Down a winding path

On By BekkiIn Musings & RamblingsLeave a comment

The city seemed preternaturally quiet today, almost like an indrawn breath.  The news oscillated between a live feed of the world trade center and a live feed of the floods in Jersey.  I suspect it will be like this until Monday, at least.

I’ve been tracing the labyrinth in the mornings.  An old girlfriend sent it as a wedding gift, which I thought at first was a bit of a statement on how far apart we’d fallen.  (I’d brought her to the one in Pass-a-Grille years ago, back when I was still in Florida.)  The last time I went to a labyrinth, I was living in Oakland and had just had my heart broken.  Suffice it to say that was a long time ago, before Kincaid’s, before law school.

When I opened her present I looked at it and wondered that the memory of a pink church on the beach had stuck, and placed it in the dresser for lack of anywhere else to put it.  Where it promptly became buried under a pile of clothing.

And then one day a few weeks ago I took it out from under the clothing and sat down to let my fingers trace out the path.  The wood is varnished, shiny and almost sticky at times, and as I run my fingers along it I can’t help but think of the day it will be smooth and shiny, the varnish rubbed out and replaced by the oil of my fingers.

Arial

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I don’t remember exactly when I learned to be afraid of heights.  AS a child I was fearless.  My mother tells stories about the time I decided the fastest way down the slide at the playground was to jump off the platform at the top and my father did a running dive to catch me, tucking me into his stomach like a football.  My father tells about the time we were at the playground in Oklahoma, the one with a metal pole about 50 feet high that had a rope netting attached at the top and to the ground, like a big rope teepee.  The kind you would never find on a playground now because of lawsuits and lawyers and liabilities.  Which may be the right call, because at two years old I saw that rope netting and went straight for the top, nevermind that the holes were almost as large as I was.  My father had to rescue me from that one, too.

And then I grew up, and realized I could fall, and stopped racing to the top of every climbable object.  I’d get that odd, swirling feeling in the pit of my stomach when I went up to the top of the hill in a roller coaster or stood near the edge of a roof deck.

It was about the same feeling I had last weekend as I climbed up a rickety ladder to a 25 foot platform and then leaned out over the edge holding onto a metal bar.  As soon as I jumped and started swinging, though, my monkey brain kicked in and remembered we liked swinging through the trees, liked swinging upside down with our knees, liked the weightless fall into the net.  Even better the moment, just an instant, really, of flying through space before being caught, and then the drop back into the net and groundside.

Which is why, despite the soreness that lasted four straight days, I would not be surprised to find myself back there again.

Heavy Lidded

On By BekkiIn Musings & RamblingsLeave a comment

I have a great talent for knocking things over.  Most often my mug of tea at work.  I put it within reach of where I’m working and then lean over to grab the phone or pick up a stack of cases and next thing I know I’m running to the pantry for paper towels and laying my mouse pad across the air vents to dry out.

Tonight it was the glass of water by the bed.  I do this often enough that I try to use a plastic glass.  Less chance of breakage.  And I usually try not to full it very full either.  Less to clean up when I reach over and spill at 3 am.  Tonight, of course, it was an almost full pint glass, so I ended up having to take the fabric off the speaker I use as an end table and sop the water off.

Husband came in and asked if I wanted a new glass.  I told him no, I’d probably spill it.  He came back with bottled water, set it on the denuded speaker, and said, “I brought you one with a lid.”

If on a winter’s night…

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I am standing on the corner of Park and the wind blows through my coat like it is nothing. Like I am nothing.

I get home and begin to shed layers, shed this winter-girl-snake-skin: scarf, gloves, hat, coat, blazer, socks, leggings.

The sun comes in my window an extra hour now. It is not enough.

Underneath the lawn by the Binnenhof in Den Haag, the crocus and the daffodils are whispering to each other, asking if it’s time yet, if it’s time yet, is it time?

The tulips, clutching their finery tightly about themselves, whisper back, “Soon.”