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Wednesday, November 28, 2007
... and then ...
Winter. It's here. Sorel boots battle footsy elements while L.L.Bean coats battle upper body temps. Snow piles up. Deep.
I like how the ambient light grows outside when it snows at night. I can almost tell how hard it's snowing, based on the light from the outside window.
Three a.m. baby rocking...I can see the glow outside...snow falls deep around my house and holds the winter light. The log glows in the fireplace, the occasional ash dropping through the grate, sending up quiet sparks in the darkness. The darkness...it begins to creep in around four p.m. after an all day twilight. A northern latitude winter swirls around us in white and black, twilight and gray, warm hearth and icy cold.
I think bears have the right idea about this time of year up here, don't you?
I often wonder how the fancy china feels, sitting there in it's display cabinet so many months, only to be brought out for a flurry of activity in the final waning two months of the year. Does it think "oh, we're so special, we only get used twice a year," or does it think "they've finally remembered we're here. We were beginning to think they'd forgotten about us."
We always get out the fancy china for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Our kids even eat on it...even though we only have four place settings of the stuff...and only four of the fancy silver as well. We've just never expanded. Maybe someday.
But for now, we're only fancy twice a year.
In other thoughts, tomorrow is our anniversary. Fourteen years (if my math is correct). I know all the statistics say we should be getting on with the divorce already, but right now we don't have the time for that sort of nonsense. When I look another fourteen years down the road, I still see myself with the same woman. I can't see myself with anyone else. She completes me. We have our struggles, our ups and downs, we get tired and don't spend as much time as we should with each other, but that's all just right now...the kid years, I'm going to call them, I think. Those fast and furious years with kids when you act more like a united front against another warring faction than like lovers (we are outnumbered now, you know). When it blows over one day, and all is quiet in the house again, I'll look over at her and say "Hey there, you..." Someday, I'll have her all to myself again.
I love her, and I always will. Happy anniversary my love.
I had counted the tiles on the roof of the cottage. The bricks. The blades of grass. I had worked on the Harley using the book, to no avail.
We had sat, in silence. For days on end. Nothing changed. Nothing came, nothing went. Coffee was brewed. Food, partaken. A haze had dropped over my eyes. He did nothing to prod, nothing to change or help. He just observed. He just whittled. He just created.
I had created as well. I'd gotten good at trees especially. These were my favorites because it seemed I could explore more variations in limb and leaf than when making mountains or rivers. Trees existed both above and below the ground. Mountains extended into the ground, but their roots were as dull to make as their tops. Trees, though, were as interesting above, as below.
I don't know how long it had been. The sun rose and set but it's changes never made a temporal impression on me. When I was tired, I slept. When I was hungry, I ate. When I wanted to talk, I spoke.
But there was something creeping...creeping in the back of my atrophied mind. Something dark and distant. Something infinite and large. Something more. I tried to whittle what I was thinking, this deep dark something, but I just couldn't. As if it was outside, and I was inside. As if it was above water, and I was below. It was just beyond a barrier that I couldn't even discern.
Finally, one sunny day, just like all the others, sitting out by the fire, whittling, I stopped and looked at the old man and asked, "Where am I?"
a matter of reckoning...boyd, tx writing project...IV
In the reckoning of time and events, there stands in Boyd, TX. a singular event by which all others are reckoned in comparison. In any other culture, this would be "year zero" of the calendar. However, since Boyd is situated within a larger governmental structure, and cannot stand on it's own time table, it must reckon things within this larger structure, while still maintaining it's own independence. To wit, a pattern of language has evolved in Boyd, since 1983, that seeks to maintain "year zero" in the minds of it's inhabitants. For example, if you were to ask someone at Jim's Doughnut (were it still in existence, that is) shop at 5am on a Saturday morning in the mid 1990's "Say there Earl, what year was it they got rid of the dirt parking area in the middle of Highway 114 in Downtown where all the good ole boys would stand 'round their trucks crushing beer cans?" Earl's answer would sound something like this: "Oh.. well, let's see, Boyd won State in '83, so that musta been 'round '85."
Time stopped that day in 1983 when Boyd's Football team won the State AA Division I Championship (see water tower picture to the left). I remember it. I was there. I was thirteen. It was cold the day the marching band played in a three quarter empty Texas Stadium, and it was the first time I'd ever marched on fake grass.
There is a problem now, however. You see, time has stopped again in Boyd. It stopped in 2004 when Boyd's Football team once again won the State AA Division I Championship (again, see water tower at left). I vaguely remember this, since I was not there. I was already living here, in Spokane.
What's the upshot of all this? This: I don't know how to tell people in Boyd when I moved away now. I don't think I speak the lingo properly anymore. I now live outside the temporal matrix which has been set up by not one, but TWO State Football Championships. Still, I never paid a lot of attention to sports during my time in Boyd. I'm not sure why.
There was a moment, last week, during all the hubbub and mêlée surrounding the various illnesses in our little family, that I wanted to scream at the medical establishment for letting us down. But I couldn't. My voice had gone. My audible voice, that is. My internal dialog regarding the red tape surrounding trying to get appointments for all of us, call-backs from nurses, and etc, though clouded by fever and pain, was indeed, less than happy.
Today, we are on the mend. We are not all well, but the hassles of health care for the sick are, for the time being, behind us.
What's funny is, we're the lucky ones. We have insurance. Pretty good insurance, comparatively speaking. Clinics can be less than accommodating when the sickos come in, though. When you're somewhere in between something regarded as "life threatening" and "non-urgent," the system gets confused. Like trying to make a custom order at McDonald's, they "don't have a button for that." Come in for a regularly scheduled visit, and all goes smoothly. Come in to the emergency room because you've lost a limb, and you'll get immediate care. Come in with a fever, an inability to swallow or drink, and all-over chills, and "please wait for the next available provider, sir."
Sixty minutes later, be seen, rapidly, and be sent on your way. No number to take. No line to stand in. But still a bit of a wait, right? Oh, and that'll be ten bucks each, thank you very much.
Oh well. American healthcare is ok, right? It's ok to run a humanitarian industry like Wal-Mart, right? Sure it is. Capitalism will always work itself out, won't it? Sure it will, provided the bottom line is always more important than the human element.
No. Not the film. Sickos, as in all of us here at Toadmaison. Swollen sore throats, low grade fever...etc...etc...etc...
But, I'm a dork, and came to work anyway. I'm sitting here in my office, hands freezing, neck boiling with warmth, and head aching. I think I may leave soon. How are you feeling today?
I sometimes run back through old posts on this blog, just to see what I've written over the past few months. When I do this, I will occasionally come across things that I barely remember writing, like this following piece. Re-reading it today, though, it makes me smile and laugh a little. I like it, for some strange reason. There's a disconnected weirdness to it that somehow appeals to me. Do you like it? If so, what do you like about it?
Have a great weekend everyone!
I've been flying, nonstop. It's claustrophobic and smells of human sweat in the cabin. On other days, it's cool, and the clouds burst open and cleanse us all.
Inside the vehicle the cold is extreme Smoke in my throat kicks me out of my dream I try to relax but its warmer outside I fail to connect, it's a tragic divide
Yogi wears a headscarf to keep the cold out, and the warm in, and sometimes to keep the warm out, and the cold in. I suppose you could say it's a dual duty turban. Turbans are useful that way, I suppose. Under his bridge, bucket and spade in hand, he digs up tomorrow and sets it free. In the folds of his garments and the gray of his beard, he finds liquid freedom, he dips tomorrow in his cup, and sucks the marrow out of the future.
Dark matter flowing out on to a tape Is only as loud as the silence it breaks Most things decay in a matter of days The product is sold the memory fades
Do you remember hearing the very first sound? The sound of the beginning of the universe? I remember. I was flying, attached to my selfless rocket, flying through the ether when it caught up with me. My ear perceived, listened, and then there was nothing but the cacophony of creation to contend with afterward. The grumble of the first sound decayed into every other sound that has ever been made since.
Blackened fish fly through the ever present fires of the upper atmosphere on Jupiter. They freeze and burn, all at once. But they live on, unconcerned with the whirling red eye that eats them alive. An icy wind flows around my naked body as I fly, unfettered, unhinged, un-winged and unconcerned, into oblivion.
It was a typically wonderful fall day in eastern Washington state. Cool, bright, crisp, and full of color. We sat outside, on a college campus full of all the signs of fall, at one of the many concrete tables around what was called the Mall area of the campus. It was the central courtyard, a large round tiled area with two water features opposite each other.
He looked up at me, finally, over his coffee, and asked, "How did you know it was me?"
"It was a guess, really. I saw you a couple of years ago, when you first started teaching here, and just put the pieces together." I replied, as I lifted my coffee to my lips. As I lowered my coffee, I could sense his discomfort as he stared at me, his bright unearthly blue eyes piercing me and searching for the meaning of my words. "You could have been more discrete, though." I continued nonchalantly, looking away.
"What do you mean?" he looked slightly defensive now, drawing his shoulders up, slightly.
"Well, the slicked back jet black hair, fashioned into a braided pony tail? The thin goatee? Professor of Philosophy specializing in religion, no less!? All dead giveaways, of course." I laughed. He looked deflated.
"It's not as easy as it seems, you know."
"I imagine not. Don't worry. I don't think anyone else knows."
"Well, what is it that you want to know?"
"I just want to know how you came to be here...I mean, just really, why? Why here? What are you doing here, exactly?"
He sighed, took a sip of his coffee, then slowly set it down on the table. He sat for a minute, looking almost relieved. He was gathering his thoughts, I could tell. He glanced at his watch, sat up straight, took in a deep breath, relaxed, and said "How did I get here? That was the first question, right?"
"Right."
"I was fired."
"Fired?"
"Fired. Laid off. Downsized. Whatever you want to call it." he reiterated, not without a little bitterness in his voice.
I was startled by this revelation. "When did this happen, how long have you been laid off from your previous...uh...'employer?'"
