Shouldn't…but Do

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.

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.

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.

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.

28F.  No ice.  This landscape holds no water, just a dusting of arid snow.  The streets are dry.

On walkabout just now, I watched a break in heavy clouds, marveling at the blue sky far above.  The horizontal gap seemed an escape – much like what I experienced last Thursday.  After waiting, the trial was put off for another day, too contentious for the time allotted.  I will take it, I am grateful.

Wisps of low clouds curled toward emerging light, curious.  In outline, then in full, the solar disk edged forward, its brilliance becoming unbearable.  It was only seconds before a larger cloud eclipsed the sun, but the filtered, reflective combination of sun, cloud, and distant atmosphere cast the covering cloud in a hue of unearthly blue of which I have never before seen.

Disregarding its containment, the sun lit the sky, piercing the cloud cover in rays stretching each direction, as heavenly, as ponderous, as any biblical woodcut.

Unfiltered light can cause blindness.  Dull clouds prohibit illumination.  Combined, their extraordinary commonality churns my soul.

And permits escape.

Downtown, 9:51 AM, first snow of the year.  LOT FULL read the electronic screen on the parking kiosk.  Absurd for this time of day, this part of town.

With nine minutes to make a meeting with the Very Expensive Lawyer, and cars backing up behind me, I just stared at the message.

Almost immediately a Parking Security Services car pulled up.  Three burly gentlemen piled out.  One quickly notified me he would check for any parking spaces in the nine level structure.  Another addressed the cars behind me.

Within two minutes, the first gentleman reappeared, waiving me in the gate, yes, there is one space in the basement level.  I located the well-lit space two levels down and parked.  Relieved.

Sometimes things are not what they seem, and sometimes, help arrives, unbidden, when you need it the most.

Tomorrow, 9:00 AM, divorce and custody trial.  Big, bad, and decidedly ugly.  Things are not looking my way.  My sincere gratitude for thoughts, prayers, or wishes on behalf of my children, and me.

The red blooms of the chrysanthemum by my drive held on unusually late this year.  Water was plentiful and it made a good stand.  In the next yard, a brilliant red Euonymus, burning bush, popped forward, connecting the two yards in a visual field greater than each yard alone.

Marking time quietly throughout the growing season, these lovely border plants plied their trade as accents.  But late autumn – and the right conditions — provoked a coincidence of colour, creating community that, upon wider view, carried a harmony all the way down the block, picking up speed through the neighborhood.

Each plant, each bush, a bit of information, flush with change, stepping out of a homogeneous background to momentarily form a  message, letters of a word  we recognize – autumn, late flush – resonant individuals with a bigger message,  for a season.

Long ago and far away, well over half a century, there were single stores covering half a city block.

Called department stores, they carried several lines of quality goods,  throughout  multi-level shopping spaces.  Sales staff were knowledgeable, well dressed, courteous.  In the basement, the lunch counter served splendid grilled cheese sandwiches, soup and crackers.  There was even a mirrored wishing pond, filled with goldfish and red-eared sliders, in the day before salmonella warnings.  Gilded, solid, expensive and  secretive, it was a  marvelous world.

At Christmas, the department store came alive.  Festooned with every sort of ribbon, dazzling tree and ornament, who could forget the animated Christmas windows and decorations that spilled out down the street and up the lamp posts?

Arriving early this morning at Target – a discount department store of this age – the glimmer of a Christmas aisle caught my attention, reminding me of those days.

I perused the  inexpensive store decorations, neat aisles of every sort of ribbon, wrap and artificial Christmas tree.  I stood for a long time in front of  lit yard decorations – cheery snowmen, bobbing reindeer.

Nostalgia is a longing for encounters that are no more.  Is it longing?  The good old days are never as good as in memory.  Memory, mother to nostalgia,  is a very choosy recorder of encounter.

Encounter – a meeting – the spirit of the times with a spirit passing through.  Memory takes it in and moves us down the line.  From time to time, if  lucky, we may see  a silvered reflection of that encounter, in the ornaments and tinsel of the present,  that evoke the long ago past.

I bought some wrapping paper I thought was nice,  it says Believe.