Grand Opening!

 

Grand Opening!  For a day, then a few weeks, then a few months, and now at least a year or two.  I remember first seeing it at the end of the hall in this building where I drop in from time to time for a pickup at the pharmacy across from the ophthalmology office.  

I’m not sure how long the banner was there before I noticed it and became curious enough to walk down the hall to check it out.  To the right of the banner is a glass storefront with a glass door.  On the other side of that glass is an eatery that’s been painted and decorated with bright colors to include two carved parrots on the far wall nearest the street.  There are tables on the left side, a long counter on the right, and stacked chairs near the entrance.  I’m not exactly sure what theme they were going for but the only thing missing is the food and drinks.

Years have passed (or so it seems) and everything remains unchanged - frozen, as it were, in the run up to it opening without it ever opening.  This oddly abandoned place at the end of the long hallway is reminiscent of a liminal space where time has been arrested and human activity has failed to take hold.  It has been forgotten.  The banner is fading but still draws my eye at times and makes me think refreshment is available there, if only for a brief moment.

***

The Hum of Love

 

Trees are the hair 

that stand up 

on the head of God,

or at least that is my conjecture,

leaves of a thousand kinds 

adding variety and texture.

It’s like a lecture 

on the beauty 

of the Creator’s mind.

He is surprised 

by my obtuseness, 

an unwinding that is useless

when it does not recognize 

all that was, is, and is to come,

the finite sum 

of my boundedness to time.

In the crime of ingratitude

He gives me latitude.

The hum of love 

undergirding the sublime.

***

Sacred Saturdays

 

There is something semi-sacred about Saturday mornings.  Sure, Sunday mornings are more traditionally the thing, but the quiet time of early Saturday mornings has its own spiritual resonance with me.

On a week day my alarm goes off at 6am and I am out of the house by 7am.  Saturday mornings I sometimes imagine I will sleep in if my daughter doesn’t need to be taken somewhere for her boundless activities.  I awaken around 6 and go in and out of dream states until by 7 I imagine it’s probably at least 8:30 or 9, maybe 10, but it is just 7 and I am wide awake and must get up.

This is the time to feed Nala, gather up my reading and writing materials (books and an iPad usually), and then let her out in the front yard to do her business followed by her luxuriating in the grass watching someone else walk their dog so she can quietly woof at them.  And let’s not forget that coffee must be made for sipping on the front porch while all of this is going on.

When I finish a chapter or section of a chapter I insert my bookmark, close the book, and listen.  There are two birds with two distinct songs in two different trees singing back and forth like antiphonal singing at church.  I notice a lone firefly looking to land on the hostas which brings to mind the lovely scene last night of him and his buddies winking on and off like stars twinkling over my darkened front lawn.

Before the sun fully appears in the sky I feel like I am in a liminal space of sorts between night and day, outside of time and the cares of this world.  When the rest of the world wakes up that will be my time to re-enter the normal flow of things, but in that brief moment it is like I have touched something transcendent, free from externally imposed expectations.

***

More Than Human

 

I remember seeing a book by Theodore Sturgeon when I was young and in the throes of reading weird Science Fiction tales: “More Than Human”.  I read the blurb, possibly on a paperback at a used book store or at the town library considering there were no personal computers or internet at the time.  

I loved stories about misfits and outcasts because somewhere deep inside I identified with them.  I didn’t really have a “best friend” growing up until my junior year of high school when I somehow acquired two.  I am exceedingly grateful for them, but so many formative years of feeling alone and overlooked was… ugh.

Until I found those two friends I wondered if there was something that made me undesirable or annoying.  It took moving to another town to discover them.  They were uber smart, creatively inclined, and mostly open to my spontaneity and impulsiveness, even when it sometimes landed us           in trouble.

It was the difference between feeling less than human over and against feeling more than human, or at the very least just meeting the bar of feeling simply human.  Maybe I could write a quirky Science Fiction short story: “Simply Human”.  It would feature the three of us becoming more than the sum of our parts.

*** 

Nala & Hydrant - a study in symmetry and smells

 

The world is a vexing place

so it helps to sit and think

alongside familiar objects

that smell like neighbors

passing & pausing to pee.

I greet them with a bark 

but my overbearing owner

barks himself, “No bark!”

Dude, I’m just trying to find 

my place in a smelly world.

***