re: midday heat

with a sigh, he sinks into the pavement. the temperature on the bank index flashes 96 degrees. there is nothing for him to do in this town of limited activity. school is out and not set to start for another month. he has recently been laid off from his job at the grocery store because of budget cuts.

so here he sits for several hours. his girl companion hums familiar tunes as she sketches fairy-like figures in a well-worn sketch book. eventually the heat overtakes him and the humming lulls him into a shallow sleep.

he does not dream. neither asleep nor awake. he would, if he understand the meaning of the word, consider himself content. the world is not wholly good or bad to him, just blissfully spinning one day into the next.

there is truth, also, in all those things he doesn't see. the hard poverty his parents endure, and that he will experience in the coming years as an adult. he will graduate high school, with no aspirations beyond the corner grocery, smoking camels on the corner, drinking beer on a friend's patio. he will marry, which may end in divorce, or worse, too many mouths to feed.

but for now, he is content. and even he is not blind to the importance of the here and now.

hmmm...

I am in an extremely pessimistic state of the moment, thinking that not even this writing will be redeemable. For everyone will die. Everyone. And moments flit by so fast that even good ones are soon gone. My life is nothing more than a blip on the radar, overcrowded and sometimes overlapped by other blips. Tomorrow I will go to work. I will calculate my hours in the form of dollars. I will trapped at times, and elated at others. I will want to be sleeping; I will be buzzing with caffeine. What is the point of it all?

I believe in god and the other-worldly hope and all that stuff. But how is one supposed to cope with the inevitability and finality of life-ending. Of things stopping without resolution or stories that do not finish getting told. Of regret and the wondering how things would have been had just another choice been made. How does one cope with the reality of lives unlived, dark and gray? How do I begin to tell the stories of my family without blame or pointing fingers? When it seems so obvious that someone must be to blame….someone must be brought to justice for the heinous and unforgivable crimes of destroying the ones they love, or that love them.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps it is grace that is the storytellers truest friend. Grace that lies between the critical eye and the frantic fingers. Grace their only companion thru years of isolation and loneliness. How I long for this grace….

Someday I will return to life as the beauty I know it to be, beyond the walls of conventional society, into the grasses and hillsides of wild country. For now, I must understand the beauty of fellow humans, lives being lived next to mine. I must find that grace and record these lives, with understanding and empathy, bold enough to tell the truth but gracious enough to tell it with compassion; justice but no blame. No black and white. Brave enough to traverse the gray areas.

midday heat