A Tuesday

Inadvertently I find myself in two places at once...bliss and blues. Inadvertently because I intended to keep myself skimming. Why though? Thats the question I'm facing today on this cloudy cold and erratically rainy day. Facing? Nah. Pondered momentarily, then discarded for the richer feeling of letting myself have the experience that I'm having.

Yesterday I spent the day running errands with my Mom. Such a simple sentence, and as ordinary as wool. But it wasn't, because of everything. Everything that you can cram into 43 years of living and learning and knowing. Not even 43 years because what is happening is not related to my life, but to the lives of others and their navigational skills in dealing with history and its relentless hold on the present. Thats not a totally true sentence because the grip of history is weak and faltering if you let it be memory rather than present. But who am I to say how time works in the lives of others. Lets just say that the day was fraught with the current scariness and confusion of the present which was carved like a petroglyph almost a half a century ago. Working things out. Working things out. Working things out.

I was there when some of the etching was done so I understand it, I can remember. This isn't a blissful amnesia. But what I've realized is that the power of the past increases with time until small stakes become dire. I want to remember this because in this time, in this now, the etching continues and I have choices to make about whether I add my marks or whether I put down my stick and my ochre and enjoy the beauty of a unaltered plane. A blank slate.

Bliss. The uncurling of stems in the spring and the sudden appearance of blossoms in sunlight. The warm earth uncovered, the dormant green growing in vibrancy. This is private. This is metaphor. These are the days prior to yesterday. This is a face in morning light. This is a hand on my back. Bliss. Different, separate, mine.

--Dan