I drove the roads at 2:00 a.m. . I didn’t have to worry about lanes because there was no other traffic to impede me. I swept my stairs again and salted them because, well, no one else was going to do it. Wearing knee-high boot covers, I didn’t have to worry about wet or cold feet. It was a balmy negative two so I didn’t have to worry about overheating as I swept some of the areas around work. I love the abandoned world that snow brings. But I did take time to stamp ribald messages in a few places with undisturbed snow. To imagine the consternation of anyone who reads them this morning. At one point, my laughter was uncontainable. My voice carried and echoed strangely across the snow and in the undisturbed world. It was beautiful, but also a bit lonely.
In the earlier hours this morning, it was one degree. With winds of about ten mph, it was breathtaking. I once worked in a -40 work environment. If you’re lucky enough to have trees with leaves still on them, you know that the melody the wind creates sounds like falling rain or heavy snow when it’s this cold. Unlike most post-midnight Saturday nights and Sunday mornings, traffic was non-existent. Everyone was huddled inside somewhere, undoubtedly with blankets piled and tucked. I walked to the road and watched and listened as the dead leaves above me rustled. It was a beautiful, abandoned world with just me in it to observe it. The crosswalk and street lights shone vividly in the air. Color in this cold takes on a new life. I stood there until the bottom of my legs began to ache from the cold. A cup of bitter coffee and another cup of hot cider waited for me back at the apartment. But still, I stood there, waiting for some unidentified moment to propel me back inside. Nothing happened. Sometimes that’s the most beautiful thing.
Someone asked me, “X, why haven’t you been making solar bottle lights lately?”
I was certain that the grin I gave shouted the obvious answer: “I haven’t stopped.”
In the last few months, I’ve left several in front of people’s houses with a note attached. The Johnny Appleseed of decorative solar light bottles. A few more, I’ve left in odd places where I knew they would be discovered and taken by someone interested.
I didn’t want all the bottles that had been saved and given to me to be wasted. So for anybody like Jay or Burke or others who shared their bottles, just because I haven’t mentioned it doesn’t mean I haven’t given new life to the bottles given to me. To strangers. It’s a pleasure to give one to someone personally, something I’ve made. But it turns out that it is equally fascinating to put them out in the world without having any idea about the lives of those who receive them.
This afternoon, I walked behind a building and looked over the fence. The bottle I had left on their front porch weeks ago sat facing the sun, charging as much as possible in the low winter light so that it can later add color however the new owner sees fit.
If you ask the average adult in what month the Earth is closest to the sun, you’ll be surprised by how many people don’t know. If you push them to guess, they’ll likely cite a summer month.
While I truly believe that scientific vocabulary and the inane insistence that we memorize such terms is foolish, the fancy-pants term for the closest point to our sun is the perihelion. And it occurs in early January. We’re the furthest from the sun six months later, in early June. That point, too, has a fancy name derived from old languages. If you want people to remember it, why not “farpoint?”
The seasonal changes are caused by the tilt of our planet.
I think it is much more valuable to understand the concepts without the need to know the scientific terms we’ve assigned. It is more valuable educationally to understand the concepts than to identify the bottle of words we use to label knowledge.
Failing to understand such basic concepts as the ones I’ve cited lead people to incorrectly believe they understand climate, weather, and other phenomenon in our world.
This same observation applies to multiple things in our world and society. Minimal understanding often gets expressed as certainty regarding fallacious ideas and concepts.
I pulled over to see if I could capture the sound of songbirds near the junior high a block or two from where I live. I left my car running and was standing several feet away from it with my phone pointed up.
A neighbor from one of the nearby houses was leaving her house. I saw her come to a creeping crawl not too far from where I was.
“Hey, what are you doing?” She asked me. Her tone was pretty brash.
Because I was in that kind of mood, I walked quickly and stopped about 10 ft away from her vehicle.
I turned my phone toward her to show her the interface for the Merlin app.
“I’m a volunteer for the American Wdlife Association. There’s a large tiger running around within a quarter of a mile of here. I was using the app to detect sounds so we could locate it before anything weird happened.”
Her face froze because I said it in the most serious tone I could manage. Oddly, she didn’t say another word to me. Her driver window went up and she drove off.
I waited until she was decently far away before I burst out laughing.
What makes going to the movie so special? It could be the excessive butter that leads to gas-propelled walking and making you regret every decision you’ve made in your adult life by eating too much of it. The kernels that plague your teeth and make you reaffirm the decision that, yes this year, you need to go to the dentist. It could be the occasional narcissist who thinks that we need their phone lit up in order to see that they are checking their Tinder for people who are really into selfishness. Rarely do you see a brain surgeon at the theater. I really doubt that Chad or Karen needs to check their phone every 16 seconds.
And that leads me to one of the most joyous things about theaters. It is one of the last remaining places that we are supposed to pretend that our life doesn’t require our personal and immediate attention. We get to focus on a fantasy world, feel our heart race, and even feel a tear sometimes form in the corner of our eyes. Without the distraction of devices. We’re just sitting and absorbing a collective story that brings us happiness.
I’m old school. I want to see and hear the nuance on the screen and to dive in to an alternate reality for a couple of hours. To feel the spark of creativity and originality fire in my brain as I watch and listen. And that requires focus. No matter how people defend their restlessness, entertainment without focus is a diluted shadow of the experience when you aren’t aying attention.
I know people roll their eyes at me when I tell them I don’t get bored. There’s no secret to it. Even if you’re sitting alone on a quiet porch, there’s an entire world within your view. And another one inside of your head to match it.
It’s being in the moment and giving each moment your attention. I can’t help but think that so many people are sitting in the passenger seat of their car ignoring the world as it passes by. At the fulcrum of most people’s lives are their phones. They are the best communication and entertainment devices ever invented. But you have to remind yourself that for every second you are distracted by your phone, you are missing the world and the people standing right next to you. If if first come first serve is truly important to us, then surely it follows that the people already with us deserve our undivided attention.
And that’s one of the reasons I love movie theaters. We haven’t quite lost the expectation of being in the moment and focused.
Like all experiences, a great movie that is shared takes on new life. Much in the same way that doing something together has the same result. All of us can list seminal movies that changed us in small ways. None of it could happen without allowing the magic of imagination and focus to envelope us.
Yes, we also get to eat a bushel of popcorn and drink so much soda that we are afraid we might not make it to the bathroom before the movie is over.
The morning was colder than expected, and I hadn’t dressed as warmly as I should have. I’d put my feet in the creek until I couldn’t feel them anymore. Somewhere in the distance, an owl hooted infrequently, its hoot carrying through the early winter air deceptively. On a whim, I decided to climb one of the leafless trees as high up as I could manage. I was careful as I climbed and took my time. Falling in the dark would be an unwelcome surprise. I sat across a large protruding limb with my feet hanging in the darkness. Enough moonlight to see dimly diffused through the branches of the tree. It was beautiful and peaceful, and it still surprised me that more people didn’t attempt to experience it. They were too busy focused on two dimensions, disguising their disinterest as a concern for safety.
“Hey X, it’s too early to be up in the trees!” The voice sounded like that of a young boy. I craned my neck around to see him. I recognized Joshua’s voice despite it sounding completely different. I’d never heard his voice disguised in a younger person’s body.
“Tell that to the owl,” I wryly answered.
“Good point. But owls are designed to be up here.” Joshua laughed.
“I am too, or I wouldn’t be able to up here enjoying the view, Joshua.” I knew he was grinning at my reply.
“Let me come down so that you can see me, X.” I heard quiet movements in the tree next to me. Within moments, Joshua sat about twenty feet away from me.
“X, I know you were thinking earlier this morning about the world and how insurmountable everything seems to be.”
I nodded. “Yes. War. Hunger. People suffering needlessly. I keep waiting for the universe to intervene, even though I know it doesn’t work that way.”
“Remember what I said about truth? It’s deceptively simple. The universe, as you choose to call it, its already given you intelligence, which is all that’s needed to solve every problem in the world.”
I shook my head. “I don’t see it. People getting cancer, going without healthcare, fighting, all of it.”
“Disease, all of them, they can be prevented. But it takes focus. Resources. Intelligence. You have that in abundance. What you don’t have? Focus or the will to pool your resources to enhance education and research. The cure for cancers is amazingly close. But your collective ability to make it happen is absent.”
I laughed. “We can’t stop fighting over imaginary lines in the sand.”
“You could end hunger within two years. There’s enough food for everyone. And resources exceeding your needs. But you spend so much on defending against one another. A quarter of what you waste on defense would solve it. Forever. There will come a time when you’ll understand. But it will take another war to threaten your ability to see how childish your attitudes are.” I could hear the resignation in his voice.
“Everyone preaches compassion and care for one another, but when it’s someone outside their neighborhood, it doesn’t matter.”
“X, that’s it! It’ll stop once you realize that caring for your neighbor means everyone in the world. How you treat one person is how you treat everyone.”
“But…” I started to object.
Joshua rarely interrupted me. “You’re waiting for the universe to intervene. It is not interventionist. All of you are like the man waiting for someone to rescue him from the flooding rooftop, ignoring the boats that pass. You have everything you need in this world. It’s on you. That’s the gift.”
“Joshua, I feel like I’m not supposed to ask, but WHO are you really?” I didn’t expect an answer.
“I am who you say I am. If you’re looking for a title or a neat little box to identify me, I can’t help you. Who do you think I am, X?” I knew Joshua was being cryptic and smiling.
“I think you’re not as good a climber as me, Joshua!” I stood up and began climbing. I heard Joshua’s sneakers scrape against the tree he sat in. I knew he was following me up.
After a couple of minutes, we’d both reached as high as we dared. I looked across at Joshua. His face was illuminated further as the moonlight reached his face. For a brief moment, I saw myself standing in the tree across from me.
Joshua laughed. “I’ll be around, X. I’d tell you to be safe, but I know that there’s no such thing.”
I turned to look at the moon directly for a moment. When I looked toward Joshua again, his tree was empty. I stood in the tree for a few more minutes, listening to the owl and feeling the cold permeate me. Cold is always temporary, and insight is forever.
I found myself at the grocery store at 6 a.m. I wanted to go earlier, but COVID ruined such earlier adventures. I had no shopping list and was letting my whims propel my feet around the store. As usual, I spent excessive time in the sauce aisle; I can eat cardboard, provided I have sufficient things to dip it in.
Eventually, I searched for kale, lettuce, or mustard greens in the produce aisle. While sorting the lettuce, I heard a man behind me clearing his throat. Assuming I was in someone’s way, I turned and stepped aside.
An older man stood about five feet away. In his hand, he held a single green apple.
“Good morning, X,” he said and twirled the apple in his fingers.
Three weeks had passed since I last saw the man who once answered to the name Joshua. He looked different, something I realized would probably be the case each time I encountered him.
I knew not to engage in small talk. Whatever his reason for finding me, passing the time idly wasn’t on his agenda.
“You can’t be sure how the apple tastes, can you, X? It could be bitter or brown on the inside. No one enjoys that.”
I nodded. “Yes, we do focus on the appearance and just trust that it’s delicious.”
“Nature and evolution have designed things so that beauty attracts. It’s the way of things. Everything here is probably safe unless you’re allergic.” He smiled slightly and waited for me to formulate a reply.
“The same is true for people, Joshua. I wish it weren’t so.”
“X, beauty attracts. Even in the wild, that’s how it works, for either mating or consumption. A bird sees a brilliant red berry and swoops to eat it, not knowing it might be poisonous. Or if it does eat it, the same bird passes the seeds far away, ensuring the plant survives. It’s fascinating. Beauty has its purpose but beguiles when it conceals something else.”
I moved slightly closer to the produce bins and out of the aisle. “Sometimes I wish I were blind around people. It would make life easier.”
Joshua shook his head. “If you’re hinting at love and attraction, you’re right. Beauty attracts – but it doesn’t keep us close. A famous song once said that a pretty face doesn’t make a pretty heart.”
“No truer words have been spoken, Joshua.”
“It’s why you are designed with primal instincts. But it’s also why you have reason to overcome emotion. If you practice, you learn to see what’s on the inside of someone before taking a proverbial bite.” Joshua softly laughed. “We know how that usually works out.”
I laughed in response. “Our senses are designed to bring pleasure and seek out flavor, aroma, and beauty. We can eat our favorite meal, but if we smell barbeque, our desire for it almost cancels out what we’re having.”
“Ideally, you find someone who attracts you and has the capacity for love, humor, and understanding. But if they are like a bad apple, you won’t know until you bite. The error falls on you when you recognize the taste is off, but continue to let beauty dissuade you from getting another apple. You keep eating the same apple or keep picking up the same kind.” Joshua grinned slightly.
“If that’s the case, how do you know you’ve got a good apple, Joshua?”
Joshua smiled. “By observing their behavior, as I’ve told you before. It’s always in the behavior. Good people behave lovingly, have compassion, and don’t engage in complexity when dealing with others. They are who they say they are, and they do what they say they will. Beauty will fade. Character and who they are will not diminish with time.”
“What kind of apple do you recommend today?” I wasn’t sure if I was speaking metaphorically. I’d let Joshua decide.
“There are so many varieties of apples, X. Some of the best ones look less appealing but conceal a lot of flavor. You’ll know when you bite and find one suited to you.” Joshua smiled.
I smiled as I moved toward the display of apple varieties. As Joshua watched, I chose two random apples from six bins and put them in my basket.
Joshua laughed. “You’re learning, X.”
“I’m not so sure, Joshua.”
“That’s good. Certainty is the hallmark of closed minds. People with doubts keep learning and seeking.” With these words, Joshua turned and walked away and out of sight around the next aisle.
P.S. Parenthetically Speaking 