Benign Neglect

I have neglected the Balcony of late. Life interferes with my scribbling. Excuses? Well, there is the job, kids, homework, dishes, bills, laundry, Halloween, errands, grocery shopping, stuff that needs to get done or else the wheels fall off. Try letting your toenails grow for a few weeks and you’ll see what I mean.

The days here grow shorter. In the evening fog rolls in off the ocean, dense in some areas, wispy in others, and in the night we hear the warning beacon sound in the harbor. A waning crescent moon rises above the pines on Anapamu Street. The County Bowl concert season is over, closed out by Deadmau5. It’s been a while since we’ve heard coyotes howl from the canyon that runs west of the Bowl.

Bob Dylan sang that people don’t come and go as much as they float, and sometimes people float to places and positions they don’t belong. Sometimes circumstances and dumb luck conspire to produce an outcome that leaves you shaking your head. Trying to understand is fruitless; it’s like trying to penetrate the meaning of a Zen koan. Whatever and whoever, it just is, and the decision you must make is to fight it or go with it. Life or death it’s not. Worse comes to worse you say, “I’m done” and hit the road. Some windmills are not worth tilting at; they will keep turning no matter what.

The illusion of control, of making sense, of logic and pattern, of rationality, of cause and effect, of being the master of one’s own fate, of being the guiding hand on the cosmic tiller. It makes no sense and perfect sense at the same time. It’s cream in your coffee and sugar in your tea; it’s a trout on the end of your line and a clear mountain stream at the end of the trail. It’s a homeless woman giving birth in a cemetery under a full moon. It’s the smartest man in the room doing the dumbest thing imaginable. It’s a beloved preacher fornicating behind the church with an underage whore.

My son is watching a rerun of Gray’s Anatomy. The show has an MD for everyone: African-American and Asian, lesbian and straight, dashing and dorky. The voice over by the actress who plays Meredith offers canned wisdom: “No matter what’s going on, a surgeon must have a steady hand.” OK, no argument with this obvious observation. My son tells me that I’ve reached an age where I cannot suspend my disbelief, and for this reason I’m incapable of enjoying the TV dramas he finds so intoxicating. Gray’s Anatomy is apparently the best show ever…my loss for not watching it.

In the world but not of the world, wandering with the people who float, beyond the point where sense is made, past the place where we cease to be what we think we are.