A Private Edit

Composed by gmanitou on March 28 on onetwofiver, A Private Edit

Foot follows foot. I move up the hill at a steady pace. Another day at its end and I am walking for my health.

Eventide is approaching and the world is bathed in quiet amber tones. Soft precious light falls on a street where a shiny black car sits. The cold steel is washed now for the seasonal cold is gone away for a day trip up north. The machine sits at rest near a crisp white curb. The curb is the edge of this cute suburban street with its budding trees and vine covered facades. This warren of brick and gingerbread is the dream of some, I guess of many.

During the day even in a down economy this place is filled with a cacophony of construction. One neighbor is restoring, another is demolishing and rebuilding. Right now the saws are silent but the neighborhood is not. Heard in the distance from inside a house closed to the chill that will soon descend (this is the false spring you see) a French horn plays. A soulful rendition of taps is heard. A silly Three Blind Mice follows as I turn the corner. Facing east now the music is gone.

This turn is a metaphor for at least one aspect of my life. Somewhere long ago I took another turn and the music vanished. All the rock rags stopped coming to my mailbox, no more Crawdaddy, no more Rolling Stone. There were no more trips to the odd club in the funky neighborhood to hear the up and coming best and brightest new band. I stopped listening to the radio because the spirit of the old FM was dead. It was just so much corporate noise. It wasn't an intentional or knowing turn mind you. Me I thought I had just glanced down an odd alleyway. Many turns are just as unintentional.

Walking east and looking up a broken twig hangs silently above me. It appears that this twig is hanging in space. It has been here for weeks and this illusion has outlasted a strong snow. A spider web (and I know this from the glint of moisture I saw on it one day) suspends the twig and leaf a good foot and a half from nearest part of the tree. The sight of the twig is a conundrum; the eye sees what the brain refuses to accept. Like the constant rebuilding and reformatting of the arguably safe world contained in this neighborhood the leaf is a conundrum. Hanging without visible support now is the dream of a perfect world the shinny clean black car represents. The illusion is so seductive, so enticing. But the current threads of economic world are as thin as the web that holds that twig and leaf in mid air. The black clean shiny status symbol car hard earned by the banker who in all other areas of his existence lives a modest life doesn't show the torment that the financial world is inflicting and suffering. It is pain experienced by both its merchants and its users/victims. If the wind picks up just a little bit all of this the twig and the middle class dream will be gone, maybe forever.

Last night I took another walk. I saw the same car in the same space. The light was different because I was walking later in the evening. A deep indigo peace filled the sky before I was done with my stroll. The street lights had come on. As I walked along I hummed and I experienced the evening’s peace. An old tune rolled softly off my tongue. "You have the most beguiling eyes that I have ever seen..." I leaned back and looked up into a now dark sky with memory and love. Last night I gazed into a sky that captured all of the warm moments of my life.

I went home and wrote a long piece about that walk. It was joyous and it was in the parlance of the 1970s mellow. And I was going to post it and then I hit the wrong button and it was gone. In one key stroke I was awakened to a core concept of Zen, all of this is temporal and transitory. The descriptions of the light and the walk and the warm world were gone like that. It was okay.

When I walked the same route tonight I had lived another day. In the living of that day the world and my place in that world shifted. As I walked what I saw was different and changed. But because of the experience of the previous night I knew that what I saw today was transitory. I didn't trust this reality but I didn't distrust it either. No matter what I saw or experienced tonight, the same walk tomorrow will be different. And that is not okay but it is okay too.

At breakfast this morning my eleven year old asked me a question. I offer it up to you. Do we need evil for there to be good? Me I begged out on this one. It was breakfast for goodness sake and I wasn't ready for that question. But tomorrow that question will remain and when I walk I will push it to the forefront of my thinking and mull on it a bit more. Then I will go home and take him on.