The image of an 1800s ballplayer from the NAABP rounding the bags came to the “mind’s eye” last night. The throw is coming to the plate, horribly accurate, from way out in right field - that guy’s got an arm! - so the runner, well advanced down the third base line, hits the dirt to avoid the throw. There is a cloud of dust near home plate. It’s as close as it gets: did the catcher make the play? Did the runner score?

There’s a feeling that accompanies the creative impulse, whether it is writing, or singing, or painting (if I painted, I imagine it would feel the same) or carving or cooking…

It seems as though it would be, or should be, an expressive sort of energy, an outflowing, but in fact I experience it as almost the opposite: a deep listening, an electric stillness: what will you whisper to me? You have to be very quiet to hear.

There is a certain rapid-fire, reactionary mindset at play during times of great change. The intransigence of weight at velocity: the more mass in is motion, the less its ability to change direction.

(Aside. Since everything is in everything else, use anything as a metaphorical lens to make big things smaller, and small things bigger. When considering mass in motion, please apply this lens to our notional [sic] politics, corporate belligerence, world-as-our-battleground stance. Of course it will fall apart. It is a train that can’t escape the track, can’t escape its wreck, no matter how gradually its approach.)

12 Minor Miracles

The commuter train pulls away from the platform, and before we roll out under what will eventually be winter-leaden skies, we first creep along beneath highway overpass, suspension bridges, massive concrete tunnels-not-tunnels, that form a pragmatic monument to decades of construction.

(They are monument to equally massive amounts of collusion and kickback, of course: major works seem to be twin brother to power grabs and inelegant behavior.)

You may have read the children’s story of a perfectly beastly boy who because disoriented, wandered into a cave, fell into an enchanted sleep, and turned into a dragon. An unpleasant combination of events.

Upon waking, he frightened himself nearly out of his wits: the left hand moved, a claw!, the right hand moved, another! So, he was surrounded by a boy-eating creature. He ran – scuttled in fact – out of the cave and to a pool of water, which reflected his true nature.

I think it was my son who recently asked: “How do you get enough food if you just bike to the grocery store? It must get pretty dull making double round-trips every time you need to eat…”

This was a reasonable assessment: the side-bags, when empty, flatten to almost nothing, like deflated balloons. And even filled, we are talking about two to three plastic grocery bags of goods. How long can that last you, before you’re on your bike again, chasing down the evening meal?

It’s difficult to see how much the sense of self is tied to surroundings, until of course you begin the process of departure, whether it’s a trip, or travel, or a birth or a death. Family and friends most viscerally part of your stone and sinew; but structures and walkways, weather and seasons, even the most subtle of daily habits are all you, all me.

“The Moment Before Knowing” by Brooke @ DeviantArt.com

Muscular I took the tiger’s tail in hand As his stripe in terrible elegance flashed Into view, in the sun, in the tall, tall grass Me at my prime – just past my prime – and confident I owned the gift of taming still…

But still

Tiger is tiger, and man is man And man, I did the best deluded can ‘Til he ran away and away he ran. I looked around to reassure me, friends Had each eluded the talon’s tear

Last night the wind picked up and, as I gently dropped into sleep, it not so gently opened its mouth and blew and blew and blew through the branches-spread-wide summer forest dark.

This morning, the alarm woke me. Wait: was it the alarm? Dream-dazed. It sounded like an alarm. No, it wasn’t the alarm. It was further away, it was down the stairs, it was the phone ringing.

Sign; groan; whispered curse; first thoughts. Who calls at – what time was it – 7 a.m. on a Saturday? The phone stops ringing. The body relaxes. Long, slow breath, like a yawn but not a yawn. Imagine an hour’s more sleep.

Two months since I last set word to the page. Life is not lived in words, but on the path where words are collected; where, if we speak of what we have seen, the story is written either in the heart and mind of the listener, or in the eye and inner sense of the reader. Sometimes I miss my time with the page, as the story is unfolding. There is a quietness you find in a record, as though counting and recounting your steps you are affirming “Yes, I have wandered here; I have wandered there.” In the telling there is acceptance of all that had gone before, the decisions made wise and unwise, the responses given well-considered or misspoken; whatever had been done was done with the best attempt that could be made at it. And the results…?  We humans cast a hopeful eye to health that never ends, but historical forces and our own flagging powers teach us better. Today’s success must stand for everything: tomorrow’s challenge will face a new self, amen.