Waiting

So many people I know have told me that the current dismal situation has affected them in unmistakable ways. One of the most common things I hear is that an air of depression-while-waiting-for-the-shoe-to-drop has settled down upon them. A sense of “Why bother?” A feeling of “I don’t want to undertake anything substantial right now because….who knows what’s coming?” A nihilistic bleakness, a sneering cynicism, a crisis-choked standstill period of time that seems like a Pink Floyd lyric come to life.

It does feel that way, doesn’t it?

And it’s easy, oh, so easy, to get caught up in that sort of feeling, and let it start calling the tune. That’s why I am ruthless in my insistence on spending as much time outside as I possibly can. No matter how tired I am at the end of the day, Jinx and I will take a walk together. I walk slowly now, creaking along with my cane or stick, and I poke at interesting weeds and I take photos and I stop to listen to birdsong and I approach the round bales of hay in the pasture and put my face down next to them and inhale their sparkling chamomile aroma. I kneel in the grass and watch the spiders and the crickets, and I stroke the nap of the moss with my fingertips, and I feel the Presence with me.

Hamlet tells us that he is severely limited because he has bad dreams. For me, I feel handicapped because I cannot remember mine. I marvel at and envy those who can recall and recount their dreams in such detail, while I am limited to remembering just a handful each year, usually something frightening. It seems such a waste to spend so many hours sleeping and yet unable to account for what occurs inside me during those hours. Perhaps this is why I try to redeem the time when I am not under the wage-slave yoke by wandering through the blades of grass and beneath the limbs and beside the cattle, because I know that I will remember these hours, these parades of imagery and sensory input that remind me of something I cannot articulate.

I feel the Presence with me, and I talk to Him, and I wonder if He sometimes speaks to me in my dreams but I can’t recall the conversations. If this were true, it would explain some things.

But you know, seeing butterfly eggs on the underside of a leaf or watching two finches court and spark and splash in the birdbath does a remarkable job of explaining some things as well.

The moon is high and getting fuller. A cold front is moving in even as I type these words, and tomorrow will be a genuine fall day. Patchy frost is forecast for the weekend, and this will usher in the time of lopping and pruning, and will see the final mowing before I winterize and put the implements of grass management away. The screech owl still calls each night and morning from the holler below us, and fruit-tang wafts my way when I take my lungful of predawn air.

Perhaps I will dream tonight, and perhaps I will awaken with some of the words still clattering in my mind. Would that it were.

~ S.K. Orr