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February 21, 2005

flux

The self same moment I could pray;
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge - The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

last week, i waited, laid low while the flood waters from the half-marathon receded. when they did, when the self-analysis and the physical consequences drained away, what lay beneath was revealed. bits of ruins, quiet artifacts of things, some built recently, some long ago.

i hadn't been able to sing for weeks. i know how trivial that seems, but it's half of my ability to speak. life gets thrown fundamentally out of balance when i can't write, or i can't sing.

i missed the training group, and the goal i had focused on for months. physically, i lost a sense of purpose.

then things started to change. friday, i sold my car to an F-16 pilot from minnesota. i left work for what i thought would be another fruitless half-hour wasted showing the car. hours later, i was driving back from san antonio, where we had dropped off his rental car. he dropped me off at my office at about 8:00pm. i pulled all my stuff out of it - a gym bag, three jackets, my suitcoat, a bag of stuff from the console, two basketballs, a pair of shoes, some clothes, and a couple dozen bottles of water and gatorade.

i shook his hand, wished him safe journey on his long drive back to minnesota, and watched a piece of life drive away.

the lexus had been a relic of a time when i was convinced that i would soon need an suv in my life, for someone i thought would be my wife, and for the children that we hoped might follow. in the last couple of years, it became a reminder of a failure, of a future not realized. then, not being able to divest myself of it, it became a persistent insinuation that my efforts to change my life, to overcome the past, might be in vain.

the weekend was spent looking for cars, helping diane look for a bike for her big trip to mexico with her kids sal and julian, and looking for a new place for me to live. my lease is up in early april, and i just know that i need to move on.

in 2002, i was laid off, a relationship ended, and i needed a place to live. i lived with my friends billy and michele for a few weeks while i looked for a place with billy's brother, robert. one day i got a voicemail from my stepfather suggesting that i should move to my parent's house until i got everything back under control.

within hours, i signed a lease. it was here, way out in the hills to the northwest of austin, so far that robert and i had decided the newness and the value simply weren't worth the drive.

in the past two and a half years, it was a halfway house of sorts, a safe, though empty and isolated location for me as i rebuilt my life. my experience here in the margins has been about as jungian as you can get.

so much seems to be happening at once. i've tried and pushed for these changes, but once again, the universe refused to be rushed. i remember lori and i saying that you can no more force the universe to unfold as you can force an acorn to grow into an oak. zen shit, but truth.

so today, it's all a little disconcerting, but exciting, as if the universe has decided that i'm either ready for change, or at least that it's going to present me with the opportunity to change my life. tomorrow, i'll buy a car. tomorrow, i'll see about joining another training group, or jumping in with the group still training for a half marathon on march 13th. and this weekend, i'll look with a possible roommate for a new place to live, close to downtown, where so much of my life seems to be lately. and once again, just before my 36th birthday, i'll watch bits of the past drive away.

tonight, incidentally, as i typed, listening to tori amos, jeff buckley, peter gabriel, songs in a cycle of despair, redemption and hope, i began, for the first time in weeks, to sing a little.

Posted by Rob at February 21, 2005 10:34 PM

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Posted by: Sheila at February 23, 2005 09:05 PM

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