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| Late afternoon light in early April from our front walk |
Friday, April 8, 2022.
The sun was about to rise. A thin pink cloud hovered above the juniper-blobbed ridge across Chalk Creek, not far beyond the gnarled oaks in the field. It was a typical morning in early April, just slightly warmer than the ever-changing normal, 34 degrees according to my phone. The green spring grasses were slowly taking on individuality out of the grayness that precedes the day's first direct light. I walked down our front walk, and under the grapevine that was still bony and bare, but with a few buds breaking into tiny tendrils of green. I clicked my key fob and unlocked the car door and got in. There was dew but no frost, which was good, or I would have been late to work.
Although it wasn't long ago, it's hard to remember now how consumed I was with death then. I didn't fear dying. I'd read enough life after death experiences to be convinced that I would continue after my heart stopped beating, my mind stopped ticking, and my blood ran cold. But I worried constantly about how best to say goodbye, and how best to make sure my loved ones could carry on with this life after I was gone. I worried about Marci. Each moment was sacred. There was not a second I felt should be wasted. Everything was under the lens and needed to be examined. Time slowed down and sped up simultaneously. I felt great joy and gratitude for the life I'd been given, great nostalgia for the past, and great pain at the thought of saying goodbye to the simplest of things, not to mention family. I teared up easily--in gratitude and in sorrow. I noticed everything. I was alive. Facing death will do that to you.
So, of course, the drive to work was spectacular. Every drive was. Every moment was. It was the first day of our journey to California, which wouldn't bring much. We wouldn't get far. We wouldn't leave until after school, and we'd only travel as far as St. George. Still, I was excited as a kid on Christmas morning.
* * * * *
After school, on the drive home, everything seemed to blaze in the golden afternoon light, especially the alfalfa fields of McCormick green with new, young clumps of spritely growth. I may have stopped the car, taken a picture.
In town, heading up canyon road, I saw a car door open. There was a girl, probably in high school, perhaps college, wearing shorts, getting something out of her car, and the sunlight hit her legs, glazing them gold. I wanted to stop the car, take a picture, but of course that would seem creepy, and because there truly are creepy people in the world, we cannot live our lives as we should. In a perfect world I would have done just that: stopped the car; got out and said, "Hold it right there. You look amazing in the light. You make me remember what it was like to be young, to be so far from death, to have life unfolding before me like the fields of Kansas stretching to the horizon. May I take your picture?" And in a world without pedophiles, rapists and murderers, such a gesture would be taken for what it was, an appreciation of the beauty of life and nothing more.
Yet, even in such a perfect world, I think we'd still need walls around us, emotional safety zones, circles of protection. Mortals just aren't that free. There is a fear built into us that keeps us from fully connecting to life. People want to be beautiful, just not too beautiful. People want to be talented, just not too talented. People want to connect with others, just not too much. We are all islands, fortified by fear, letting only a few into our inner circles.
Yet, part of us knows that connection is there, and yearns to live a life uninhibited by petty fears. That is what art is for--to transcend the distance between who we are and who we want to be, between this flawed mortal world and the perfect world to come. In art, in a story, you do stop that car, and you do take that picture, and you transcend the limitations of this life, and for a moment, live perfectly. In literature, you do that as the writer, but you also do that as the reader. Art captures moments of perfection, even if the subject is painful, simply because it allows us to view life without the blinders we wear as a means of self-protection. Art makes the viewer naked and vulnerable before the world, and allows us to experience things we are afraid to experience on our own. We all yearn for that, not because we yearn for tragedy, for pain, for sorrow, but because we yearn to be free from fear of pain, free from fear of sorrow, and ultimately free from fear of death itself.
We yearn for a world where we can stop and tell someone they are beautiful and not be misunderstood. We yearn for a world if not free from war, at least a world where we can be in a trench, dead comrades all around, and not be afraid to look death in the eye, and say, Come take me if you wish; I have no fear; I will live each second of this life right up to the moment I die, and then I will live then too, you miserable, selfish beast. I exist and I simply refuse to not carry on. Being is my destiny.
* * * * *
Packing can undo the most sacred of moods. And so it did that day. My seize-the-day euphoria ended in the rush to get out the door, as Marci and I told each other what still needed to be done, and each bristled with resentment at having one more thing to do before getting in that car and heading down the road.
Normally we fight while packing up to leave. It's our routine. Yet, we didn't do that. Perhaps, we were both too aware that our time together might be very limited. So, we stifled the usual snide comments. Still, it was not a joyous process. Getting out the door on time never is.
And then we were off to California--or at least St. George.
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