Confession XLXIX

The coastal roads dive with the waves.  They crash going right and left and this way and that.  They merge pavement with light.  They blur.  Reflector passing onto reflector hinting that there’s a trail, which even leads travelers home in darkness.  They follow cliffs and follow stars and cut through February airs with little ease.  They drive on with no drivers driving on them.   

And a carousel of lights spins round giants in the air.  Zigzagging lights blinking fast and slow depending on a driver’s speed.  But speeds are always slow at night.  There’s no rush home.  No rush to any destination.  Only below 30s mimicking colds and their frozen bogs or what’s left of the skating ice. 

So pop your collar to hide the chills from your neck.  And rewind the song like it’s an old cassette tape so you can hear your favorite lyrics again.  Then find yourself not in the light anymore. 

She sings while the piano plays.  And you’re struck by the chord.  Staring off to figure out how life as a tire might be.  Going round and around, spinning pedals pushing harder to the floor to spinning faster and faster and faster some more.  Till you find yourself back in the light.

It’s like quick glimpses between sun and naught, moon and dark or any apparent opposition.

But you’re drawn to both, like a film that never ceases to reel the picture forward on the screen.  You’re drawn to progression as it swerves and licks the corners of the road making your heart stop when you look down that cliff to the ocean bed.  And you doze off.  And your head nods, neither yes nor no, just the indecision between sleep and wake.  And its accompanying necessity to drive one more mile till whatever destination you have in mind is reached. 

It’s then that you realize you’re playing in a silver screen.  The kind that continues on after the credits stop rolling.  The kind that brings you back home at night imaging the next scene.  You play it out in your head.  You say the lines as your prayers beside your bed.  Knelt down before your God.  Moon through the window.  Blinds left open.  Eyes shut.  All alone in your room.  Mystifying the night like Odyssey’s and Hercules’ and all fantasies from the heavens. 

You are as Mars fighting for his one love.  Battling against armies numbering the sands of Dover Beach.  Overwhelmed and at your last edge.  Ocean foam circling your feet.  Coursing tides molding your last steps.  Fighting cowardice.  Fighting your heart.  Fighting all of life just to stay alive.

You cycle through every emotion till all escapes you, till you find yourself gazing into flashing reflectors outlining the column you drive in.  They blink.  And blink.  Blink, blink with less pause. 

The lights above flash, blurry flashes, like old cameras leaving smoke residue in the air.  Foggy photos.  Moments caught slow but continuous.  You string them together like pulling elastics over the tops of each telephone pole making some geometric shape.  But be careful how far you stretch the elastic.  It might break.  Snap.  Shoot the moon.  And make the coastal drive home that much more memorable. 

Will you really remember this moment?

Or will you just stay lost in it?

Unfortunately we don’t last that long when it comes to holding time in an hourglass.  Because even hourglasses constantly drip sand for sand grains.  One after the other.  Slipping faster than second for second, counting the most miniscule of time increments like a second is the smallest conceivable idea for time we understand. 

I drove that coastal road home last night.  I caressed every curve.  I jump-roped the hills and broke keeping from losing control.  Driving down.  Driving down.  Down in and out of light and dark then back and forth till I noticed the reel as a series of still photographs strung together in some purposeful way.

And sometimes the purpose doesn’t matter because you’re not focused on the still frames.  You’re looking at the moving picture as a whole.  Trying to figure out the grand scope of your life as you drift in and out of the night.  But it’s not even the understanding of life that we’re concerned with.

We merely enjoy the moment for the moment.  And we drive on our way for another twenty minutes.  And we let ourselves get carried away as our body directs us home taking the same roads we always take home.  It’s like we’re a passenger even though we’re driving the car.

So we’re able to stare out the windshield and see a never dying horizon.  Able to hear the crashing waves ‘gainst distant stone throws for old old giants skipping boulders on the water and counting the number of skips. 

We’re able to enjoy the simple of life.  The little that God might grant us.  But that little is quite enough.

Better is the little that the righteous has

   than the abundance of many wicked.

(Psalm 37:16)