Shouldn't…but Do

Sunlight rolls through shadow on the ball field. It is coming my way. Apollonian consciousness dramatically overtaking dimmed turf. Pale shadows become bold in brighter light, it makes me uneasy.

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$300.00…an hour. The going rate of a good divorce attorney in my town.

If money be the medium of energy exchange in our culture, we can – over time – tally the cost of freedom, the price of consciousness extracted from decades spent plying arid, frozen ground once called marriage.

The profligate habits of X. a partner I married years ago left me with total life savings of $14,500. Embarrassed? I am humiliated. But it won’t change anything.

So after today, retainer and fee, $11,340. That’s it folks. Poverty is unquestioned, but can she escape X for even that? Will psychological riches gained through brutal self-reflection – years spent tortuously balancing pain and hope – require a broken hearth and home in the end?

What price consciousness? Stay tuned, the clock is ticking…

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I almost stopped the car. Gusting wind haphazardly first blowing, then slamming, a storm door open and shut. Disconnected, unattended violence in front of a worn grey front door, locked tight.

The springy flexibility of the door long since blown, it controls – admits or denies – nothing. Just a futile, quiet screaming as it flew from one end of its range to the other. Slammed open, slammed shut.

Those in my car saw nothing, I saw a hole in the universe. Sometimes that bothers me.

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Becalmed. My anemometer reads no wind.

I like weather. I like to understand what’s coming, what factors conspire to create certain conditions. To be right there when it blows in.

The anemometer has registered no digital data since autumn, when it descended into a funk. I lacked the time to attend to it given the general bunching of life into collaborative divorce proceedings and the living of life.

Funny, the anemometer returned to life Wednesday night, same night my upcoming-ex copied me on the email ending our collaborative process, hell-bent on litigation. Early into next morning I watched fluctuations in wind-speed, breezy, mostly out of the south-west.

Now its becalmed, working just fine though. Waiting for the next storm.

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A full moon sailed the skies last night, got caught in a tree in my backyard long enough for me to notice the silhouette of bud break on the branches. New leaves, not yet unfurled, waiting, ready.

The sun rose a spectacular, orange fiery ball on the horizon, it too caught in the trees and the atmosphere, long enough for mere mortals to view its extraordinary brilliance.

And set firm and straight this morning, with a jaunty wave, the mailbox saluted Helios.

Last evening, while we attended baseball practice, the Neighbor called on my cell. Apparently the husband of the Very Apologetic Driver was surveying the scene. Throughout the evening, the Neighbor informed me, a couple of trucks, several children, three husbands, two wives and maybe a dog or two occupied my drive, intent on repair.

Meantime, baseball practice ended and the local elementary school Art Fair beckoned. A seemingly enjoyable stint turned disturbed when it became apparent the Ex-in-process was following us.

Returning to the Homeworld afterward, upset children in tow, it was a relief to see a stalwart mailbox, contained and containing, ready and willing come what may.

One evening – skills polished, brilliant young creativity on display, dark unconsciousness spread as fog covering, disintegrating connection – while simultaneously, community, repair, restoration of solid groundedness.

Life is neural, organic, such activity at different levels, different phases, created, orchestrated in a three-hour period of time. Like the human brain, a single factor can have cascading effects, but so too discreet networks function, repair, rebuild. Interconnectedness is not beyond capture – in mind, community or universe.

There it stands, waiting, ready. Like the moon it has potential, like the sun it was worth waiting for. There is outgoing mail today.

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The mailbox has issues. Suspended unnaturally, it sways silently with the arrival of news, like some broken-hinged ghost town door, quietly surveying what is no longer there.

The landscape, though still brown, is shrugging off winter. The mailbox just shrugs, as it sits, replanted on its metal poles, next to the broken post that once held it firm. Mailboxes are not transient, but this one is, waiting for a solid stake that will give anchor. Never meant for the dance, the mailbox has issues.

Next to the mailbox, the jagged post is broken at ground level, protruding slightly, but plunged like some ugly knife, deep.

I could fetch the husband of the Very Apologetic Driver, but I will not. I have issues.

Excavated almost a foot down around the post, the ground is compacted, dry, frozen untouchable memory. Unfriendly and unwilling, the post has staying power with no intention of vacating the premises.

We’ll see.

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Like walls, doors are an essential architectural feature. No getting in, or out, without doors. Walls contain and hold up, but doors let it all out.

Doors punctuate walls. Although walls can get built up, or tumble down, their premise is structure. More cheeky, doors are both structure and movement. What an expanse life would be without doors. People pacing up and down, unable to get through. Doors are fundamental, it’s good to know where they are.

Some of the best doors, though, are unseen in a landscape. Present, but not visible. Stumbled upon, they provide some of life’s greatest moments.

But some of those unseen, not-so-accidental, doors are the most frightening. No choice but to go through, hope for the happy ending, sometimes there, sometimes not.

Locked doors, lots of those in life – sometimes that’s good – they protect. But sometimes that squeeze stems from rusty hardware, broken, unhinged, unable to mediate any longer, cold and heat rush in, exposes things that shouldn’t be.

Doors themselves have personality, made of different things, designs, paint. Some doors swing, lots are hollow, the sturdiest are solid. Even two doors that look exactly the same are not, their use and outlook differ, experience matters with doors.

So too with doors, like real estate, location is everything. Front doors have a lot to say and see – most of the drama. Back doors live on the sly, admit and deny the real world. Side doors are in-between the headlines and the backpage, no show there. Side doors are for friends, or those making a discreet exit, good for emergencies too. Let you out where it’s safe, not too bright, not too dark.

Doors have their own space, their own Way. We call it a “doorway.” It is a place in-between folks, like me, prefer. Doorways are like the moon, sometimes open, in phases, partly closed, peeking. Time in the doorway is liminal, reflective – a threshold between here and there, always changing. Doors, like the moon, enable, inhibit, keeps things interesting.

No matter how humble, all doors have moxy. Without something breaking up the landscape now and then, symmetry becomes stifling. Doors are where the new stuff comes in, falls from the sky, creates an escape or a new paradigm. Doors don’t just offer an outlook, like a window, they let you make good on it.

Doors – we slam them, throw them open, answer and close them quietly. Always something coming and going, have to love doors, it’s where all the action is.

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Snow. Frozen precipitation. The arrest of flow into solid, due to freezing conditions. It stacks up, adds up, confounds movement – of cars, animals, emotions. It sits there, waiting.

And the ground that it waits on, freezes, holds in, dries out. Holds things that were once stuck there, like mailboxes.

And the snow melts, and the ground gives in, but not quite because it isn’t yet warm enough, but it is trying. And the mailbox falls over.

Too cold to set a new stake, too much warmth to be cozy in the snow, but the mail must get through. A new season arriving, but not quite here, assistance is still needed.

Two metal poles and some bungee cords. The poles hold up, the bungee cords hold on. It’s okay, it works for now.

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