sunset sessions
warming my toes in the setting sun from my rooftop porch (which, incidentally, is really only on the first rooftop, our turret still towers over me) i can relax a touch. there’s just enough light by the end of the summer day that the sun and i can meet once my mind is settled. we sit down and chat for a spell, he slowly settling in behind the hilltop and me, sipping a chai tea and occasionally glancing over at the harbor.
if this isn’t perfect, well…
smells and sounds drift in: the church bell from a tower several blocks behind me, horns from freighters in the bay, my roommate’s bob dylan tunes, the smoke from a passerby’s cigarette, road traffic.
i suppose that i could find something to complain about but that would take effort and this porch is not an effort inducing location.
one of my roommates (who’s soon to be gone for idaho) was lamenting trading away his ride the other day, losing his mobility in this societal reality. we bounced back and forth on that one, musing on the ethical and environmental concerns that lead us to think not owning a car is best but stuck on the realization that inter-city travel in the midwest is a bear without ones own wheels.
ultimately though, we each miss owning a vehicle because we’ve tied our mental space (and the re-ordering of it) to the road.
there are thousands of miles traversed on long summer nights and winter afternoons where the drone of road contours and music offered a backdrop to the arranging and rearranging of thought and dream. the car fast cluttered with a thought here, a dream there, an idea placed in the glove compartment or a whole thematic life transition dropped in the trunk. the space gets filled up so quickly that pretty soon the thoughts drift the roadside too, strung along like ribbons or cans fluttering and clanking down the freeway. future hopes attached to prairie bluffs in western north dakota, seasonal job plans somewhere in the desserts north of las vegas, a plan for a new start tied to an oceanside cliff in maine…
all spread out, all nicely spaced to allow the contemplation of one section, one bit at a time, no mess of conglomerated pieces all colliding and collapsing on top of one another, clamoring for attention and notice.
pity then, those in such a space, who find themselves in an accident, physical or metaphorical, that jars them from said bliss - thoughts crashing back together with elastic strength, some snapped off, others mashed into one.
we wondered, as we talked, what bits of us remained in what locations, how convoluted the former paths were when you included thought-space not restricted to the road (how much of me is tied to a cherry-striped pole at the bottom of the world, anyway?). wondered if driving down the right freeway might gather up the thoughts left behind after a surprise jolt, might realign the energy and gather ourselves whole again.
and my roommate? he’s off on such a mission…on a train through the great northern plains to a firetower on a mountain top for a summer.
i’m waiting to see what the sun pulls back for me while we chat it up in the evenings.