A special someone of kindred spirit surprised me with a book in the mail. She took the time to conceal it inside bright paper, obviously appropriating one of my favorite ways to conceal a gift.
I don’t check my mail very often. Or anyone else’s, for that matter, in case you were wondering. I walked over to throw something in the communal trash. Without realizing I was doing it, I meandered over and opened my mailbox and realized that I had a surprise.
Because I am always laden with both markers and scalpel, I opened it under the clearest October sky you can imagine.
Because she is an ardent bibliophile, I knew the book would have special personal meaning just for me.
It was her inscription written inside the cover that wounded me joyfully. I reread it and suddenly seemed to have dust in my eyes, unseen particles that made them teary.
I would never be so gauche as to mention Marjay by name, or to publicly thank her for the kindness. She not only gave me a surprise, but also a little universe inside a book that she thinks I already live inside, wrapped a little like I might.
I’m certain I will love the imaginary world in this book. I’ll read it with my recently restored eyes. And probably finish it with a rejuvenated heart.
A beautiful early morning for a walk. It was strange to be chilly.
Oddly, I heard five different Shouters this morning. Those are the people whose neighbors want to go outside and clobber them into silence. They have nothing to say but they say it with volume and incoherence. It seldom works out if you try to say anything to them. They are either belligerent, under the influence, or Republicans. (Sorry, it was too easy of a joke to pass up.) The best revenge is to get a 12 volt battery and a motorcycle horn or used car horn and put it near their front door, drop the wire on the other terminal, and walk off. “STFU” works well as a parting note to leave attached. I’m just passing that along if you’re short on ideas.
The fella in the picture waited for me just after the art building by the trail nexus. He made me go through the ritual of talking to him in a ridiculous tone of voice before he started doing gymnastics and let me run my fingers through his fur. I named him Fanta.
I took the picture around 12:30. I knew I needed to walk up the hill and stand where the wind would push hard. It sounded like several hundred pieces of paper being rubbed together by a mob of angry teachers.
When the drops started at 12:47, the change in the smell was dramatic. You can probably imagine the smell from the picture. I felt truly young for a moment. In part because I was alone up there.
I zigzagged down the hill a bit and stood under the open spot in the canopy I discovered a couple of months ago. The wind found me again as I became a little soaked.
The moment was fall in a way that can be experienced but rarely described.
What used to be beautiful, uninterrupted backwoods now has a modern trail running through it. A dad with his two kids told me this afternoon that they will soon put in a huge elevated bridge across the creek. I’ll have to find a way to get down past it, even if I have to hang a climbing rope ladder on it.
I don’t want to traverse. I want to immerse. Convenient rarely equals joyful on a long timeline. If it were true, all of our fast vehicles and massive roads would have led us to be happier.
What used to be a massive cattail marsh is now just a small patch. I remembered last year after most of the hummingbirds migrated that it was one of the last places to be abandoned by these little jet fighters. I wasn’t disappointed this afternoon. There was a small squadron of the hummingbirds there, joyfully feeding on the little red wildflowers growing around the cattails.
As for birds, my Merlin app confirmed what my eyes were seeing. It tracked 36 different kinds of birds. I’m certain some of them were migratory, unlike me, who will return more frequently now that it’s rained and the weather is cooling.
When I arrived at the creek, an older man stood on the low water dam looking down at a turtle with a little bit of damage on its back. He told me his dogs had gotten a hold of it and that he feared it wasn’t alive. He left before he found out otherwise. The turtle came out of its shell and then I had to rescue it from one of the flow drainage pipes running under the low water dam.
The dad I mentioned earlier in the post took the opportunity to talk to his two kids about turtles and nature. I waded up into the creek away from them. The little boy was jealous that I was allowed to roll up my pants and walk barefoot in the middle of the creek. I heard the dad tell him that the next time they came, they would all go into the creek without shoes.
I never see people my age roll up their pants and get in the water. It’s their loss. Sure, I can slip and fall in. It’s happened before. And I hope it happens again. Everything comes with a price and a risk. Just as much as the decision to play it safe.
Some bastard with chalk defiled an offshoot of the trail. It’s so strange that he used red for the hat and orange for the stick body. Who in the hell carries chalk out across a creek? Crazy people, that’s who.
I was this close to getting my card punched around 11:30 today. Coincidentally, that’s almost exactly the time the plane crash happened 35 years ago today.
I waited at the light at Gregg Avenue and Appleby. When the light turned green, I took my time. It’s a dangerous intersection. A white sedan blew through the red light, going at least 60 mph. It was heading north in the fast lane. If you know the intersection, you know visibility is poor when you’re turning left onto Gregg because of the restricted corner and setback stop line for Appleby. Because traffic in the slow (right) lane was stopped and backed up, I couldn’t see someone flying down the fast lane.
I swerved slightly left as I was turning and came to an abrupt halt. It was ‘just’ enough. The white sedan missed by about an inch as it blew through the light. A half-second earlier and I would have been smashed into oblivion. I’m not sure what triggered my response.
It’s only been a week since I saw an accident in front of me in the same spot.
The weird thing? I didn’t have a reaction. Zilch. No adrenaline, no fast heartbeat, nothing.
My subconscious was working in overdrive, and doubly so because today is the 35th anniversary of the plane crash. I think I was mentally prepared for another plane crash in honor of the ridiculous and capricious universe we live in.
When I finished my turn and continued down Gregg, something was off about my brake and gas pedals. It turned out my phone had flown forward and lodged under my foot when I came to an abrupt halt to avoid getting T-boned.
PS I’ve been remiss in buying lottery tickets. Until today. Probability is for the weak-minded.
Thirty-five years have passed since September 28th, 1991.
One of us was a world-class pilot, and the other was a rudderless young man with no clear direction. The pilot’s incredible ability couldn’t overcome the habit he practiced. That’s how I ended up looking into the September sky and seeing his parachute floating down, a grey-silver jacket inside it.
I met him only in death.
That day rarely touches me deeply. Not beyond the cerebral and superficial. This September infected me with a desire simply to get past it.
When it does touch me, it is a chill on the back of my neck.
You can do everything right and still fail. You can also do the most minor thing, a thing you’ve done countless times, until the universe notices and adjusts your arc in life without any consolation or care. If you do two things wrong, the odds don’t double. They become infinite.
I can’t stress enough how gifted this pilot was. His family in Illinois was legendary for their flight simulators. Some reports indicate he ran out of fuel; I’m not certain whether that was true. Whether he jumped or fell out of his plane, he didn’t have part of his parachute attached. I’m certain he did it a million times. Those two things had the final say in his life. How the plane and pilot landed on the ground basically in the same spot still bewilders me. The capricious luck that kept either of them from killing me is never lost on me.
Some of you rightfully caution me about climbing trees, especially in the dark, or about meandering while the world sleeps. There’s no such thing as safety. It’s exactly like when I went skydiving; there is a slight risk, of course. It is the appearance of relative danger that makes it enjoyable. It’s surrender as you fall out or jump.
It is VERY rare for me now, but sometimes, I find myself hesitating at doors. Thirty-five years ago, I jumped up and ran out of my bedroom to investigate. I opened the door to mayhem. I get tenuous glimpses of it in dreams that immediately fade. Not too long ago, I heard a commotion and ran out of my apartment and into another one to see someone needing CPR. Pun aside, I went into autopilot.
I had two tremendous lessons like this.
Both deaths happened in September.
Both of them died unexpectedly in their early 30s.
Both of them were within feet of each other, separated by decades.
Most of the time, they are simple memories from a lifetime ago. Other times, I look up into the blue of the September sky and wonder about probabilities. If it can happen once, it can happen twice. And also, that no matter how big or small the world seems, it is happening to someone right now.
Although the actual equinox happened Tuesday, last night was 4 minutes from the literal one. I finally captured all 18 of my solar bottles activating simultaneously. That’s the sun in the corner of my window, illuminating my living room. There aren’t actually any lights on in there.
“Uncle Richard!” It was a high-pitched little girl’s voice. Looking up, I saw the most precious little girl with brightly colored glasses smiling at me. She was probably 5 years old.
Her mom stopped and softly told her that I wasn’t her uncle.
Looking at me, the mom said that I did look extremely similar to her brother-in-law.
I was going to ask if he was prone to wearing brightly colored glasses, but the little girl spoke again.
“What’s your name?”
“Do you want to play Rumpelstiltskin? I’ll give you 27 guesses.”
This is where it got fascinating.
The little girl smiled. “I don’t need any guesses. Your name is X.”
I know I looked stupid for a couple of seconds. It’s not just that I forgot about my name badge. No one looking at it ever correctly assumes that the big X on there is my name. As far as I can tell, only psychopaths and weirdos have names like mine.
“How do you know that?”
“Your name is in the corresponding space for names.”
I laughed and looked at her mom in surprise. For a child that age, her vocabulary and logical deduction about my name and badge was truly astonishing.
“You are a very smart girl aren’t you?”
“I hope I will be.”
“Say hello to your uncle Richard for me, okay?”
The little girl smiled. “Of course.”
I would say that I thought I might have just met one of our future presidents. But she’s much too smart for that.
PS The picture is one of the talkative and quarrelsome crows that likes to fly by me.
Because I got up even earlier than should be possible, I walked the dead man hill route and cut south. When I made it to North Street, the number of young people out around 1:30 was ridiculous.
By the time I looped back around and walked a short stretch of Leverett, three different cars had driven by with young men screaming from the windows in an attempt to startle me. It happens a lot. I wish I could tell all these young guys who have obviously been drinking that riding around with the back passenger window open while wearing a backward baseball cap is tantamount to catnip for police.
After I turned on Leverett again, a little white Hondaesque car drove by me slowly. Can you guess? Yet another inebriated young guy leaned out the window and screamed. “Wooooo!”
Even though I was expecting it, I jumped and laughed. The young guy leaned further out the window and waved, laughing.
The car turned on the very next left onto Hazel Street. It’s very close to Leverett. For no reason at all, I walked around the same corner. The Hondaesque car had stopped at the intersection of Hazel and Storer. The brake lights were lit, so I knew somebody was in the car.
I’m pretty sure one of the occupants was either stopping to confirm his membership in the chess club or securing more alcohol. I’ll let you decide which is more likely.
It was at that moment that I realized that Bobby Dean was calling. I walked quickly across the grass and against the trees just in case one of the car’s occupants might see me. When I was about ten feet away, I darted over to the passenger side. Keep in mind it’s about 2:00 a.m.
At the top of my lungs (two feet from the car), I screamed: “WHAT’S UP C*******ERS!”
(You have to use the terminology that young university men are prone to use, not to mention a nod to my dad.)
It turns out that two of the occupants had exited the vehicle when they arrived. Both passengers in the back seat screamed like elementary school girls.
It was as if they moved in slow motion as they overreacted. It didn’t occur to me to run off.
Both of the young guys fortunately thought it was hilarious.
“Be safe and watch out for the Watermelon Man,” I said before walking away, still grinning like an idiot.
PS The Watermelon Man is a fable invented by my dad, Bobby Dean. He’s always out at night and you never see him coming until he wants you to.
.*The picture is of beautiful new buildings recently constructed on the corner of Sycamore and Leverett. I had what should have been beautiful shots of the university skyline, but both turned out to be Mr. McGoo shots.
