. Spinning .

I too, may well have kept on walking; for even in the midst of mid-life crisis and my resolve to be a better man, there was nothing I could do about spilt wine.  But as I neared Him, He looked up and within the haggard face His eyes met mine.  I could not look away, I slowed my stride and stopped within an arm’s length from Him, taking in somehow the nondescriptiveness of the man.  His clothing, not shabby, frayed nor dirty, but telling of a hardness and a well-worn life within.  An overcoat, charcoal grey and thinned by time, so that it appeared the man inside warmed it instead.  Woolen pantslegs like young and bending saplings stuck out from underneath; His shoes were pricked with holes in some design created in a better time.  All this I saw as if in halo that wound around His eyes.

His face was sagging with what I guessed to be a sadness at the broken bottle, and yet His eyes shone with intensity as if within a darkening room a light switch had been flicked; a bare-bulbed locus that blinds and yet still draws you in.  Grey-hair with glints of light that caught the sun to sparkle like silver threads adorned his head and matched a beard and mustache that curled as well.  I thought of Willie Nelson with his stare of glazed purported wisdom, for there was softness in His look though feverish as well like Charlie Manson’s black piercing and commanding eyes.  I felt no fear, no overwhelming sense of madness in them, just a need to stop and take it in.

Willie and Waylon do it for me.  Spent and will spend the rest of my life until Christmas Day in the frameshop working to get the orders out (and money in!), but that doesn’t mean my mind doesn’t wander away from the jobs at hand.  I’m anxious to write—to finish the story I started a post or two ago; and to read, and to hide away from the world until this year is over.

Saturday my niece was in an auto accident—on the way to have the car cleaned up to be sold before they leave for Spain later this week.  A van hit a dump truck and careened into the driver side of her car.  Luckily, she was alone (without the three kids) and luckily, although I’m sure it was hell for him to watch, her husband was following in his own car.  She’s okay, we think; they kept her overnight in the hospital because of a serious concussion, but it could have been worse.  The car was totaled, and it took a half hour to get her out of the car by cutting the roof.

I can’t take too much more of the losses, (a 50-year old neighbor with six children died last Sunday of a heart attack, a terrific guy) and the near losses keep me on edge. 

I know it doesn’t compute, but I really, really want this year to be over.

(Note:  This is just a story line, so don’t get nervous…)

It doesn’t really matter to me just what you believe and what you don’t.  But some of you are hooked on guilt and doubt from being raised one way and facing all your life a different world.  So that’s what makes me think that I should tell you I saw God the other day.

I suppose I’d call it chance, but maybe it was meant to be, a fate of sorts, a reason that I among the crowd would be the one to notice Him; to spot that He had dropped a package and it smashed against the sidewalk with a loud yet tinkling sound you knew was glass.  He stood there looking down at it as if surprised, perplexed, while people skirted round Him and the slowly purpling crumpled brown bag.  Or maybe they just knew and saw a dozen times before and didn’t wonder at the stain that spread across the grey concrete like blood upon the water, sinking in yet running out in fanned patterns that children would some morning later claim looked just like dinosaurs or maybe like their teacher with the biggest nose they’d ever seen.

It wasn’t that or that, but finally this that broke him into little pieces of confetti blowing in the wind like on a wedding day when tossed in joy amid good wishes of the crowd.

But while they cheered, he landed hard on concrete walks and tried to scurry with the wind while they walked about and ended stuck to the bottoms of their shoes instead.

Until thinned by endless drumming against the earth he sought to live upon, he wore away to nothingness and no one ever noticed except one housewife in New Albany.  She came in from the rain one day and wondered at pink streaks that wet and shiny marked for a while her kitchen floor.

Don’t you hate when the last main conversation of the day lies heavy with the price tag of a good night’s sleep?  After the writers meeting…

Writers who want to write—a large percentage of the population.  Literally, almost everyone is a writer, and everyone has a story certainly. 

Writers who need to write—a much smaller group.  Not necessarily even the crème de la crème of writing ability, but those who suffer from indigestion of facts requiring a coating of the soothing Pepto Bismol of imagery.   There are more bad writers burning with desire than there are good; but God bless them, every one.

And this:  What serves for inspiration to explore, learn and race ahead?  Role models, certainly; Edgar’s done more for me and others as a tragic and dramatic author whose concepts and tale-telling abilities beat just as strongly in our hearts with drama as did in his.  A penchant for fantasy perhaps, or righteous indignation at the current state of humankind. 

Or for some, when the horizon comes into view and shocks one with its layered sunset colors in a beauty that strikes the blackness of the earth against the sky.  And that which never was a real reality becomes the focus.  And the darkness of the nightfall turns instead to light the coming day. 

Uh-oh.  Had this weird and scary experience in the dark garage this morning. 

Normally words come to me in poetry; a line, a phrase, sometimes a stanza or paragraph.  And by poetry, I mean a narrative that includes the imagery, the metaphors, all of it; something I can take and run with (literally, I run for the computer and let it bleed out, like a fresh cut that you’d tend to bandage, but I don’t).

But this morning, the idea is there, but not the words.

Something really good and sad about walking out, and winter being the worst time, and the leavin’ lasting for days like footprints in the snow.  And even reading the tracks of memory as would an Indian scout or hunter, knowing where one had been and where they’re heading. 

But I don’t have any words!