the crack in my eye

this week i was privy once again to the fact that sometimes my view is skewered by my own paranoia and imagination. i'm one of those kids whose mothers handed her a paper lunch bag when she was seven and said, just keep breathing, or you're going to faint.

what was i so worked up about? no clue. a few years back when i saw my therapist for the first time and described the horrible feeling of trying to suck air in over some invisible wall in my lungs, she said it was a nice way of describing anxiety.

my powers of description abound.

i imagine that most paranoid folks have a vivid sense of imagination. you're always wondering what's around the corner, and whether or not your own invisible monster is going to gobble you up. i imagine these things at the obvious times, like when the floor creaks at night, but even when i'm sitting on the sofa watching television in broad daylight, or shopping for paper toweling at target. the lurking fear creeps around behind me, dogging my heels.

and this is what it's like when it's better.

i've had this constant companion for so long that most of the time i can ignore the red maw waiting to envelop me. i can talk myself into falling back asleep, i can walk without always looking over my shoulder. i don't know what it is in me that imagines these things, but whatever it is, it is probably the strongest muscle in my body, due to its consistent exercise.

***

when i see the world it is through rose colored glasses. rose colored because i enjoy that romantic sense of hope and innocence, but rose-colored too because the world takes on a distinctly bloody overtone. i see carnage around me at times when perhaps it is something simple.

take, for example, my drive into work the other day.

along the highway, where sometimes you'll see the remnants of shredded tire, there was a cardboard box. it was torn up, a large box, perhaps something that had housed a microwave or washing machine. it was plain and brown, warped and ragged.

and when i saw it, at first, i thought it was the body of a doe. i couldn't see the blood yet, or the soft white of her underbelly, but i was certain that it was a carcass.

as i pulled closer i realized that it was just that box.

***

one of the reasons i dislike walking on my own, at least here in the big city, is due to this overactive and shaky view i have. it is as if little red riding hood and the big bad wolf are waiting around each corner, perhaps playing a hand of gin before leaping into character as i round the turn: young and naive and sweet, and large and ferocious and toothy, both of them grinning for different reasons.

perhaps it is why i am reticent to make friends: i am always hoping but consistently waiting for the proverbial other piece of footwear to fall from above. perhaps it is just a story i tell myself, so that i can remain silent and shy, and keep to myself, a hermit wandering the streets. leftovers of a childhood spent on edge? the malfunctions of a brain drenched in unbalanced chemicals?

personally i find it all quite lovely--what is there not beautiful about the shiver of a sob, or the crack of laughter?

***

during my drive home i have to wait in line on the on-ramp, watching the light and the car in front of me, waiting for my turn to speed up and get home. on my right there is a house, next to the wetlands in the middle of the city, that has a large, sloping yard leading to the ditch between the ramp on which i'm parked and their home.

i've seen wild turkeys there, strutting around. but that day, after imagining the worst in a cardboard box, i can perhaps appreciate better the innate grace of the living doe, slender neck bowed to lawn.

perhaps that is my own secret: that to live with the dark on your shoulder, even if it is imagined, makes you more able to wonder at the light.

round trip

so saturday we went camping.

camping was delightful. dan grilled some melt-in-your-mouth steaks, and my mom made cake, and we had a blast just playing bocce and rummikub and tramping around the lake. it rained cats, dogs and farming implements on saturday night, but the tent stayed dry. sunday we had a great breakfast, packed everything up, and went home.

the campsite was 1.5 hours away. i planned a road-less-traveled route, which we discovered was under construction. the detour for that route was, yes, also under construction. it took twice the scheduled time to arrive.

sunday when we were driving home we took the road more traveled, the major highway in the area. the sun beat down and we were warm and tired, so were looking forward to a quick arrival. about half an hour from home i glanced down and my heat needle was buried.

fabulous.

for about five miles we drove on the shoulder, hazard lights flashing. pulled off and filled up the antifreeze, which was nearly empty, and then drove home with the heaters on full blast and windows open. our travel time on the final leg was tripled.

***

it's not the destination, they say, but the journey. and the journey this time was arduous, to say the least.

it got me to thinking about most of the journeys i've taken, alone or with my family. it is the truth--the journey is the long part, and the destination often doesn't hold the glow it did when you began. or else perhaps you've seen something more remarkable during the voyage, and the destination is not the hoped-for miracle.

then again, maybe my definition of destination needs to change, if for no other reason than there is no true stopping point--you are always, always moving, forward or backward. the actual distance, the direction, the place you turn around--those are just markers. even stationary, the human race is just that: a race.

the only destination is when you lay head to soil and end your journey, for good.

***

during the weekend we laughed over memories. i remembered being young, riding on top of my father's shoulders as my parents walked around the lake near my grandparents' home. halfway there, dad stirred up a snapping turtle. this is probably my earliest memory--watching a stick brush leaves over the turtle's beaked snout, hearing the harsh snap of its mouth clamp shut. i can smell the lake and the sweat on my mother's skin, and see the shine over her tan. my father's arm is all i recall, jabbing outward, not hurting the turtle, but showing off the whip-snick crush of its jaws.

i think i was around two years old, then--almost three decades ago. my father's beard is white now. in talking it was made clear to me that, as then, if he came across that turtle now, he would do the same demonstration to some other child--beware, caution, this is a small animal but even it can be vicious, and you must respect it.

that turtle will no doubt outlive my entire family, if it hadn't already by that time. i cannot imagine going through the world so low to the ground, hauling my home around on my back, moving that slowly.

then again, the turtle's journey will end the same way mine will. i suppose it is not so different, then, when it comes to the journey.

things that look like other things

when i was a kid i used to love watching clouds. it was just relaxing and such an easy way to exercise my own imagination--and oh, the things you could see: a pig riding a bike, a ceiling fan, the antlers of a moose.

i enjoy too the words that sound alike but mean entirely different things: pane and pain, there and their.

on my desk today there is a printout dan found for me, a showing of "serenity" at the riverview theater in minneapolis. it's for charity. it reminds me of the word serenity, and how now it has two meanings: the direct, pure, clean-of-soul meaning, and the movie, based on the television show.

this week my word is solitary. i feel the need to insulate my self with emptiness--the absorbing power of the void. empty has two meanings, too--empty and never to be filled, empty and to be filled in the future.

the empty space i crave right now is simply that: empty. it could go either way. sometimes it lingers for a long time. sometimes for just an hour or two, long enough for me to need a hug or a touch from dan, or to hear the voice of a friend, the meow of an insistently hungry feline, the caress of simply seeing humanity all about me.

i think it's the double edge of being human, this need. as a person you are individual, solid and solely of your self. your world is limited by the confines of your flesh, your mind unlimited. it's this mind that ties us all together, something unnamed and invisible. as much as you can understand the depths and meanings of what another person experiences, you cannot walk in their actual shoes. you are connected and yet separate.

on wednesday when i got home i went for a walk, just around the block. i enjoy walking for many reasons--mainly the health benefits, but also because i enjoy being outdoors a great deal, and i haven't had too many run-ins with gnats and mosquitoes yet this season. it won't be long, i know, before i'm swatting as i walk, and sweating in the dusk, and i dislike doing either of them.

anyway, i went for a walk, alone. it felt nice to just be outside, nice to be my self, nice to be separate from the world at large. wednesday it was windy--violently windy, gusts that moved my two-ton car around on the road and had trees flailing like children. i like the wind. when i lived up north, it would call to me. as soon as i was done with work i'd run home, put on my hiking wear, and trek out to the state park. i'd stand on the beach, winter or spring or whenever, until my cheeks were chapped. it was better than taking a shower, just to stand in the wind.

wednesday i remembered how long it has been since i walked in the wind, and savored the feel of it enfolding the limits of me--each and every finger, the small line of hair that i missed shaving on my shin, the bowl of my ankle bone. it was beautiful, plain and simple. while i walked i saw kids riding bikes and parents fetching the mail, all of us experiencing the same blustery atmosphere, all of us alone in our own pockets of life.

i had a silly theory once that the wind is just imagination--you cannot see it, but you can feel it, just like love or anger--and that perhaps the world and our bodies conspire together, bending limbs and follicles, in the pretense of being blown about by the wind.

it does not look like anything, wind. it moves around and tosses gravel to sky, violently strips homes from earth and uproots whatever is in its path--and yet for all this result, there is no hand that you can see, moving it all about. at least if it rains you can see the flood, rising.

something that looks like something else. wind doesn't look like anything. perhaps that is why i enjoy it so.