Consequences

It was late at night and it was very dark. The clouds were hidden behind a thick layer of fog and the world moved around her in only three colors: black, gray and white. The roads were nearly deserted, just a bus with its hazard lights on blinked quietly as she passed. And she drove on, driving up the twisted road that skirted like an asphalt snake along the edge of San Bruno mountain, her car’s headlights outlining the bulbous forms of gray clouds that enveloped her like a hungry ghost made of mist and sheets of moisture. There was a musical piece on the radio, an electronic composition without words that seemed so tender, coming right from the unknown heart of its creator and entering hers with an unrelenting curiosity to see what lay open in the late hour. Small tears pricked her eyes as she reached the crest of the hill. The music was too beautiful, how could something like this arrive to fit the moment so well? This was music for the tender dark hours, when night and day blend into one. When the sleeping and the awakened dance between clouds of fog and pull dreams from the void. The music held her, as though the notes themselves were made to caress her curvaceous tears, as though the notes knew why she would cry and they pulled the tears out with a little more force, taking her with them on their voyage through time. As the road flattened out, she suddenly realized she might never know the composer, another song would come on and the beauty of what she had just heard would remain forever in her memory, encapsulating the moment like a dream. Someone, somewhere had made this music, and that person would never know that now, there was a girl driving in a small black truck in the middle of the night, going home. She could never tell them that the notes cast themselves around her like a magic circle, holding her as no other piece of music could. It was made for this. It was this. She was that, and it was her. It took her hand and led her down a psychedelic road where owls feed and coyotes sometimes wander. It held her in its palm, a loving teacher that pulled on her metal gates just a little more. “Open up,” it said. And whoever made this piece…they would never know. What were they doing right now? Sleeping? Eating? Working? Making love? The infinite consequences of their creation were unknowable. Once born, the creation had its own life, moving through time, radio, stereos, ears…moving into and out of perception…being heard by some, being shut off by others. Were there others crying? Others dancing? A thousand ways this piece could go…its creator would never know.
The consequences of what we create are unknowable. We create for the sake of creating, we do for the sake of doing, and then, it is sent, it goes out into the world, drifting like a carefully constructed leaf in the wind. Will someone catch it? Will it go straight to the sea, straight to the blue waves that will swallow up the orange and yellow and green? Or maybe it will drift to land with the high tide, and perhaps a little girl will pluck it from the ocean foam. And maybe it will end up in her collage of thoughts and dreams and her memory of changing seasons. There is just no way to tell what will happen, so we just let them go. Just as we were once let go, like tears already dispersing into the fog before the song that provoked them has come to an end, like ribbons of stardust dancing in the bottomless void of the infinite night.

Precious Moment

The day sparkles with freshness, made new by gusts of forceful wind that rustles silvery leaves without rest. The light is high overhead, the brightness of a wish just past. My heart has been aching since the morning, noticed in a moment of stillness when all I could feel was the pounding in my toes and the ache of my wrists and the extra pressure in the center of my chest. It stays in me, a continuing presence as long as I can maintain this quiet in my mind. The sacrifices are made, held tightly inside, and I look for my ring of keys.
The day is bright, the sun is high overhead, winking its rays through the glass of the car, through the tinted lens above my eyes, through the delicate membranes that are my windows to the world. The light is clear, I feel myself in the car, aware of each turn of the wheel, aware of the narrow road down the hill with five sharp turns. I move out beyond the dotted yellow line, there are no cars coming and I’m safe, but I feel the strength of the car, I feel the weight moving at thirty miles an hour, fast enough to smash the delicate connections between fiber and blood.
There are three stop signs before I get to Mission St and as I brake at each one, the sensation of fragility compounds. Maybe it’s the man wheeling around his trashcans to the curb, maybe the woman walking across the street talking into her cell phone, or the man sitting in his car at the red light beside me.
Something comes thorough me, coming in, moving out, twirling inside. I do not name the cause, I wouldn’t reveal the source, I can only recognize the moment.
Without the radio on, without yammering or melodies…the day seems brighter, harsh in its generous opening. It’s not the strength of a fight or the pounding of a bat, it’s more like the opening of a sun that has remained shrouded in petals, the glow is harsh, the reality is painful. My chest thumps with more pain than I usually a notice, a nice, dull, achy pain that sits well, a feeling I have begun to consider a long lost friend that I welcome with a smile.
“Oh, you’re back! It’s great to have you home!”
The skin surrounding me seems so temporary… I feel the forceful weight of the car, I feel the fragility of the moment like an egg shell rolling down the street. The mortality of the breath, the temporal nature of me.
The other day, she loudly laughed and then she said, “You don’t know when you’re going to die!”
“Oh yeah,” I thought… “I can’t count on eighty more years.”
One wrong move, now, and everything could be altered. I imagine myself in the hospital on a ventilator.
I hear his voice, “We might be able to be together after this, depending on how much progress we’ve made during this cycle.”
I scan the crosswalk carefully for walkers. I check the rear view mirror. Time is precious, the body is precious. The moment is precious and delicate and I feel it as though for the first time, in the brightness of a sun high overhead, in the freshness brought about by the wind and an aching heart.

Music For The First Time

When was the last time you heard music for the first time? The notes from an old David Bowie song jump from the steel guitar strings, they rush through the air, vibrating moments apart from each other, they leap into the ears of a toddler running by. The men stand on a street that’s crowded with vendors selling the first strawberries of spring and the remnants of a short winter’s harvest. A toddler waddles by, she runs past the music and then two feet past, she stops abruptly and turns once to the right, then to the left, as though trying to identify something, looking for something she saw or felt on the edges of her consciousness. She stands still for two seconds, then turns around and runs back to the musicians, to the source of the music that fills the street. She stands still in front of them, like a small mortal at the feet of giants that reverberate in the world of sound. She stares at them, without a smile, without an indication of joy or fear, just an open mouthed stare that borders on disbelief, as though she is trying to understand her perception. I look past her and see a middle aged man sitting on the warm asphalt with two small children in his lap, their attention focused on the musicians. Is this the first time they’ve heard the orchestrated notes of a Bowie song? The first time this particular arrangement of seven notes has run through their ears? They come towards the music like strange worshipers to a stone covered in undecipherable marks. Unsure and curious. Like a vibrational comet, they fall towards the closest source of sound. They can always find an airplane in the sky or point to a pinecone perched on a table full of soap and incense. A little baby stares with wide eyes at the singing face in front of her. Her big hazel eyes take it all in, watching everything. I wonder how she senses each note. Is it a pure sensation, like touching snow? Does she see it though a lense of color and sparkles, not just hearing, but seeing the music that moves around her like a breathing story? The crowd moves past her, adults with bags full of ripe produce, ten year old children that care more for their ice cream cones than the two buskers under the full sun, children that have already begun to watch the magic drain from their bodies like bubbles from a bath swirling down the drain. The baby is in her father’s arms, she points to the music over his shoulder, but he is busy talking to an older woman in a stylish jacket, he doesn’t see her tiny hand rise up in a tight fist, she jerks it in the air, as though pounding a drum and then opens her little hand, pointing to the musicians. She stares at them, fascinated, captivated. Suddenly, she looks away. Something has broken the spell. Sooner or later, something always does.