Shouldn't…but Do

The word is out.

Minds of every age consider the question of what medium, what  expression, best gives evidence of the human condition – what  form best presents humanity as it passes into history?

The trick is preservation, observation, without concretization.  Concrete is heavy, tends to crush what it captures.  Dogma is rarely illuminating.

Words, pictures, thoughts, shared at high speed.  Instant access, instant message to friends.  Friends – a word being drained of  meaning.

Twitter, Dogg, blogs, electronic touch, touch down, restlessly move on to the next touch, the dogma of these days.

Uninhabited words zinging back and forth, some cleverly constructed, some not, valued for arrangement, rather than content.   Neuronal massage, maybe a little dopamine, and then off for more.

What is it that can express a human moment, or a lifetime, that holds and releases, costs nothing, cannot be horded or sold, and usually contains the indelible essence of any person?  Something understood across any language, both ephemeral and explanatory, that  cannot be electrified, painted,  or destroyed?

The word is out.

It is a sigh.

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Same snow, different day.

It is back.  The plow wall.  Two feet high, three feet wide, frozen road slush slung up around a neighborhood corner and slammed across my driveway, blocking access to car and mail carrier alike.  Snow blower won’t touch it.

Offspring at school, the plow wall is left to me.  It is not going anywhere, and apparently, neither am I.

Cut, clean, quick.  Hurled over my shoulder, snow fort fodder.   I will pay for it in pain tomorrow, but not today.

The unreasonable pile of stuff that usually gives me breathless pause – worked, attacked – shovel by shovel.  Save the grief, it is done.  Cleared.

Make room for what is coming through.

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C. terniflora.  A vigorous, late flowering member of the clematis  family.  Mine resides on a wooden lattice fence.  By August, in combination with a half-moon gate, this mature vine voluntarily takes on a trumpeting elephantine shape.

In bloom, hundreds of star shaped flowers exude the fragrance of vanilla, making good on its common name sweet autumn clematis.  A munificent vine, it provides refuge for birds,  bees, and me.

Come autumn,  garnished with scarlet, orange, or yellow zinnia’s for eyes, and other floral accents for bejeweled cape, the Hindu Ganesha, Remover of Obstacles, Lord of  Roads emerges in the  shape of that clematis.   His presence, as with all deities, constitutes both warning and  blessing.

After petal fall, gloriously red coloured fruit – achene –  appear, attached to a plumose style, feathered for flight.  The seed-headed puff balls appear as tangled dancers, sashaying forth, arguing, receding again as the styles fluff and slim with rain, humidity.  Gone to seed, the vine is almost as glorious as full bloom.

By January, sun, storms, and snow have weathered and worked the seed heads to their limit.  The cherry dancers have cleared out, the heated, tangled arguments have lost  importance.  Many seeds remain, now only  in congress with the single whiskered style that might carry them on – that must carry them on – before a new season’s growth surges and laughs at their withered beauty.

Those brown seeds, and the empty receptacles that held their kin, alone, wind torn, represent the full imperative – they are the beginning, they are the end. The tangles are no more.  Cutting winter air brings clarity, leaves only germ, past and future, the seed – all in one.

Though there is moisture all about, locked in snow, small icicles hanging off  crinkled leaves, and stored deep in the root, the vine is dry.   The tangle, for this plant, this season, is done.  Stoic, vulnerable, beautiful in its aged state.  It tells a tale.  Its ends are met.

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Tis’ the season.

It has been a year.  Time has worn on, time has worn down.   From the perspective I love best, it has been a year of great depth.  And that is all that can, or should, be said.

Autumn stretched long this year, plentiful  time for breakdown, decomposition.  In hopes of a spring I pray one day arrives, I cleaned up part of my garden a few weeks ago.

I have a favorite pair of garden shears, bypass type.  I should call them secateurs – but they are not.  They are old, rusted, purchased a lifetime ago while living in Canada, yellow handled, maybe $10 new.

They have persevered – assisted, been left in the rain, found, stashed, forgotten, used unmercifully – and continued to work with me as I built, maintained, and still  try to save my garden.

Working in November to cut ornamental grasses, I  noticed my efforts, and my shears,  were having little effect.  Serious blades opposing each other, but no progress.  Upon inspection, the spring between the handles had broken.

I sat for awhile with my shears on that grey day, back against the faded wooden fence.  Like friends, these shears have been with me, helped me work, helped me  find pleasure and meaning  in sometimes backbreaking, mind- numbing labor done in the spirit of a greater cause, a bigger, richer landscape.

Like the spring in my shears, friends help me come back, regather energy and tension needed to do the job.  Brute, blunt force cannot accomplish what the spring in a shear, or in my step, can accomplish.  When a spring breaks, sharp, great forces dulled by loss of rebounding connection pass each other without purpose, focus lost.

My shears gave me years of service, and in their end,  gave me a precious gift realizing the quality of resilient relationship I hold so dear in friends.  Aged, maybe missing a spring, but never to be discarded,  they will always have a safe home with me.

Tis’ the season, and this is my holiday greeting, the only I have energy to send this year.  Thank you, bless you, may we all have health, and maybe a bit of happiness in the coming days and years.

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Forget the calendar, I need only the garage door opener to remind me it is December.

Last week, I made the mistake of admiring the fact that the door was still working.  A year ago, the device broke in early December and financial straits being what they were, I was unable to have it repaired until early February.

Last Friday, in a rush to pick up my son, I exited the driveway, pausing as I pulled away to notice the garage door was going back up.  Furtive attempts at disconnection and other jerry-rigging were of no consequence.

The result of leaving my car outside in freezing rain was frozen car door locks.  Note to self, the old trick of heating up the key does not work on car locks anymore.

I scraped up some cash  for the service call, hoping the mechanism had not completely given me up for lost.

The diagnosis was a faulty bearing,  causing the motor to lose awareness of its limits.  It could not ascend high enough to admit, could not descend low enough to rest.

A restless machine, bearings shot, worn out of shape.  I viewed the torqued oblong metal piece – once in the round – misshapen by relentless stress to exceed its natural boundaries.

$75 and it is no longer confused.  Opens wide enough to admit my vehicle, closes gently at the level.  Something to that.

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Cloudless sky, brilliant day.  Minimal snow, heavily glazed streets of ice.  Snapping clarity to the air, to the lines of house, tree, car.

Weather makes things apparent.  Car treads, heretofore unseen, are sharply preserved.

Where rubber hit the road, moisture was squeezed out, leaving dry pavement within tread marks. Long gone cars left their trail in  falling rain that froze almost instantly.

On walkabout, these narrow ice free trails are the only way to navigate crackling sheets once known as streets.  Switching from car, to truck tread, and back, I pick my way through the neighborhood, stopping in my driveway to admire the dizzying glare of noonday sun off the road.

The path I follow was crafted by freezing conditions.  Those conditions make my journey dazzling but treacherous.  The  gift in the treachery is  the preservation of a track I can  follow.

Inclement weather makes things apparent –  that which slows my way, also shows it.

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A Christmas party.  Friends to hug,  strangers to meet.  A room warm enough to wear heels, flirty black dress, glittering, dangling earrings, hair up, guard down.

The bar and buffet table tempt and treat without a single dish containing tuna or peanut butter.

Faces recede, and the warmth of this place, of these souls, gives light to my heart and my face — or is it the gin?– regardless, a true gift of Christmas.

Across the room, a man glances my way and smiles.  I am surprised to remember I arrived with this one, and  will leave with him too.  He is kind, intelligent and curious, I have no idea how that happened.

Dance music playing somewhere beckons couples without frenzy, the room is alive with the season and community, inside and out…

I am transfixed by Christmas lights on a dark, rainy night.  Opting to pay for outdoor lighting, rather than indoor lamps or heat, my house is dark and chilly at 54F.

Thick socks, thermal underwear,  jeans, turtleneck, shirt, sweater, hoodie and  ubiquitous stretch knit gloves replace the gay apparel of my flight of fancy.  My Santa hat is a nice touch though.

I have not been asked to dance in 20 years.  I think it far more likely I will meet my end with a terrorist than a kind man.

But one is not the loneliest number.  That dubious distinction belongs to two in a poor relationship of any duration.  Though my future is uncertain, the bright filaments of coloured strings of lights warm my heart even as my skin is cold.

Lights in the darkness, warmth amidst the cold.  Life is good.

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The artist is out there.  She is in here too.  And in you.

But the Artist lives and works in the far away realm of California.  The Artist measures time, seasons of creativity, in canvases.  She works her craft in encaustic – beeswax and brilliant colours that make her subjects move.  Move thought and feeling.  The mark of art is movement.  Of many, or of one.  It matters not.

What moves changes history, affects how we experience time.

The Artist does not feel rushed.  I admire that.  It is her canvas that tolls the hours, not the notches on a clock.

The artist is out there, and in here, and in you.

And the Artist is greater than she knows.

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As a form of entertainment, the car wash has a lot going for it.

Conveyance through a tunnel of mesmerizing apparatus, frothy spray, whirling manikins of cloth affectionately referred to in our household as dancing Wuli masters, application of colourful gels and unguents, even a mirrored wind tunnel.  Fun for the whole family for just $10 a carload.

Delivered at the exit, I put the car in gear.  Glancing back at the mirrored wall I noticed, for the first time, the extensive machinery residing at ceiling level.  Enormous fans, piping, motor housings and the like.  The overhead that makes a clean car possible.

With eyes  focused on experience, I rarely see what pulls the strings, delivers the water and blows it away.

Only in hindsight can you see where you came from, and how much it takes behind the scenes to wash away the accumulated debris that dims headlights and dulls paint.

All for a slim $10.

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