flowers

flowers ...

Twenty-odd years ago at a highlight of life ... when I used to drive Nicholas back and forth between the Panhandle and South Florida, there began to be at some point in the trip, seemingly more sudden than gradual, awareness of change, that change had occurred; not was occurring but had occurred: plants were different, flora, the vegetation. Unfamiliar, even foreign, I didn’t belong here. Flowers, still Florida, but not, not home.  

It’s more than geographical. It’s chronos. At an hour of hoping — more optimistic than expectant and not at all realistic, so might as well have coffee — that sleep may yet return, what comes instead of sleep is uneasy sense of hazy, murky, not line, between eccentric and weird. Writing. Thinking. Dancing fingers. A zone. Twilight maybe. Caution: others may notice, and that would not be good. Or is it kairos? And is it just me, or am I not alone by this window? Green light across the Bay, is that you, Daisy? Jay here. Wait. Wait for me. Or send Xapov for me.

Seldom do I watch television. I’d rather read. Bloom still, about J’s Moses now, and this should finish the book, because Adam to Moses, J’s earthy story begins in a Garden and ends on a Mountaintop. But last evening the distress sets in and I put Bloom down because of what’s on the screen, live. Realtime. Terrible, terrible scenes in Nepal, suffering and fear. Children. A building collapsing. Rage in Baltimore, before very eyes I watch a CVS store go from people running out carrying armloads of — what? candy bars? cough drops? condoms? chocolate-covered cherries? toilet paper? Kleenex? What the hell's to loot in a CVS? And wasn’t this their neighborhood store? — to smoke pouring out the door and off the roof; to the block an inferno. Sirens. Troops.

Twilight now, light fading over the Bay and shrimp boats chugging back out, takes me to other times and places, war zone. Danang harbor, late night, flash, whump, concussion as an American jet swoops up after firing into a target high on a mountain in the distance to my right. Today a drone would have done that, eh. Zone: in a campground somewhere on Blue Ridge Parkway I listen as Walter Cronkite, in tears, describes the assassination by a hate-crazed madman, of a hero. By the time I arrive back at work, the city skyline across the Potomac is ablaze, flames leaping high. What’s wrong with us? Anger, hatred, certainty, rage, power, insanity, selfishness, force, violence is our only road to change? P was wrong, earthlings are not in the image of Elohim the divine chorus at all, but dirt, mud-dolls. J has it right and we are still in the Wilderness. Dirt. Dust. … Ellipsis. Flowers. How do I get out of here? In the darkness, who will write the history?

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