Reason Breeds Insanity

Rumors of War

She nuzzles deeper into her flannel-lined sleeping bag and tries to quiet the dreams becoming nightmares that interrupt her night. The air, the freshness lulls her outside and promises a restful night. Though it is her own yard and she sleeps inside a warm tent, she lets her empathy move her to other places and into other minds. The planes fly low overhead, buzzing and booming their way across the sky like great gas generators droning the technological revolution into her mind. The beat, the rhythm of the planes is antithetical to the slow moving gurgle of the river. The harsh sonic abrasiveness of the jet engines crashes abrasively against the slow, raspy whispers of the tall pine, whose needles rub softly together giving her the illusion of a God who does love, who does care. She sleeps.

There will be wars and rumors of wars. The planes become less of an annoyance and more of a reminder that other people in other places live with this raucous persistence every day. In those places, planes carry a threat. They carry sadness: the sadness that comes when an orphan is made, the sadness that comes when a parent sees a die, and the sadness that comes when those who fly the planes realize what they have done and don’t understand why they have done it. The sleeping woman envisions the nightmares of others. She sees them happen in front of her, but cannot look away. She reaches out to help, but cannot get there. She struggles to comfort the children, but they will not stop crying. The sirens scream past her in the night foretelling more tragedy. Buildings burn. Things get lost. People die. The ground shakes, though the clay is hard and unforgiving. The tremors come. Bombs rip through the air, punching holes in buildings, showering the already parched land with glowing embers. She thinks the fiery flowers remind her of celebrations from another time. They open in the night sky. Purple. Red. Yellow. Each burst more brightly lit than the last. This may be the last war.

Foxes have holes. Birds have nests. The son of man has nowhere to lay his head. Sometimes she wears a shirt that says, “Jesus was homeless.” She thinks, “Jesus is homeless.” As she sleeps, the woman lives under the Elm Street Bridge. All day long she pushes her meager collection through the streets in a wobbly-wheeled shopping cart. Squeaking along. Some days, there is no cart and she carries everything in thin, plastic bags. They tear. Her food falls, spilling out onto the road, cans clunking, rolling, and bottles breaking. The cars do not stop. They rush past in a fury. Sometimes they honk and the drivers yell. Each night, her possessions are gathered, collected, and guarded. Sleep is extravagance. Each noise, each night, is the sound of intrusion, violation. Are the approaching footfalls hostile or friendly? The rush of the tires and engines gliding along Elm Street above is amplified. The rocks are jagged and hard, and her cardboard bed is not thick enough. She waits every night for any man to come and take her, or her belongings, against her will. She knows one day she will come to this spot, her home, and all will be lost. Someone will have stolen her life. Someone will have deemed her unsightly. Someone will have erased her. Even her cardboard bed will be missing.

Inside her tent, the woman awakes, stiff but rested. These thoughts and dreams she has experienced are merely empathetic sensations. To others they are apocalyptic resonances of terror. She asks: Will I be next? I will lift up my eyes to the hills—from whence comes my help?

I started a story today when I was walking after I ran. I mean to say that I ran and I was cooling down by walking the rest of the way home. I wrote the beginning of this story in my head. The story is about my dad. The bit I have written (in my head) goes like this:

I bend slightly at the waist, leaning over to pull the seeds from the ornamental grass that tickles my leg as I walk past. I am out of breath. I have been running. I have exhausted my senses with the morning air, too full and refreshing to be contained within my lungs or within my mind even. I hold the grains in my hand for a moment and I think— this is cliche but I think it anyway—time is like these grains, slipping between my fingers. One by one the days cease to be. They each have their own destiny. One seed, one day, could fall in the soil and be reborn into beauty and rejuvenation. Another of either could fall onto the cement and never become anything at all. Still another could start to grow only to be unearthed by an animal or a jealous lover. That seed, that day, began but was destroyed. I think—and this is cliche, too—that I will drop every grain but I will never get them back. I will let each one slip through. I will not have a second chance. I will not gather another handful of seed-days.

My parents have released more than half of their seed-days. They are rightfully beginning to grasp tighter to the seed-days they have left. I think their hands may be getting tired of squeezing so tightly to those seeds. Those days slip faster and faster. I think today, especially about my dad’s days. He turned 62 on the first of this month. I think about his days because a couple of years ago, he dropped several of his seeds in a quick torrent. I do not know what he was thinking, but he opened his palm and just let them slide out. I think, he will never retrieve those seeds. The wind has long blown them away. Words like wind blew from the doctor’s mouth. Congestive. Heart. Failure. Hearts failing cannot be good. I knew that. I know that. We all do. We celebrate the few seeds he still holds with a cake and a candle. We hope maybe those few seeds he still holds will fall slower and with more purpose than those coming before them. We hope his hand remains clenched around them, letting them out one by one, slowly releasing the seed-days onto the ground. Those that land on the ground grow and are reborn. Let beauty grow.

I walk along listening. To the breeze blowing the leaves against each other. To my feet striking the path. To the seeds spilling from my hand. To my tears sliding down my face. I smell joy in the air. But I know that reality lurks behind the scent.

That is it. That is all of the story I have so far. Maybe that is all of the story. I am not sure why I am still wide awake, but I know I need to go home to sleep because my days this week are more than full. I know that my seed-days are rich and full. But I know I miss conversations with friends. I miss leisure time. I miss living in the slow way I usually live. In response, I moved my comps to August to buy some time. Tomorrow, I am meeting with Debbie to figure it all out. And I mean all of it. I expect answers. I expect miracles. Maybe that is the end of the story: I expect miracles. I expect answers.

The Ordinary Radicals – Trailer from Jamie Moffett on Vimeo.

The Ordinary Radicals – Opening Title Sequence from Jamie Moffett on Vimeo.

I found this on my brother’s now defunct blog. I think it’s poignant. Don’t forget to vote.

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