…catch a leaf

It has been busy, I have been quiet, the blog remains untouched by any. Wild things can change the course of one man, a leaf in the wind fearing the impact and finality of the grass, his grave, and the unknown cold emptiness of atmosphere, unable to choose in which he’d rather bed.

Teaching continues; she is the course that runs sure. No, that’s not it. Streams change when trees fall or stones roll into their paths…Teaching is a waterfall where rocks, fish, trees, hydrogen-dioxide have no choice but to plummet, violent in nature, but peaceful in method. Students thunder into class, absorb, try, extend, leave, still water but impacted by the fall. There is comfort in this vehement routine. It is all else here that is different, even opposite: peaceful in nature, but violent in method, the stone that rolls into the stream. At once it is sturdy, unchanging, calm. A flick of the eyes to a passing songbird or a fox on the prowl and you suddenly see the stone differently (did it move? change shape?) for its power, dormant kineticism, preying for destruction:

I go to buy a gas burner, I look for life’s necessities, I find myself accused of theft and robbed of prior pieties. The rumor rolled into my stream, and stuck itself in the mud. How common this act of necessity was, and yet, how disruptive it’s become. But I’ve kept moving, flowing and soon I trust that it will dislodge, only to leave the bank quite different than it had been.

Some belongings have been sitting in my apartment, their owner a previous tenant or two who seem to have forgotten. But today a gentle rap on my metal door, once opened, revealed the young hand of a slender woman. I let her in, but left the door ajar. The prodigal daughter came and collected her things with smiling nostalgia. As the transaction ended, for that’s all it was, a passing, two winds, or just one and the wood, with the door left open for all to observe (and they did, all of the children who live around me in this hive, buzzing curiously into my empty cement cell), she waved and parted, bearing her new-old burden.

But the bees stayed and they asked me if I was afraid of God, which I’ve been asked before and still don’t know how to answer. Do they mean merely that I know God is powerful, that I should fear him in my love for him? Or do they mean, as I think they do and are taught, that one should be afraid of God, and should pray to appease him after offense? This was the course of action I was strongly advised to take after choosing my response: No, I am not afraid. With a simultaneous, seemingly rehearsed gasp, they leaned back, forced by the blast of blasphemy in my words, and I went from neighbor to infidel.

I blessed them good-bye and sank into my room where their atavistic noises surrounded once again. Children, so peaceful when tucked in, so innocent of worries to come as they tie string to twigs to plastic and call it a kite, so angry and raw, bearing milkteeth in disgust.

And Tim leaves too, in a month, to ingest the New England autumn like apple crisp and cranberry sauce. The quietness I’ll know will be a cacophony of absence. So I’ll pick up more classes and keep myself busy.

But busy-ness doesn’t mean absent-ness, though I find myself on the stoop less often, my passing breezy and quick, neither warm to notice, nor cold to hunch in. An autumn lull has settled here, and common living rooms have lost their detail in my mental frames.

Fall only exists in evening, summer reigns all day. Winter peeks in the stripes of night that descend as does the sun, but her pale face has yet to emerge from her sneaky, mischievous hibernation. I grow enamored with the language as she becomes familiar, and conversations are had where we dip into each other’s tongue and taste what we think we know and ask about what we’ve never had.

And meanwhile I soothe something within or around or holistic with the differently familiar sounds of the Mumford & Sons new album; sometimes I read or sit or pray or do push-ups. As I make coffee on the burner I bought to calm my accusers’ pointed fingers, I catch up on world news that I downloaded onto my phone the day before and wonder how Morsi or Hadi’s trip to the UN will be received and if Palestine will get her borders, if Obama will listen or if Romney will rise, or if Ahmadinejad will ever put his foot in his mouth or even use it to step down next year…and my thoughts drift, papery, colorful.

I suppose I choose the grass, I say to the wind. Though final, it’s steady. I want Niagra; though brutal, it’s sure. Not the sweet, calm atmosphere that will change in an instant and thin in oxygen and loose its hold on you then gently drop you off into space where the last thing you see is the smile of the moon before asteroids and a once-planet become silhouettes by a dim star and Hubble catches sight of you causing scientists to wonder What is that? and you’re classified as UFO in science books that gather dust on the shelves of libraries.

And its what I’m getting in the Arab Autumn where crispness lacks in air and stove, but heat exists in both, and tumbling over waterfalls seems a bit dramatic as I lay in the grass and look up at stars. Who knows who’s up there, and down here in books.