what if's

I like the “what if’s” of life. I used to have a teacher, actually she was the principal of my grade school that would say “uh-uh, no what if’s.”

How sad.

What if the sky was pink and the oceans were lemonade.

What if I had a better job, and why don’t I go get it right now.

What if people treated each other better, or if government had a better mandate for the people or if religion taught individual salvation, what if sandwiches were the reward for the well lived life, what if, what if, what if.

What if I added olives to my marinade?

What if I drank another beer?

What if I told that S.O.B. off, like s/he so desperately deserves.

What if I tried to be less angry, more hopeful, less sullen, more joyous, less proud, more proud.

I think what if’s get the lawn mown. Get the trash taken out. Get dinner made and get us out of bed in the morning.

If I had a chance to go back in time and finish that particular conversation (there are so many) I would tell her, what if’s are the things of dreams, the imagination of children, the aspirations of adults, they are the reason we live, the reason we die, why we try and fail, and why we try and succeed.

Dog Daze

I can’t help but sit here and think about all those novels set in the deep south that begin with a description of the long wearisome heat of summer that bears down on the mind and the senses. Something about women bathing before noon and gentlemen wiping the damp from their foreheads with a yellowing handkerchief. Every one of my pores breaks out in an absolute panic each time I set foot outside. I am like a deep-sea diver descending into a foreign land, my sweat like a layer of armor against the elements.

Yesterday S. and I were the pool where I fished a dead cicada out of the water. “What is that?” she asked.
“A cicada., the trees are full of them.”
“Why” she asks, not so much to further the conversation but really more to say “I have nothing at all to say to that.”
“Listen” I say “you can hear them all around us.” The trees are full to the aching whine that is the distinctive sound to the insect.
“I don’t hear anything.”
Incredulous I point to first one group of trees and then the next. “There” I say “and there. No?” Nothing. Like a pungent aroma that seemingly vanishes within minutes of first detecting it, she has managed to pushed the sound out of mind and memory till it has become completely undetectable. “Nothing at all?”

Cicadas aside there is a kind of meditative stillness to the long, hot, dog days of summer. Total immersion creates a kind of restfulness that monks achieve after years of contemplations. Standing in my make shift studio in the garage, the banter of my mind is silenced by the drone of the fan blowing against me. Paint stiffens in the heat and the wet bristles of the brush begin to wilt. The eye darts from canvas to canvas making spontaneous decisions in an effort to out pace the heat.

PINK

Moments

Is it selfish to suddenly realize that the moment you are experiencing is yours and yours alone and that when you die that moment will be gone, lost forever and will pass away into oblivion. What if you have this realization? Do you ask yourself, how great is that moment? I mean, come on, sitting on the toilet is a moment I may have had but I am not about to share it with the universe. Ask yourself, how important is it.

Standing there in the sunlight, my children playing in the pool, I had what you might call a moment of clarity. Million of lives, billions, life after life sharing moments of awareness then passing into the dark, moments that may have been similar to this, or more likely vastly different, all of them lost, all of them un-… un what? Unrecorded? Unremembered?

Every moment is precious, whether we appreciate them or not. I am often annoyed by the fact that moments of seemingly no importance seem to stand out in my memory more than those that I might have so dearly hung on to.

I was a party shortly after high school graduation talking to this girl. Making small talk I asked her “Where did you go to school?”
“Um” she replied, “we went to school together.”
“Really?” I said feeling awkward.
“We walked down the aisle together at graduation and you gave me a big hug”
Now I feel like dying.

Some are poets, some are architects, others are bankers and maids and journeymen and accountants. This moment will pass and this and this and this. I imagine that the world is gone, absorbed into the vastness of space, only to be replaced by another and anther and another.

“There is a book” said the man, “that records the lives of all men.”
“Where can I find this book?” asked the student.
“The book is hidden in the most obvious of places, and is written in the most common ink of all.”
“I what is it’s name?”
“It is the name that each man calls himself. It is your name.”

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

O Lord of the universe, I see in your universal body many, many forms--bellies, mouths, eyes--expanded without limit. There is no end, there is no beginning, and there is no middle to all this.

So I begin to wonder, how different are we after all? Some are angry, some are happy, others open mouthed and ignorant or wise and mute. I read somewhere in particle physics that the path of the electron is not determined until the scientist had recorded the observation. The universe is made in our beholding and grows as we grow, expands as we expand and diminished as we diminish.

“Papa” she asked “where do we go when we die?”
“Heaven” I said.
“Where is that?”
“Its right here” I said confidently.
“Yeah right” she said dismissively, taking another bite of her ice cream cone. “You always say that.”