Traffic
The wind has blown hard the past two days. Tall palm trees bend, lean, and waver in response to the force of moving air. Dead browning palm fronds end up in the road or on sidewalks. Even green leaves lose their grip. You can't see it--the air--but you can see what it does to the world around you.
I sit here now in my study, the light from my lamp concentrated in a small but intense circle that falls on my keyboard, on my fingers moving over the keys, the sound of the clicking pleasantly telling me I'm doing something, that something is taking place, even if I don't know what it is, even if I don't know if it's significant. I still know something is happening.
I feel that way most of the time. That some wind is blowing through my life, blowing through me. I can't see it; I can't really name it or identify what it's doing to me or with me. I only know--or believe--that it exists.
Of course, maybe that's just what I tell myself in order to be able to get up in the morning and not feel like a complete idiot. Maybe I say that to myself so I don't decide once and for all to chuck the obligations and relationships and the other thousand details of life that get in the way of just saying to hell with it and quitting work and selling the car and buying a ticket to nowhere and moving there permanently.
Too much this weekend I argued with my teenaged son. My heart. My heart. I keep thinking about my heart. What does that mean? I have a muscle in the middle to left side of my chest. It beats; if I sit still for long enough, I can feel and hear it beating in my chest. It has a regularity to it. It has it's own pace. But most of the time, I don't hear it. Most of the time, I'm talking too loudly, or I'm watching television or a movie, or I'm reading something that makes me irate, or I'm hunting, hunting for something to occupy my attention and my mental energy.
I rush from moment to moment. In my car, on the way to work, I become irate if the driver in my line travels below the speed limit. I sometimes becomes irate if the driver is at or above the speed limit but could be going faster because traffic is light. I curse to myself, throw my hands up in disgust, stomp on the accelerator and speed around as soon as the opportunity presents itself.
I have no idea why I do that. Generally, I am in no particular hurry to get to work. My job is fine, but it doesn't set my life or world on fire. But this urgency I feel in traffic has nothing to do with there I'm going. When I get irate, work doesn't occupy my mind. I simply feel an urgency, a desire to travel as fast as I possibly can.
I see the wind pushing everything before it. I feel myself pushed, tumbled headlong through the day. I blow through time, through hours and days and weeks in anticipation or something, or so it would seem from the pace I feel obligated to set, from the rushing I do. But most of the time, I have no idea where I'm going.
How do I deal with this speed? How do I come to terms with this shoving, this insistence? I feel a hunger for a silence that I don't allow myself to have.
I sit here now in my study, the light from my lamp concentrated in a small but intense circle that falls on my keyboard, on my fingers moving over the keys, the sound of the clicking pleasantly telling me I'm doing something, that something is taking place, even if I don't know what it is, even if I don't know if it's significant. I still know something is happening.
I feel that way most of the time. That some wind is blowing through my life, blowing through me. I can't see it; I can't really name it or identify what it's doing to me or with me. I only know--or believe--that it exists.
Of course, maybe that's just what I tell myself in order to be able to get up in the morning and not feel like a complete idiot. Maybe I say that to myself so I don't decide once and for all to chuck the obligations and relationships and the other thousand details of life that get in the way of just saying to hell with it and quitting work and selling the car and buying a ticket to nowhere and moving there permanently.
Too much this weekend I argued with my teenaged son. My heart. My heart. I keep thinking about my heart. What does that mean? I have a muscle in the middle to left side of my chest. It beats; if I sit still for long enough, I can feel and hear it beating in my chest. It has a regularity to it. It has it's own pace. But most of the time, I don't hear it. Most of the time, I'm talking too loudly, or I'm watching television or a movie, or I'm reading something that makes me irate, or I'm hunting, hunting for something to occupy my attention and my mental energy.
I rush from moment to moment. In my car, on the way to work, I become irate if the driver in my line travels below the speed limit. I sometimes becomes irate if the driver is at or above the speed limit but could be going faster because traffic is light. I curse to myself, throw my hands up in disgust, stomp on the accelerator and speed around as soon as the opportunity presents itself.
I have no idea why I do that. Generally, I am in no particular hurry to get to work. My job is fine, but it doesn't set my life or world on fire. But this urgency I feel in traffic has nothing to do with there I'm going. When I get irate, work doesn't occupy my mind. I simply feel an urgency, a desire to travel as fast as I possibly can.
I see the wind pushing everything before it. I feel myself pushed, tumbled headlong through the day. I blow through time, through hours and days and weeks in anticipation or something, or so it would seem from the pace I feel obligated to set, from the rushing I do. But most of the time, I have no idea where I'm going.
How do I deal with this speed? How do I come to terms with this shoving, this insistence? I feel a hunger for a silence that I don't allow myself to have.
posted by A Pilgrim at 9:30 PM
1 Comments:
is it a hunger for silence you don't let yourself have, or a hunger for movement you have been taught to deny?
we have been taught to see the two as opposites, mutually exclusive, and stillness is the privileged pole.
i am restless lately -- like, the last three years lately. and i have come to see that i have actually always felt this way, but never felt it was a proper way to feel -- and so tried to squash it. and then acted out, just like you do in your car... when i deny my need for movement -- hungry, panting, crazed even, movement -- that's when i go nuts in my car. when i allow for it in other areas of my life, i am the calmest driver around. (-;
we do need stillness and silence. but we also need to move -- to rush -- to feel our own wind and let it drown out our hearts. there's an exhileration in that wind that is good for us...
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