Word in Camo
Uniform of the Day: Camo
In the dark very early every morning, I walk out back, down the ramp I had built for my mother not long before she died, onto the concrete driveway to get Linda's newspaper. Eyes sweep the shadows cast by the streetlamp shining through trees and palm branches, looking for the wrapped paper, which is hiding, never easy to see. A slight breeze moves the shadows, making it even more elusive, camouflaged within the shadows that cover, hiding what's really there whether words are printed in black and white or unspoken in heart and mind.
Always a good lesson in the magic and art of camouflage, the paper often lies invisible right at my feet. It's all there if you look for it. I spot it, pick it up, walk out to the middle of the street. Easter Week, in the morning’s eastern sky was a bright crescent moon, and to the right of it the planet Venus as big, bright and clear as I, once an amateur astronomer, have ever seen it. The eyes are not that powerful, but with binoculars I think Venus would appear as crescent as the moon (yes, the camera that does not lie proves it).
At this hour and in predawn darkness under this sky, in every man who ever dreamed and every boy who ever loved, is a poet musing, "Who whom I love or have loved is now, or ever was in time past, looking at the same moon and same bright planet at exactly the same time as I, sharing the moment from far away, and maybe thinking of me ... " A man, even Jesus would have had the thought, perhaps of Mary Magdalen? Not to mention Alfred Noyes. "The moon was a ghostly galleon ... " the Highwayman and Bess.
At this hour and in predawn darkness under this sky, in every man who ever dreamed and every boy who ever loved, is a poet musing, "Who whom I love or have loved is now, or ever was in time past, looking at the same moon and same bright planet at exactly the same time as I, sharing the moment from far away, and maybe thinking of me ... " A man, even Jesus would have had the thought, perhaps of Mary Magdalen? Not to mention Alfred Noyes. "The moon was a ghostly galleon ... " the Highwayman and Bess.
Turning right, I look to the south, out across St. Andrews Bay. Not often but some mornings, pajamaclad, I stroll down the dark street toward the beach. Across the Bay, almost directly across from Calhoun Avenue where I stand is a flashing green light. I’m not sure, but looking at the NOAA booklet online, it may be G“15” with a 2.5 second green flash. If the light is clear and bright, there’s no fog. Sometimes it can’t be seen at all: foggy. This daily early morning alone or lonely event brings to mind the green light on Daisy’s dock across from Gatsby’s mansion: again, Jay's existential crisis from Jimmy Gatz to Jay Gatsby and return, crisis resolved. To Jay, the green light symbolizes his dream, which is Daisy. She is an idea, a dream that we know, as Jay never knows, is not really the girl he loved and who, in the fantasy that he thinks is real, he still loves and loves him. His dream, like many dreams, is a door ajar, a door which will only be -- as William Alexander Percy has it in his hymn/poem about the Peace of God -- “closed in the sod.” So be it. Red Right Returning, but we are not returning, we are leaving, and the green light guides us safely to the open sea and beyond.
As I walk back to the house, a song drifts in mind. I first heard it on the radio in our 1935 Chevrolet in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Who was singing? Frank? Bing? Walter? Walter Pidgeon sings it online, Youtube. Who? IDK, I know only the lyrics and haunting music. Sometimes my mother, who as a young woman had a sweet voice, would sing along.
Gone is the romance that was so divine.
'tis broken and cannot be mended.
You must go your way,
And I must go mine.
But now that our love dreams have ended...
What'll I do
When you are far away
And I am blue
What'll I do?
What'll I do?
When I am wond'ring who
Is kissing you
What'll I do?
What'll I do with just a photograph
To tell my troubles to?
When I'm alone
With only dreams of you
That won't come true
What'll I do?
What'll I do with just a photograph
To tell my troubles to?
When I'm alone
With only dreams of you
That won't come true
What'll I do?
For anyone who hasn’t been here, predawn is an hour when, glimpsing heaven because the dream is ended, one might see clearly that everything remains the same. That only we change, conceived, born, live, love, dream, age, die, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, may the Lord ..." It's all there if you look for it, any who don’t believe should look to the star lit heaven --
The glorious sun’s life giving ray,
The whiteness of the moon at even -- or dawning,
The flashing of the lightning free,
The whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,
The stable earth, the deep salt sea
Around the old eternal rocks ...
The glorious sun’s life giving ray,
The whiteness of the moon at even -- or dawning,
The flashing of the lightning free,
The whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,
The stable earth, the deep salt sea
Around the old eternal rocks ...
Mystery? Mystical? Cryptic? Eccentric? Cynical? Existential crisis? Memories in camo? Fuzzy existentialism? What's going on? Nothing. What's coming down? How the hell do I know? Next? A wall. No door ajar. A wall. I don’t understand life, which sometimes is no clearer than my mind or this blog post that I call My Nonsense. And I sure as hell don't understand death or why death can't wait, cares not that we have doors ajar, things to do, places to go and people to see; but only pierces our souls and breaks our hearts. Just a man, I don’t need to understand.
For this week after the Second Sunday of Easter, apt prayer from our Burial Office.
For this week after the Second Sunday of Easter, apt prayer from our Burial Office.
Help us, we pray, in the midst of things we cannot understand, to believe and trust in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, and the resurrection to life everlasting.
perhaps even
Give courage and faith to those who are bereaved, that we have strength to meet the days ahead in the comfort of a reasonable and holy hope, in the joyful expectation of eternla life with those we love.
perhaps even
Give courage and faith to those who are bereaved, that we have strength to meet the days ahead in the comfort of a reasonable and holy hope, in the joyful expectation of eternla life with those we love.
A flashing green light: Any Dream Will Do.
TW+