Today on the drive back from Subaru I didn't take that side street off the service road. The one I had taken just the other night. The one with the tiny magical church at the end of it. With the front-lit Jesus statue (or is it Mary? Jesus) just standing there, inviting and creepy. The most unassuming Heaven's Door you could ever imagine. Just sitting there. Before that final right back onto Saint-Laurent.
Turns out it wouldn't have been the right way anyway. A large tree had cracked in half just above the trunk and crashed right into the cab of a parked truck. The truck was not spared and the street was completely blocked by a damn of thick branches. My brain registered the shape of the disaster out the corner of my eye but it took me a solid twenty five seconds and one reluctant u-turn to realize this was not the kind of thing you see everyday. So I photographed and reported back. Even though I had vaguely heard about the power outages on the way back. Even if I vaguely heard the wind howling all day. The nondescript knocking around of plastic garbage bin on asphalt as I played phone in for a bargain! with at least three different dealers, just to see who would throw in something (anything) more than just the winter carpets that would compliment the shiny hunk of metal awaiting me at the end of the exercise. And this was a good day to be investing in metal. An auspicious day to buy a car - the start of Diwali and all.
But today was something else. Today was so many things for so many different reasons.
A missed birthday with no phone call. Some last-minute goodbye wishes. A day to reach out. To rebuild. To nurture. Not from the ground up. Never again from the ground up.
Everything I set out to do today I did. The car. The hot water tanks. The re-connect and the background check. Whatever had been lingering around since I got back, really. Whatever I couldn't get away with blaming on jet lag any longer. The afterglow had dimmed a little. I had been beaten back down into reality. As if. As if I had expected anything less from life. Everything except the evil eye. And maybe the old tightening of the chest, first thing in the morning. So I had to let a little more of that weight go today. For myself and my well being. More promises followed. Tomorrow I would even start to run. And when the wind finally started to die down a little we watched the Muppets. Because it was still in the DVR. And we were all so much older than we might have been our first time watching. But there was still so much magic in those puppets. And everything seemed to come alive when I saw all those smiling faces go up on my wall. Those rows and rows of beautiful and colourful smiles. You would find no inner struggle in any of those rows of smiles. There would only always be life.
Turns out it wouldn't have been the right way anyway. A large tree had cracked in half just above the trunk and crashed right into the cab of a parked truck. The truck was not spared and the street was completely blocked by a damn of thick branches. My brain registered the shape of the disaster out the corner of my eye but it took me a solid twenty five seconds and one reluctant u-turn to realize this was not the kind of thing you see everyday. So I photographed and reported back. Even though I had vaguely heard about the power outages on the way back. Even if I vaguely heard the wind howling all day. The nondescript knocking around of plastic garbage bin on asphalt as I played phone in for a bargain! with at least three different dealers, just to see who would throw in something (anything) more than just the winter carpets that would compliment the shiny hunk of metal awaiting me at the end of the exercise. And this was a good day to be investing in metal. An auspicious day to buy a car - the start of Diwali and all.
But today was something else. Today was so many things for so many different reasons.
A missed birthday with no phone call. Some last-minute goodbye wishes. A day to reach out. To rebuild. To nurture. Not from the ground up. Never again from the ground up.
Everything I set out to do today I did. The car. The hot water tanks. The re-connect and the background check. Whatever had been lingering around since I got back, really. Whatever I couldn't get away with blaming on jet lag any longer. The afterglow had dimmed a little. I had been beaten back down into reality. As if. As if I had expected anything less from life. Everything except the evil eye. And maybe the old tightening of the chest, first thing in the morning. So I had to let a little more of that weight go today. For myself and my well being. More promises followed. Tomorrow I would even start to run. And when the wind finally started to die down a little we watched the Muppets. Because it was still in the DVR. And we were all so much older than we might have been our first time watching. But there was still so much magic in those puppets. And everything seemed to come alive when I saw all those smiling faces go up on my wall. Those rows and rows of beautiful and colourful smiles. You would find no inner struggle in any of those rows of smiles. There would only always be life.
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