Driving down the highway this morning, I was startled by a scarlet light on the side of road. It glowed.
Tough to gawk at 55 mph. A glimpse proved the source to be sunlight bent at just the right angle through a discarded, unopened, bottle of red energy drink.
Unearthly beautiful – high fructose corn syrup. Unearthly beautiful for a moment, illuminated junk.
Bent light, bottled energy tossed aside. One moment of brilliance in a gutter. Life is like that.
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Identity is an interesting thing.
You have to have an identity before you can lose it, or have it stolen. But few people seem to develop an identity until, well, they recognize it is missing.
Identity loss is rampant. Be cheery when you aren’t, spread cynicism when you can’t hold your own, loss of containment at the core, an inability to remain authentic. Everyday life. You lose.
Identity is purely a reflection of its bearer. While society reduces identity to data – social security, drivers license numbers – and the like, identity is just as often found in religion, occupation, hobby or calling.
I muse these details as I fill out IRS Form 14039, Identity Theft Affidavit. X stole my social security number to purloin the far better part of the annual tax refund.
With dark hilarity I recognize “identity theft” as a hallmark of a bad relationship, or at least of mine. The longterm, erstwhile drain of the person I knew once to be myself.
Was it theft? The social security number was. I guess I let the rest happen, participated even. But even now, recognizing what I am not anymore, I cannot stop the drain, the theft beyond my control. I am tired.
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“Good morning Cynthia, what can we do for you?”
Car repair horror stories are known to all drivers, but the place that services my car is manna from automobile heaven.
Friendly, expert and fair, big, brightly lit, clean. From routine oil changes to nervous calls when my children were small, far afield, when car noises rattled both me and the undercarriage.
Today, it was tires, where rubber hits the road. Those rugged hard wheels that can go flat, yet, like Atlas, hold a small world of car and occupants between heaven and earth.
Snow tires to all-season radials. Most, I am told, go the mid-route, all season, all year. Being a tire-for-every-season gal, I opt for the ritual switch, rotate and spin balance two times a year.
Tires, I find, can be a lot like people. Snow tires – rugged, but actually composed of softer compounds and sippling allowing for better grip in inclement or cold weather. Built for intensity, but serviceable in good weather too, their flexible hearts wear out a little faster if used constantly.
All-seasons, good for where you’re going, your average ride in average time. High performance tires – harder, faster, meant to go, not linger. Will roll on turns made too fast, useless if the weather’s poor.
Tires, so much rides on them.
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A life well lived, and loved.
“Nola Garrity was born on June 26, 1917 in Leamington, Utah. She was raised in Salt Lake City and graduated from Westminster College. On September 4, 1938 she traveled to Seward Alaska to be married to her childhood sweetheart Gene Garrity. She enjoyed travelling, spending time with friends, playing cards, watching sports, and being a mother and grandmother. She was a lifetime member of the Mizpah chapter of the Eastern Star in Salt Lake City. Was proudly a member of Presbyterian Women at Puyallup First Presbyterian Church. She is survived by her beloved husband Gene Garrity; her children, Dennis & Jeanie Garrity, Pat Garrity, Margaret (Markie) Garrity; 7 grandchildren; 12 great-grandchildren; and 1 great- great grandchild. She is preceded in death by her parents Delmah and Fred Crowton. Surrounded by family, she left to be with the Lord on April 24, 2010. Services will be held at Puyallup First Presbyterian Church at 1:00 Saturday, May 1.”
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A day slung low by X. Mechanically carrying through. The church sign reads:
Do not fear tomorrow, God is already there.
In other words:
Vocatus atque non vocatus Deus aderit
Latin for:
Bidden or not bidden, God is present.
or simply:
que sera sera
what will be, will be.
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Five frogs flattened. The tally of frog roadkill on the streets of my suburban neighborhood. Five frogs crossed the road to get to the other side – and never made it.
Why did the frogs try to cross the road? Biological imperative? A whiff of greener bogs beyond, or like the ubiquitous chicken, just to get to the other side?
I’ll not pretend knowledge of frog lore, perhaps like worms they surface in spring rains. Maybe they didn’t even notice the change in texture, from grass to asphalt, until their fate became etched in it.
I harber a wish that they crossed – not for sweet salvation on the other side – but because of their amphibious nature, their general ability to skirt worlds of land and water. To broker the line between this and that, irrespective of consequence, which in the case of these five frogs, was deadly.
Five frogs flattened. Maybe 50 more made it. Maybe no others tried. Just for the trying, to see what was there.
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And sometimes the wind is too loud, ideas disperse in high grey clouds, rain is sparse, best to let go. Time scatters, backward, forward, degrees of freedom lose meaning.
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The ability to reconnoiter ambiguity – a measure of greatness, they say. No one is where they were, nor where they are going. Everyone lives in ambiguity, but never believe it until something big breaks through. It is present in every indrawn breath.
To a greater, or lesser degree, Windy people are possessed by ambiguity. Yearned for, shied from, flirted, skirted and full-out pursuit. No time for the furniture of life.
But oftentimes the wind is in the furniture, the grass, the work – a transit of energy – passing just beneath the surface of almost everything. Readily seen, but not with the eyes. You have to be there when and where the word drops out, where idea makes landfall, spreading so fast in all directions that the mind races off where the mouth is left to stammer.
To find those lifting, shifting, sinking places, roiling novelty – good or bad – to “go with the flow,” Windy people are like that.
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Last November I watched a crow against an altocumulous background. Shifty day, winds higher up buffeted the crow off its southward path in the sky. It maintained a general direction, struggling, past my visual horizon. I wondered about destinations, whether it matters precisely where you land, as long as you get there.
Come April, I watched another crow, its due southwest path unfettered by opacity or breeze, an arrow of time finding its way. As this one too passed beyond my sight, I considered the importance of precision, of that right connection, clear, unhampered.
Conditions, intent, timing. A slope, a curve of the universe. Arbiters of this sphere.
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A single swan rode the water, usually there are more.
The “Ugly Duckling” comes to mind, off-told tale of self-discovery from Hans Christian Anderson.
A classic motif – unknown, undiscovered soul, suffers wandering hardship until the moment of recognition that everything needed was within, waiting. Vital bridging between the yearned for external image and the internal gift within.
But which came first? The duckling or the egg?
It is easy to identify with the outcast, the wandering duck. Disenfranchisement is commonplace. Recognition of beauty, of the swan, comes from perseverance, courage. A hero’s journey of the avian world.
Misalignment of an avenue into the world, a swan in duck’s clothing, square peg, round hole, that sort of thing. Life energy stifled, the suffering of fluid sorrow that ever comments, ever works upon the problem of alignment.
So which came first? Duckling or egg – which is original?
Are the personal travails of the duckling unique? Did recognition of destiny rise from difficulty, or did it appear as image, the reflection of what was, and what once more shall be?
The egg, an embryonic pattern left behind by a larger world. It is a pattern that revisits the duckling throughout its misery, a pattern for which he yearns, but cannot articulate why.
It is to the egg, to the beautiful yearned-for birds, that the duckling later submits, accepting annihilation, and finding instead sanctuary, Home. The correspondence between original pattern and personal hardship becomes life-giving, rather than life-taking. And it is only secondarily that the duckling is astonished by his stately image, affirmation of his individual place in the world. The collective pattern left in the egg, returns in the personal image.
One swan, an oft-told tale.
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Shouldn't...but Do 