the dust that doesn't settle

so it's in strange rhythms that i watch people smile, walk half-eagerly (i know where i'm going) and this is what it's coming to. i'm thinking about songs again. songs for rides homes and songs for long walks. songs for flat tires and songs for sad conversations. they always add up now.

stopping for smokes i noticed some children playing in the little playfield near my home. i dropped the wrapper of the new pack and leaned to pick it up and suddenly, the whole world seemed to smile at once. great wide smiles, san andreas smiles with arching eyebrows, we all know, they seem to say and i believe them and it's worth it.

climbing into my car, i turn on a new song, a drive to work song and click shutters in my mind of all the trees leaning at just such an angle casting just such a shadow or buildings made of odd colored bricks that trigger my imagination. i remember briefly a dream i had last night but it is gone before i can get my fingers around it. it's something i'd like to share with you but can't find just now. it has been misfiled. it has been placed in some other category in some other filing room and the all-nude cleaners i ordered from the observer haven't yet gotten to that part. cleanliness is for monks.

a song comes on, a good one, songs for countries by volta do mar and i feel myself slipping tirelessly as if caught on a strange foreign breeze, an undertow of certainty that needs nothing and feels only the grace of clocks ticking or ballerinas pointing their toes. it doesn't matter now, but the moment is beautiful. i have it every so often, and it's always like the saltiness of tears after your done crying. after all the sad moments have been expelled. isn't that what crying is about? isn�t' that what sadness is about anyway? expulsion?

enters the jesus and mary chain, like odd birthday planets i reflect momentarily on a dialogue in a film regarding their replacement of echo and bunnymen and mark it mentally as one with no real merit and move onto more pressing issues. i lower the conditioned air and notch down the window, light a cigarette, sometimes they taste oh so good and i am crazy with love of them. some moments are better than god.

the air outside is cool and i am sucked in by the moment, the way the sun hits this branch or that sidewalk, like spotlights for the latter day. i think about knighthood and saints and what is the difference, tell me what makes them so fucking different?

i lean back in my chair and feel for a split instant like a sixties hipster who sinks far down in the seat before raising back up to ensure seeing whatever road signs lie ahead. my registration is expired. i think about this strange officer who pulled me over for it a few nights back. it must've been five till nine (as curfews for liquor buying go, nine is ours) and he pulled into the store behind me. he let me off with a warning, which is a first, and i think dramatically about this for a moment, how abused i am for not getting more warnings. if only, i am quite aware, i had breasts i would be given ample warning, pun-free.

alas, such is not such.

as he pulls away after checking me for warrants i think enclosingly about every time i have been pulled over and the reasons for them. i am not sure i remember them all, but i remember most. i drive like a grandmother most of the time. not below the speed limit per se, but not ahead of it. i seldom rush. this life is full of rushers; i do not need to add to the ranks.

as the word ranks occurs to me, i think politically for a moment but then brush it off. there are too many people speaking loudly these days from this end or that, and i have, of late, decided that the problem is the loudness altogether. the wrong people are always talking, i have found.

the right ones seldom need to.

i get tot curve of the road that takes me to the highway (the 6-3-5) and lean to the right with my turning steering wheel. everything feels comfortable. as i merge on this sort of off-looking fellow with too few teeth and to long of hair on the sides (brushed over to cover the growing baldness, if it can be called that) decides that my being let it is a travesty of immense proportions and cannot, under any circumstances, be allowed. he speeds up which nearly runs me into a wall (the lane ran out) before i slam on my brakes to get in. strangely, though, even this feels right. all this is going on and i am on the phone with angel and she is telling me about the brashness of her day, i make a go or two at consoling her and maybe have halfway decent success. life is easy today for certain.

i like the breeze blowing through my car. i lower the rear windows to feel the air coming through. i know that doing this; i will reach the office with bed-hair but am willing to deal with the tilted head puppy dog looks from co-workers. this is how it happens most of the time. life just coasts right by and we try to be there for it, mostly only in half-cocked attempt, but attempts none the less. most of us, on most days, are unconcerned with the actual living of life and moreso the gathering that takes place during life. but the gathering unto ones self is not life. it never has been. but we never pay attention to truths, only simplicities.

as i'm rolling down the road, slowdive on, i feel suddenly a sort of kinship with my fellow drivers. it is, if only for an instant, as if we are all dancing together in our large tin boots. it is a dance, that unlike most of life, we all know the steps to. it is only the pace that alters.

i am struck dumbfounded by our new routines, however old they seem. this road, here: today, is not a road i have ever driven before, despite it being the same path i used yesterday. it is a new road. a new wind. a new sunlight burning in, and a new fresh hour to drive through. this is all good.

i feel suddenly like the christ when he realized that cross or no cross, life was just life, and smile big. this is how it happens. and we are lucky to see it.

i drive into the parking lot at work and slip inside with a slight grin eager for another day.

2003-10-29 | 5:32 p.m.
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