Shouldn't…but Do

It shone right in my eyes.

A brilliant headlight from beneath the surface of the water.  Fiery, burning brightly enough I had to look away.  Dazzling the mind, Tir na nOg, the Celtic land of eternal delight shimmering under the waters of the western ocean, beckoning, demanding…

And the earth moved, and it was gone.

Light, spilling through the trees, refracted through the lake at  the castle of the Lady of Note.

Headlight.  Our heliocentric world relies on, cultivates consciousness, stellar brilliance.  Solar light during this season weakens.  The sun did not command attention on its way to ground.  It was only bent light, filtered through the watery medium that demanded attention.

Perhaps sometimes the things we should know cannot  be directly intuited, even seen.   The information, though brilliant, is beyond our senses.  But gathered and focused, by and under the waves,  is given unmissable focus, startling clarity.

But only to those who notice.

There is only one.  A solitary, fragrant white flower amid emptying seed cases and fading leaves.

It is a Mock Orange.  In spring, its branches sway heavily, laden with confections of golf-ball size blossoms.  Situated near the house, its fragrance wafts long  through window and memory, as the best spring flowers do.

But it is not spring, it is autumn.  In between, the shrub learned and lived, and now  sheds its fruits and settles before a cooling wind.

Except for the one flower.  At the end of a branch held high in the air, free of twigs and clustered leaves, it holds forth in the sun by day. Moonlight finds it bobbing up and down on the breeze, delighted.  I know because I have seen it myself.

It is not easy to hold out so long, to bloom after all others, in inclement weather  that can spell rapid demise.  Alone, but brilliant, no missing it.  Unable to flower under the usual conditions, it held out for something different.  A character, we might say.

I am grateful for the hold-out.  Brave or foolish, aberrant or one-off, there is none so lovely in the blue, blue sky.

The Neighbor laid her wedding dress out on the sofa the other night.   It has been a decade since her divorce went through.

Our original plan  involved painting portions of my house attired in our wedding dresses, but let me tell you, lace, ladders and paint cans are a  problem.   We then decided to dispose of our wedding dresses in tandem, one dress could keep the other company.

But I spoiled that plot when  I secreted my dress in her garbage can and didn’t tell her until after collection.

So there lay her wedding gown, resplendent.  An acre of  duchesse satin, chiffon and lace.   Two dimensional, it appeared to be waiting – beautiful – for another moment.  Another moment.

I was stopped.  Bemusement gave way to sober wonder.  Even devoid of its inhabitant, a wedding dress has the power to still.  The dress contained nothing, but its hold was palpable.

Any woman can only wear a true wedding dress once.  While she may marry again,  there is only one dress that will carry her from her original unmarried state to the condition thereafter.

What space does that dress traverse? Girl to woman is trite,  from father to husband is demonic,  unmarried to married is not quite right.  It has more to do with personal to collective, a ritual whereby  individual is joined to a greater story– a bigger river–for better, or for worse.

Great minds plumb the anthropological and sociological symbolism of wedding apparel, I need not go there.

The dress before me once carried anticipation and plans,  inarticulable future images.  First brides are radiant because they are in transition, grown out of a life, walking into another.  Heads turn, and so they should.

A woman’s initiatory  trip to the altar surrenders her passing life and sacrifices present, sometimes future, hopes unbeknownst.  A fate-full moment not understood until long passed.  The moment, the dress, can never be repeated.

The Neighbor’s dress is bound for Goodwill.  Her dress has an unseen fullness, perhaps it is potential,  that mine did not, at least not that I remember.  It is good our dresses had divergent paths.  With alteration, the Neighbor’s dress  could walk another aisle, carry another woman from there to here.

Garbage cans are good things.

I am referring to garbage carts, the cans from days of yore that evolved plastic lids and wheels.  Left at the curb, these are not the household way-station cans that speak to process, but to items, in bag or bulk, kicked to the curb.

By the time something makes it to my curb, it cannot be reused,  or recycled, it is trash – broken, soiled constituents – of something that once was.

Consider the power of the can – to  receive objects solidified out of the flow of life.  Things chosen to be unchosen.

Garbage cans are not compost bags.  The premise of compost is transformation. A  garbage can?  Disposal.  Clean, punctuated ending – not metabolized for different use, a different day – but literal landfill – buried deep, layered, compressed and covered over, soulful detritus.

You can know someone by their trash.  It worked with the ancient Anasazi  of the American Southwest.  Trash piles astride their cliff dwellings provide a treasure trove to archeologists studying their habits, diseases, diet.

Seems like people nowadays are the same.  Hang around someone long enough, you’ll get to know what they buried, what is eating them, and what they too devour–and dispose of.

Garbage cans hold their own, and let it go.

Two wine glasses atop a two-foot cleanly sawed tree trunk at noon.

The trunk-cum-coffee table rests in the otherwise spare front yard of a house  facing a busy road.

Driving, as I was, on that busy road, my look was not long.  I was struck by the friendly placement of the glasses, the equivalence of red wine in the bottom of each.  Whoever drank of these cups was at leisure, a shared decision to retire from that place–perhaps last night, when the moon rode behind  iridescent layers of cloud.

I notice this house from time to time.  In autumn, a friendly inflatable, illuminated ghost rears  from the darkness at night, at Christmas, the same sprite inhabits a rotund Santa.

Well worn, the house sits among  few remaining on the road. Except for its seasonal decor, it is grey and white, blending easily with salted road spray from the enormous plows of winter.

The house always struck me as a vestige and I have admired its festive pluck while never seeing  inhabitants upon  the property.

But today, the inside was out.  Two glasses in close, comfortable repose, having delivered, but not entirely depleted,  their spirits.  Filtered autumnal sun undoubtedly spurred a heady bouquet over those glasses.

Glasses left full could have meant waste,  interrupted reverie.  Glasses empty could signal scarcity, drinking as admission to the euphoric world.

Glasses between here and there?  Maybe pleasure, enjoyment of the good things now, the companionship of two,  an evening whose path led elsewhere.

And maybe not.  But happy endings, moonlit nights, and glasses left with just a splash?  It works for me.