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three songs
July 06, 2005
at about 3:45, I slipped out of the office, and out into the heat of the day to pick up some photos. something’s not right about this summer. I’ve lived here 36 years, and there’s something particularly unbearable about the heat, even worse than summers a few years ago where I had to wear a suit every day, and still chose to drive with the top down.
the sun was still high, but I surveyed the sidewalks ahead and crossed the streets strategically to stay in the shade.
at congress and sixth, I waited far back from the curb, in the slightly cooler, slender shelter of a lightpost.
to my right, a woman sat on a bench, alone, flanked by bags. she was probably in a rough version of the late fifties. she had a large rolling suitcase in front of her, and both hands rested lightly and delicately on the retractable pull handle. she moved it up, and back down, smoothly and rhythmically, and she smiled with an odd, knowing peacefulness.
the light changed quickly, and I moved on. on the way back, I didn’t think to look back over at her, and I took a different shade-exploiting path back to the office.
after work i changed in the office, rode my bike home, changed shoes, and went for a short run down congress. at sixth street, I again met the light, again sought refuge in the pole’s shadow, and I waited, breathing deeply, hands on my hips.
to my right, the woman still sat there, with her bags, still working the handle, raising and lowering it. maybe she had nothing else to occupy her. maybe she was enthralled, hypnotized by the simplicity of the motion, the smooth, near frictionless sliding of the tubes.
as I ran on, I couldn’t get the image out of my head. I wondered, but I know I missed what was happening.
one
blow up the outside world
(soundgarden)
the device was ready. the case, filled carefully, steadily, involuntarily, over time, over years. it was packed with the volatile mix of loss, sorrow, despair, anger, confusion, madness, the experience of her life turning her away from whatever dreams she may have had as a child, and into an unwitting bombmaker.
the bomb was armed with determination, conviction, faith.
there was no conspiracy. she acted, as she lived - alone.
there was no agenda, no political statement, no bargain to be struck. she only wished to make it all go away, for the price to be paid, to save the world from itself, from seeing and feeling all she had seen, felt. it was her right and duty of vengeance and of pity and of mercy.
she raised the plunger, and felt it slide smoothly back down under pressure.
click.
not yet. somewhere deep in the chaos and stillness of her mind, there was the knowledge, the intellect of instinct, that knew that there was a defect in the detonator. charge flowed, but stopped. it was a matter now of chance, the randomness that god built into the universe that is so often wiser, more profound, more sacred than predestination.
when all the influences in the world and in her own heart, all the space and time and humanity and birth and death and joy and sorrow and war and peace became just slightly more out of balance, when her heart knew and god knew, then, maybe then, the spark, and the detonation, and the end, the universe exploded into the infinitesimally small blocks that god would sit with again, like a child on the floor with his legos, building a new universe, a new garden where hope might thrive.
raise the plunger, press it down.
click.
not now, but soon.
-----
two
of these, hope
(peter gabriel)
she was tired, in a way. how long had she sat here, in this sun?
maybe she always had. she had always sat somewhere, for as long as she could remember. she could, in fact, remember little else. she saw little girls walk by, and knew that at some time she must have been a child, or so it seemed. it seemed like it could have been, but it didn’t seem familiar. but maybe. maybe it was yesterday, maybe it was 100 years ago.
she wondered if she had ever been beautiful, like the women that walked by, their skins kissed by sunlight, smooth with youth and care, almost translucent to the glow of potential and life. she wondered if she was beautiful now.
she wondered about these things, but they didn’t worry her or get her down. she was happy doing her job. she knew what it meant, working the pump, providing the world around her with air and the force of life. she didn’t understand at all how it worked, but she knew that didn’t really matter, and there was wisdom in that, though she didn’t know that, either.
she knew she couldn’t stop. she didn’t know sadness or regret, or understand the absence of meaning and happiness. to her, there was no choice, no wondering, no question, no foil necessary for meaning or happiness. and for this, she wasn’t ignorant, but probably wiser, though she didn’t know it, and the people that walked by probably wouldn’t understand it.
it had been made easy for her, working the pump. she saw people struggle with the machines they used. she saw people speaking into boxes, moving erratically to try to make them work, asking “can you hear me? hello? can you hear me?” to apparently no one in particular.
she saw the men driving noisy things into the street behind the pretty orange cones. the things caught on the street, tore into it, sent force and shivers back up into the men. they stopped from time to time, and rubbed their hands, stretched their backs, making faces all the while.
but the pump was smooth. it took not so much force or pressure to raise and lower it, though it required rhythm and focus and a simple faith and willingness. she had these things, more than the people she helped sustain, though she did not know it.
those traits, and doing the job she did, made people think she was crazy, though she did not realize it, and did not realize just how precisely inaccurate that judgment was.
she looked ahead, and saw what bit of the world passed in front of her.
she raised and lowered the handle.
hope and life and love flowed out. and everyone in the world, though no one ever realized it, breathed it all in.
-----
three
but i'm not the girl you once put your faith in,
just someone who looks like me.
(aimee mann)
she sat on the bench, in the sun, in july, but she was there in the airport in rapid city, on the black vinyl seat, in the fluorescent lights, in late december, the buzz of the small, quiet airport early in the morning, the cold just outside the floor-to-ceiling windows.
in front of her, the one suitcase. further, across the aisle, he sat, his hand curled before his mouth, looking for the words that would make her stay.
sally jesse rafael blathered. donahue had been ok in his time, but lately, there was this explosion of talk shows, with egos named geraldo and maury supposedly trying to open the eyes of their audience. it seemed to her it was just drama, and it seemed to be getting worse.
how long was that? five seconds thinking about talk shows? when she was in the midst of her own drama? what was wrong with her? sometimes she worried that there was something cold about her, that maybe she only felt things because she knew she should. she worried that really, she didn’t. sometimes she wondered if anyone did.
she looked over at him, and she knew that yes, people really did feel things.
she leaned forward, ran her fingers over the retractable handle of her suitcase. just the one bag, but it was all of her life that she decided to take with her.
“just a month or two, baby,” he said quietly. “please, I’ll find something, we both will. we can get by. we can make this work.”
she pursed her lips, tried to listen through the noise in her head. it had gotten worse lately. she had lost bits of time. sometimes, she heard herself talking, but nothing she heard made sense. now, though, she was just listening, searching to see if she felt anything.
she opened her mouth to respond, but she didn’t know what to say. she pushed the button on the handle, pulled it up slightly, lowered it till the button popped back softly against her thumb.
“it’s not you. I just have to go.”
“you don’t even know anyone in texas. I don’t even know why you’re going there. you just started talking about it…”
he hesitated. he had to say it, again, but it hadn’t gone well before, no matter how he had gone about it. “I’m worried about you. you’ve been making more and more kinda weird decisions. you don’t sleep much. I really… think you need to see someone. just stay until you do… I don’t think your mind is healthy right now.”
her head snapped up and she stared at him. there, there was something… anger. and… fear. and sadness. she grasped onto them… they seemed real. she needed real, it’s all she wanted, sometimes. she breathed, softened her gaze.
“john, i-“
feedback blared briefly over the public address system.
“Delta flight 729 to Houston is now boarding. Please presen…”
“I have to go. I’ll call.”
“wait…”
“no.”
she pushed the button on the suitcase handle, pulled it partway up. she was convinced because she thought she was convinced. but still, she searched, dug, clawed at her own heart. do I feel? what do I feel? what is it?
she stood, pulled the handle up with her.
click.
Posted by Rob at July 6, 2005 03:07 AM