“You are the Skittles of my heart.” – X
I waited day after day for the perfect moment. When the declining sun aligned perfectly against the ordinary tree by the road. There are only a couple of days of the year when it’s possible to capture this fleeting alchemy of orange at sunset. Which proves that even the most ordinary thing or person can shine with brilliance when someone is looking for it with patient eyes.
Love, X
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blanketed by the sky blue
above the Earth immense
billowing trees verdant
dropping splashes of color bright
each one perhaps for my delight
seventy-seven irregular degrees
November ignored
tomorrow reminds me that this is the last
time is short
though minutes long
when you find yourself
where you belong
bare feet sliding across bedrock mossy
water cold washing away the day
this moment stolen can’t exist tomorrow
you cannot borrow against what is not yours
for all the things displaced for tomorrow
surely regret will be your sorrow
time is short though minutes long
what is surely yours is a song
you choose your verse
until its end
X
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Some moments remind me that people often find themselves on the razor’s edge. Wherein one more callous word or capricious movement of the universe can have them seeking the tallest building. I won’t reveal the moment from a little bit ago. But I saw the most authentic face of gratitude I’ve seen in quite a while. I heard the clerk tell a man, “I’m so sorry your day’s been terrible.” The man in question radiated defeat and bone-weary tiredness. He was much too young to stand with a posture like the upper part of a question mark. When we both left, he reached out his hand to introduce himself. I showed him my badge so that he could see my name as I said it. I didn’t mean for the words that exited my mouth to sound so meta or cryptic: “Things might not get better, but you will be.” We talked for a minute. As I drove away, I saw him walking. His pants were still askew across the top of his boots; his back was not as arched. Is it optimism to think the synchronicity of our collision in the same time and space was no accident? Pure selfishness tells me that it was more of a benefit to me by far than to him.
I drove away and then stopped to walk over to the creek. The tornado test siren filled the air. “This is a test,” the siren blared. Indeed it is.
X
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Just to see if I could do it… Since I was up at 1 a.m. in real-time, I decided to attempt to catch the daylight savings time in real-time on multiple devices. Attempting to screenshot the online clock when all my devices reverted from 2 a.m. to 1 a.m. reminded me of those ancient Commodore 64 timer games. In high school in 1983, the chemistry teacher Daniel Lynn had his Commodore 64 set up in class. Each of us attempted to hover over the keyboard and jam a key when the screen flashed. My reaction time was that of a drugged hamster. I had to look the teacher’s name up. It could have been Aloicious Dragonlegs, and it wouldn’t have surprised me. It wasn’t until I looked him up in the way that I do that memories came back to me, ones I hadn’t thought of in years. This morning, I counted the last thirty seconds and closed my eyes on the last ten as 2 a.m. neared. And clicked, catching the clock reverting exactly.
As for DST, the effects of it are as insidious as those of being left-handed in a right-handed world. I hope I live long enough to see this stupidity eradicated. And not only that, but eliminated. (An old joke of mine, repeating synonymous words as if I don’t know what the original means.)
X
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It’s lovely that the goats recognize me now. I brought them both healthy and trashy treats. And this time I remembered that there would be a tumult of birds. All of us were happy. When I left, I heard the distant roar of the tourist train approaching, so I stopped at the corner and got out and leaned on the hood of my car. A small silver car passed driving erratically. The driver was angry and screaming at the passenger. The kind of anger that easily results in danger. That guy needs more goats in his life.
X
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Earlier today, though I was more tired than usual after work, I graced the grocery store with my presence. I remembered that an ATM had been placed on the other side of Domino’s. Placing my bags in the car, I had the sudden urge to run. There were no Trump supporters nearby, nor a rabid animal to flee from. I sprinted across the grocery store parking lot and then up the hill and across the parking lot of Domino’s. After using the ATM, I walked back across. An employee of the grocery store hollered across at me. He had watched me take off running from the side of my car and was convinced that I was being threatened or chased. It seems that he was tempted to call for help. After a few seconds, he was convinced someone was filming it as a prank. He asked me why I took off running. Because I’m inscrutable, I told him that just because he did not see someone chasing me doesn’t mean that there wasn’t. He looked at me like I was crazy. I finally laughed. He seemed relieved. And confused. I have a feeling he’s telling the story of the crazy man running for no reason. The next time I see him, I’m basically obligated to take off running in the opposite direction again.
X
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PS The picture is unrelated to my story!
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On the heel of using some of my lottery winnings to replace the windshield of my car, today I went in for an oil change. For my car, I mean. My oil seems to be fresh. A young tech entered the waiting area where I was busy doing shenanigans. He told me he thought I had a chipmunk problem. When he came in, I expected odd news about my car. To hear the word “chipmunk” was near the bottom of the list for expectations. He went on to say that when he pulled my air filter assembly apart, he ran into a problem. I figured I was going to have to replace the air filter. Or worse. He told me that there were 50 plus acorns in there and that he used a special vacuum nozzle to get them all out. It was at that point I realized he was referring to squirrels! The lady in the waiting room with me looked up in surprise. Because the conversation was probably one of the weirdest and most rapid-fire ones she’s heard in a long time. I thanked him, after noting that whichever squirrel that was using my air assembly as a nut hoarding place was going to be plenty pissed when he returns to find his stash missing.
I’ll keep an eye out for an angry squirrel for the next few days.
X
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My windshield had more cracks than a plumber’s convention. So today Safelite came and exchanged a new windshield for money. The tech had it done start to finish in 30 minutes. He told me my car would run faster if I gave the engine squirrels more protein.
I also experimented with acrylic inside my light bottles. One was a complete failure. But in doing it wrong, the light bulb went off in my head. This one has a keepsake bracelet embedded in it.
X
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Stupid delights. The fortuitous alignment of location and timing. A strong gust of wind precisely when I passed under the tree. Surrounded by a cyclone of beautifully colored leaves making their escape to the ground. It felt like dozens of butterflies.
X
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The plants are attracting the wrong crowd.
After working a bit very early this morning, I drove to the flattest open space that was convenient. Sleeping less sometimes has its rewards. I parked near the railroad tracks and access road by Meeks and sat on the hood of my car. It didn’t take long for the meteor showers that peak this weekend night to dazzle me. Though there was more light interference than I liked, the wide view of the night sky provided more than enough vantage for me to watch several brilliant transitory flashes burn across the sky. I’m sure anyone driving by might have looked twice at that hour because I decided to lay flat on the road several feet away from my car, and my eyes turned to the sky. As I lay there, the mass of traffic snarls from yesterday evening seemed like a week ago. The hardness of the ground didn’t bother me. After a few more flashes, I went back to my apartment. The first time I went back out on the landing, I wasn’t thinking about more meteors. But the sky gifted me with a couple as I stood there.
These meteorites are debris related to Haley’s Comet. It staggers me that about 50 tons of this debris hit the Earth’s atmosphere daily.
Though my Grandpa knew nothing about the night sky, some of the sporadic memories I have of him are of him pointing at the Big Dipper, or asking me if I could see the man in the moon. He spent most of his life surrounded by fields and immense night sky views. I spent more than a few seconds thinking about what the meteorites might look like in the fields of Monroe County.
For a brief few moments, the night made me wonder how objects that could be 4.5 billion years old were racing toward their demise only for me, a solitary human being, to witness. And that each of us, in our own way, flies through time exactly like they are.
X
P.S. Parenthetically Speaking 