2003-02-10 - 10:00 p.m.
Driving Around on Sunday Afternoon
The sky is white and all the cars seem strangely silenced. My radio is broken.
There is a man with a leash on both his child and the dog. The child lags behind, the dogs strains ahead.
Sometimes the details are heartbreaking.
A turquoise vase sits empty of flowers, on the front steps of a house. The brightest thing I see.
Here. Now.
I am driving through the part of town where the new expensive street signs are made to look old, like things of quality. The name of the street and the message: Are you sure you belong here? The ivy is green and glossy on this winter's day and the roofs are bright, unstained.
If I were to have an accident here, it would be my fault for being here. For being here in my old car and my rumpled coat. I'm glad I went most of my life without knowing this. But now that I do....Is this what I chose for myself?
Patches of dirty, crystallized snow cling in the corners and shady spots.
I see myself as I might be or could have been..... others see me for what I am.
The office buildings are closed, their parking lots empty. My son works in that one, with the dark brick, the blind windows. What a thing to be able to say.
Sometimes I don't remember how it was I got here, what path I took for sure.
I had a baby boy, a tow headed child, who watched me for years in blue eyed wonder. And now he goes to work every day in an office building, and has a head full of things I will never know.
The years have swirled around faster and faster and drained like water from a bathtub.
The trees are full of crows instead of leaves. The car is warming up a little.
I make eye contact with a young girl sitting in the back seat of a big black car. She looks like she is being taken someplace she doesn't want to go. I always want to tell people: you are not trapped. Do not believe you are trapped.
She has not yet learned that people do not look at each other in cars.
Sometimes I break that rule and people turn away in shock, as though you were peering into their bedroom window.
Strangers in a world of strangers. When a strange man tried to lure me into a car, I turned and ran, just like my mother told me to. Don't talk. Don't get too close. Run. I was six and I remembered.
How do you want to live? Can you not have decided all of that, after so long?
When I was twenty, we used to joke that all problems could be blamed on one of two things: the war or hormones. I just realized that has a new ring of truth to it. I wasn't really scared then, but I am now.
I'm scared. It is a different war and different hormones.
I stop at the natural food grocery store, where everyone displays their naturalness in layers of ethnic clothes, in long grey braids and the scent, when they walk by, of incense and garlic and coconut. There is a whole river of thought flowing through this place and sometimes I want to throw myself into it, to become one of the people who will let nothing but the purest substances touch my body. A way to control the uncontrollable, the terrible randomness that stalks us.
I wonder if they know I am an imposter because I do not really believe it makes that much difference. But I like it there. The cashier has a nice smile. I always slip away, I never stay involved.
When I come back out, it has begun to rain.
There is a newpaper box on which someone has scrawled the word: "LIES."
What would that be like, to be so sure you knew the truth? If I did, perhaps I would deface something, too.
Now I remember: I dreamed about words. WORDS. Not one of those dreams where you wander through a swirl of surreal images, but one of those dreams where you feel as though the universe it presenting some ancient truth. All the words I have spoken drift up like smoke above my head and linger there. It is all about finding the right words. If you have no words, then you have no thoughts.
I know the reasons this is not true. But it is true for me, the observer who looks for some way to describe what is happening around me. There is no genuine understanding in good or bad. We can only say: I see. I know. I am.
The bent and compact tree, its branches angled too sharply, looks like an old Chinese man. I see him there by the side of the road, his eyes lively and slightly amused.
Wisdom was what I wanted, more than money or fame or an easy life.When I begin to see the connection between all things, will I be wise?
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