It’s Friday for those who celebrate. Those of us who are retired don’t, really. For us every day is Saturday. We awaken every day at the same time as we always have. Our internal clock doesn’t recognize the time change from Daylight Savings to whatever local time zone we live in. Nor can it tell the difference from the 45 – 50 years of our work life to wherever it is that we now live. For me that means the early arrival of the new-found day. In the warm season when I can have my office windows open, I listen to the morning song of the robin calling to the world that breakfast is served. Soon the sparrows gather for their daily cacophony of “Feed Me! Feed Me!” Sol, that great light who reveals the dark secrets of the night, usually smacks me in the face as he rises to the labors of a new day. His warmth and light chase the bogeymen and frost from the earth.
So, here I am, writing so much nonsense to throw to the winds of the æther. Like the old children’s rhyme that I knew so many years ago, “I shot an arrow into the air. Where it lands I know not where,” these words are hurled out for all the world to see. But, where may they land?
I’m beginning a book by Ta-Nehesi Coates called “The Message.” I enjoy Coates. He writes like I feel. His melancholic words find sanctuary in my heart and mind. So much of his work reads like entries in a personal journal. They’re filled with the pathos of a person who seems to feel like he almost belongs. But not quite. His language makes me feel like we are kindred spirits. Can we ever truly be kin? We are products of entirely different worlds. I cannot know his any more than he could possibly know mine. Yet our shared humanity touches a live wire in me that sparks to life the truth of life in an unforgiving and unyielding world. There is joy in this world. Yet it sucks the life out of all who walk its paths. There are questions that are asked that have no answers. So, we write of our experience. Perhaps there is someone else out there in the ‘wherever’ who share our questions. Who may have a solution that hangs just out of reach, in the shadow where Sol never raises his voice.
I wonder sometimes why I can’t be like a normal person. (Whatever ‘normal’ is!) Someone who can find joy and fulfillment in simply living. Working in the garden. Just reading novels and poetry. Enjoying the simple pleasure of sharing a meal with my wife. My brain doesn’t work like that. I have to dig. I must ‘know.’ I think deeply trying to find the treasures of faith and knowledge that seem just out of reach. Always. No matter how far I stretch my arms and fingers. I can’t quite grasp it. So I keep digging and reaching. How nice it would be to simply retract my reach and put my hands in my lap to rest.
One day.
One day I will rest.
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