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.
The water under the bridge glittered like diamonds this morning. Heaven in earth.
The view coming over the rise, just before driving the bridge, breathtaking. Moving light embanked. With the bridge, a clean intersection of fluid and structure. Dividing the landscape, before and after, now and then. By extension river and bridge go on forever, incessant division coupling with moments of brilliance.
Water under the bridge glittered like diamonds.
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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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Dysphonia has me again. Laryngitis. Voice, aural expression reduced to a whisper. Walking into an office, and known to be a gregarious sort, I was hailed with a hearty “hello,” today. The uneven squeak representing my intended response gave great merriment, to myself included.
How often do our words come out differently than expected, even with our best intentions? When misunderstanding, not merriment, holds sway.
Pivotal moments of human interaction turn on finely grained cues – tone, a word too many, two words too few, a weightless pause. Words are fickle tools, especially in an uncertain voice.
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Walking Man spoke today.
Walking Man is part of a small subculture of people who regularly walk my neighborhood on any given day. I belong to that crew, as do my children, by extension.
It surprises me, from time to time, when I meet people who know me, yet we’ve never met. “I see you walking,” they say. I ask if they are out in their yards, and I have somehow missed them. “No, from the window,” they say. Ever sociable, I encourage them to come out when I walk by, but we both know they won’t.
Walking Man moves from north to south and back, I am circuitous myself. Found at almost any time of the day, young man, late teens, moves with loping gait, eyes straight ahead, no expression, no words, irritates the gentry by cutting across their lawns. Rarely out after dusk.
I cross paths with Walking Man frequently, usually on different sides of the street. It is not for exercise that Walking Man walks, nor for me. His motive I cannot guess, I walk to keep moving – toward something, away from something – each step punctuates a new experience entirely. Process, I guess.
Sunny and cold, Walking Man and I happened to be on the same side of the street this day, going opposite directions. We both said “hello,” and smiled. Walking Man looks younger with a smile. And Walking Man spoke. Punctuation.
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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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A billboard seen recently…
“Education in two words: You’re Hired”
Novel. The deep premise of education appears here to mean making money. Broadly, education, perhaps training, does equal greater capability for compensation, not my discussion.
Babeled.com provides the following etymology for “education:”
“The literal translation of educate is to draw out of, lead out of… The Romans considered educating to be synonymous with drawing knowledge out of somebody or leading them out of regular thinking. “
Yes, to lead out of, away from regular thinking, as do the challenges we face in everyday life. How far we have come, from imagination as the ideal of education, to commerce as the goal behind education. Sometimes being grounded is not such a good thing.
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A recent bog about the retirement of a faithful newspaper delivery woman brought the following response from a Danish friend:
“This is so sad…what will she be doing now?”
When I spoke last to Naomi, she was planning on delivering until the newspaper could find someone to replace her. Following surgery on her hand, she will look for other employment. Undaunted and confident that divinity will guide her path, she parted from me with well wishes and mutual expressions of appreciation for times passed. Her smile never shadowed.
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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.
Posted in Psycho-Bubbles, Reflections on the everyday | 1 Comment »
Undeniably poignant. A website log-in screen, the password space with checkbox for remembering your password the next time you visit the site.
This site, providing the same service, had a checkbox with the words “Remember me.”
I didn’t check the box.
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Shouldn't...but Do 