Blogging on my day off

I had one of those moments. You know what I'm talking about. You're walking on a beige carpet with a cart full of books in your hand and trying to decipher a call number when it hits you. Or you're standing on that old kitchen tile in the break room stirring a cup of coffee with a small stick, waiting for the day to begin. Or you're sitting in your office when the phone rings, and in between rings you look out the window at a bird bringing a piece of glittering foil into the eaves for its nest. You're in Carolina just after sunrise, chalk full of pills, watching smoke rise from valleys who still have their Indian names. Or you're standing at the chalkboard and trying to explain to a room full of nine year old's why the Spanish Inquisition was a bad thing, why the paint on your toe nails is chipped, why you sleep alone, or on the couch gathering warmth from an old blanket knit by someone's grandmother, you don't remember who's.

And it hits you. Suddenly, and you know that you shouldn't dive any deeper. That to live inside an idea like that will only drive you crazy, and that you'll end up blown out over the street like the guts of an old whale or walking on black sand beaches, hat in hand, begging for money. I was struck by the absurdity of it all. There I was walking down an aisle filled with books to retrieve a specific book and send it off to West Virginia so that someone could further their study of life in Mizzoula at the turn of the century. It is absurd. Civilization is absurd. At least the ants know what they're about. We're very busy carrying things away from the picnic, but we've no earthly clue how we're to put them together to make something of meaning.

That's what I was struck by as I pulled down the book and placed it on the proper cart. That I could have just as easily picked up the wrong book, or walked backwards amongst the stacks with my arms flapping and screaming that I was angel. I could have done a poorly choreographed and danced rendition of Thriller. And yet, I did none of those things. I put the slip in the book and placed it on the cart to be sent out, because that's what we've agreed upon, that it's best if people put books on carts, refrain from public dances or attempts to make book angels, and perhaps that is for the best, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't occasionally struck by the absurdity of it all, by the expansive possibilities that are so narrowed by our interpretation of what's right to do in any given situation, and our concern for how we're perceived. But I've gone on long enough, all I'm trying to say is that it's occasionally useful to think about the gears, the machine grinding away behind the veil, the Wizard who reminds us all what we're supposed to do.

If you need be I'll be out in the yard drinking whiskey giving new names to the stars.