Things, many things occur to me when I am in the street walking by myself. The problem is I forget them by the time I get finished with my walk. Our subdivision street is almost a quarter of a mile long, beginning to end. Therefore, a half a mile is easy to figure, and I always end up home at the end of the half mile or mile.
Several days ago there were white clouds scattered over or under the intense blue sky. As I stopped to look up at them (I have to stop to look up since my neck doesn't work much any more, fused vertebrae, and I have to turn my entire body; that makes star-gazing really difficult), I saw just under the clouds two turkey vultures (my best guess) just circling one another. They were so high that every time I looked down, I lost sight of them and had to find them again. Once when I looked down to relieve my neck and then found them again, there were four. Goodness! Where the other two came from I have no idea. Once they weren't, then they were. The next time, one disappeared, and then there were three. It is beginning to remind me of Agatha Christie. In any case, the fascinating element in this experience was that they were so high. How they could see or smell anything on the ground from that great height was a mystery to me. I am tempted to say that like myself, they were just enjoying the moment. From my position they looked like small black ants seen on the ground while standing above them. I kept hoping one would ascend into one of the clouds and then glide back down, but none did though they certainly were within sudden reach of the clouds.
The sky itself began to remind me of my soul. White clouds gradually giving way to darker clouds, (it was one of those days), but then there were spots like wounds, slits, where the sun in the west would light up the small gap and transform the cloud edges into a brilliant bright white. The slits would close, but then another farther on would break through and open for another brilliant glimpse. The experience also reminded me of the image in the third volume of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, where the sun serves as a metaphor for the characters, of the supernatural reality that is always real and present, behind and under, regardless of the oppressive smoke covering the land from Mordor. Anyway, such magnificent days are, I think, to be lived in and treasured in their presence, their otherness. (Thinking of Prufrock's enclosed world there.)
From outside to inside: I was sitting at the dining room table the other afternoon, with my back to the living room, as I am wont to do, when I heard a single sharp bark behind me. Simon! The single sharp bark usually means that Dexter is stretched out on the sofa, blocking Simon's ability to jump up and cover up. Usually, I have to rearrange pillows and Dexter in order to make room for Simon. So, I got up, turned around, and saw Simon sitting on the floor just beyond the sofa, looking intensely at me. I walked into the front room, expecting to see Dexter on the sofa. The sofa was empty. Simon just looked at me as if to say, "You can figure it out, Big Guy." I looked down and there on the floor in front of the sofa (some might call it a davenport) was Simon's blanket.
Since Simon is usually under it, when he gets excited about squirrels or guests or treats, he jumps down, sometimes taking the blanket with him. Presumably that had happened in the near past as the blanket was definitely on the floor and Simon would not jump up until the blanket was there first. How do I know? I picked the blanket up, spread it out on the sofa, and Simon jumped up without an assist or any trouble at all. Once up he began tossing the blanket with his nose and head until he was able to crawl under it. What astonishes me is not my own haste in getting up to help him onto the sofa, unnecessary though it was this time, but it is his ability to figure out that I was necessary to get the blanket back onto the sofa. I was gobsmacked by the ingenuity and cleverness of the little dog's mind. There is intelligence in there that I had not expected.
I suppose I should have known. He has seen me pick the blanket up often enough and place it on the sofa. He also knows that if he is outside and stands in front of the door and barks just once in a very loud dachshund voice, I will come to let him in, and almost always do. I just remembered that in order to get an empty water bowl filled, he will take it and bang it around the kitchen until I come and fill it. He is dachshund stubborn and lazy, but he is not stupid, by any means. Myself? Well, that is another story. No one comes for me no matter how many times I bark!
The other thing I just remembered---excuse me, Simon just barked once in his loud dachshund voice---I got up and found him in front of the sofa, of course. The blanket was preventing him from jumping up as it looked as though something was under it. I moved the blanket. Nothing under it, of course. He jumped up! It happened in real time, just now! I swear!
Simon is now under the blanket. Therefore, The other thing: I was in front of the Kennedy's, coming toward the end of the first half mile. The usual suspects presented themselves in an overwhelming fashion. "Soy yo!" I have a specific identity that I did nothing to create. That is, I was born to Alice and Louie Startzman on June 8, 1940. None of us did that. It happened to us. I was their son, for good or ill. My identity in that sense was given. What all of us did with it was a different matter, but that original "thisness " or "thatness" was given, as was the world in which I was drawing breath on my magnificent day a few days ago. There is a "givenness" to all our lives, much more than we usually suspect. I was mulling all that around in my mind, getting no further than I usually get, when I met the bush in front of Gin's house. Every time I walk, it has been there, but I never really saw it before, right on the corner of their driveway. It looks like it is trying to be some kind of evergreen, but it is about waist high, and the colors are so startling that I came to a complete stop. The bush has a kind of cap of dead leaves, but the visible sides are full of leaves, I suppose, of such astonishing fall colors, that I wonder how I had not seen the bush before. Reds and oranges and browns and yellows with yellows and greens under the cap when I pulled them off, astonishing. Well, I am coming to the conclusion that it does not take much to astonish me. Speaking of such things, have you seen the morning sky an hour before sunrise these days? Even I get up to see it when the sky is clear. Jupiter, Venus, Mars (just passing Venus) with the moon doing its dance through them these days. June 8, 1940. I might not have been. My brother or sister aren't, due to a miscarriage that prevented my mother from having another child. Life is given, life is taken. My uncle Warren, 60, died in front of my mother on our kitchen floor from a massive stroke. Don't these facts alone suggest that something beyond our meager comprehension is going on in our lives?
Well, I made it to the cul-de-sac circle, went around it three times for satisfaction's sake and staggered up the road and home. One mile done. Of course I watched the bush, shrub, whatever it is on my way past, thinking of Moses and his exotic encounter in the desert, but not stopping this time, but very much aware that all is truly given and all is truly holy ground, even or especially that which we cover up with blacktop and sky scrapers, and I am grateful for the gift, or should I say, thinking of Simon and my Chobani raspberry yogurt, my children, and my daily bread, gifts.