  Soothing whispers borne down to earth on the breath of angels.  There is no straining to listen.  There is no need to work so hard.  It is enough to lay still, and listen.

The rain falls.  I lay back on my pillows with my eyes drooping shut from the lassitude of the day.  In doing so, the rain sound intensifies.  The reduction of one sense, sight, allows for the sharpening of another, hearing.  Laying here, slowly melting into my bed, I listen carefully, and relaxed.  Drops of water strike the earth, the window glass, the eroded edges of the wood fence in the side yard.  The feather force of the drops pings the gongs of my heart and soul.

Rain speaks, it whispers in unhurried consultation with the night.  I lean toward the sound.  Water makes holes in the breeze to tell me that between everything and nothing lies love.  I dream of walking straight and narrow between them, hands outstretched, and am filled with the warm embrace of knowledge, of knowing that this room in which I lay will not always seem so big.

Magpie Tales 85: Dream of the Disaster Relief Engineer

Image via Tess at Magpie Tales

Thirty five years in the business
Cleaning up diabolical messes
He lay abed in a mess of his own
Veins occluded by whispers of Morpheus

Harrisburg, Pripyat, Fukushima,
Ionization writ in the blood and bones
In fevered sleep he breathed, laughed:
Unlikely angel come to carry him home

Sunday Meditation #8: Water Through Stone and Tree

September 11th, 2011, along the Patapsco River.  Morning, standing on railroad tracks.

For the first time in a long time I was just far enough away from the roads and the machines of modern life that I could truly hear the sounds of nature.  The river was some tens of yards away, and the valley was thick with green leaves.  It was some minutes before it sank in to my head that the only sounds I could hear were my breathing, the crunch of boots on gravel, the trill of water over rocks and the cries of birds out in the trees.  I stopped to consider this small miracle.

I was on my way to the ruins of an abandoned hospital for a photo shoot.  The path I took to get there was along the rail line that followed the river.   The route took me across a bridge and through a short tunnel bored under a small hill.  The tunnel was made of brick, stone and concrete, constructed in 1903.  I was slightly nervous approaching the tunnel.  As short as it was, I had the small fear that a train would come along as I was in the middle of it.  It was wide enough to step safely away from the tracks, with small niches in the brick for a person to stand, presumably out of range of coal smoke and steam back in the early days.

I hurried through, just the same.

It was as I approached the far end of the tunnel that I heard it all.  Drip, drip, drip.

Water was seeping through the arched roof overhead.  Small puddles on the rail ties, glimmering like mercury in the light shining in from outside.  I slowed down a little to watch my footing.  As my breathing slowed, my hearing became more acute.  There, I heard it!

It was a hawk, keening from the trees ahead.  Its sharp cry put all other sounds in sharp relief.  My pace slackened further as I stepped out in to the silvery daylight from the overcast sky.  The hawk cried again, and I could hear the river murmuring sweet nothings to the rocks over which it flowed.  I ceased walking, and stood still.

I could hear the blood rushing through my ears.  A faint rustling from the trees as a small breeze blew.  I could not see the sun, the clouds were opaque, but its presence was known.  Another cry from the hawk.  I stood and listened, to the water through stone and tree.  I heard no cars, no planes, no raised voices.

I heard peace.

Powdered Rusk

September 30th, 2011, 9:55 p.m.  The Wee Lass sleeps, I am alone in a cool room. The night surrounds.

It has been a year of posts for me, yesterday, to be exact.  365 days of posting once a day.  A record for me I never intended to set, but once it came close I could not stop.  It is good exercise, but it has left me exhausted in a creative sense.  But I couldn't stop.  Perhaps I should take a break, soon, revitalize and get some other things done.  Tend to the garden, as it were.

It was made clear to me tonight, as I was wiping down the kitchen counters.  I could see some bread crumbs scattered on the laminate, a wheaten corona around the humble silver carcass of my toaster.  I realized I had not emptied the crumb tray in weeks, so I moved the toaster towards the leading edge of the counter in order to clean it.  I slid the tray from its slot, and was amazed.

Two thin sheets of metal, a forked tongue in the mouth of the miniature dragon that browns my bread.  They were obscured by a thick layer of parched crumbs, the detritus of multiple mornings of making toast.  I considered briefly storing them in a jar in the vain hope I would remember to use them in a sauce or maybe to coat some fish for frying.  But then I remembered how long it had been.  There was probably dust in there, and some of the crumbs were so hard it might have been like eating sand.  I tossed the crumbs in the rubbish bin, feeling slightly sad.

Those crumbs stayed on my mind as I sat down and tried (not) to write.  My mind, a wetware toaster cranking out thoughts golden brown, crispy and hot.  My crumb trays are getting full, though, and I need to empty them out.  I let you know if I find any thing worth saving, amongst the dry and carbon black bits scattered on the bottom of my mind.