Gold

I hate the outdoors.

I know everybody says that, but I mean it.

I don’t like going outside.  Much.

But yesterday I needed out.  I needed to turn off the noise in my head and the pain in my body and go for a walk.  Which, y’all, I never need to go for a walk. 

But yesterday I did.

I knew something was amiss when I saw a pair of brilliant blue jays.  I’m pretty sure they were dancing and I’m pretty sure it was ballroom. 

And then, out of nowhere, a rose bush bloomed. Bright pink. And, of all things, right next to a fruit-filled lemon tree, heavy with the weight of citrus.

Someone had taken stones and made a large mickey mouse head in their yard.  I would have thought it the full moon except for the huge round ears. 

It wasn’t long before I realized that my neighborhood is magic. 

As I walk-crunched through golden leaves I had a thought:  None of what made me lace up my shoes is life or death.  Not the misunderstanding I kept replaying, over and over again in my mind wondering where I missed the clues.  Not the anxiety that makes me feel like I can’t swallow.  Not the relief I felt when the lights turned back on after a power outage during which my living room smelled like Christmas threw up due to an over use of scented candles.  Not the bright orange sunset that caused me to take a double take because I thought the hill was on fire.  Not the fact that Christmas music is playing on XM Radio and its early November.  Not the joy I feel watching Star Trek Discovery.

Not the narrative that runs as a tape through my brain, over and over, telling me that there must be a misunderstanding and that, in fact, we’ve got her all wrong.  God, that is.  That she’s actually surprise and curiosity and electricity that shocks and also that warms.  That she is the song we sing and the debit card pin we can’t remember.  She is actually that person, there, who has no debit card.  That she’s right there.  RIGHT THERE!

right here.

As I walked back down the other side of the street, crunching in many, many more golden leaves I had a thought:  All of this, all of it, is life and death.  The relationship that is worth me worrying it.  The chest pressure that could, one day, actually be a problem with my heart.  The cold that had begun to curl around my toes when I had no power.  The fire truck that was roaring down the street behind my neighborhood.  The Christmas songs I’ve sung to a man who was on Hospice care at the request of his family.  The pain that steals my joy, no matter how I try to numb it with Paramount Plus.

The narrative that runs as a tape through my brain, over and over, telling me that there must be a misunderstanding and that, in fact, we are meant, as human beings, to be creatures of creation not destruction.  That all is oneness and that every time we act as if it isn’t, we ignore that creative impulse that calls us, over and over, into life.  That when we ignore that impulse, deny it, we see devastation.  RIGHT THERE!

right here.

Yes, my neighborhood is magic.

She is blue dancing partner and child imagination.  She is pink bloom-lemon scented and gold fading.

She is life and death and life again.

She is god. She is oneness.

right here.

right here.

Gold.