We are walking to dinner on a Saturday night. A man stands in a driveway, waving his arms around. He is furious, his voice straining - talking to no one and everyone at the same time.
I ask N to translate, a few steps later.
“He said the whole world is mad.” She explains. “Mad, mad, mad, mad.”
I crane my neck, looking back at him.
The air holds a strange smell these days.
On the surface, people are taking last minute vacations before school starts, stealing time before they all go back to the grind. People are celebrating, dancing long into the night, sitting at long tables with perfect white tablecloths eating exotic dishes. The wine is uncorked. The guitar appears as someone sings an old song and the rest join in. For some reason, I witness this as a facade, a sheen, a reflection of another world, but not our world. The man in the street is all that makes sense to me. The rest is a parade, and of course I wish to be dead wrong, because I love a good parade.
I don’t know how many times I have used the expression “waiting for the other shoe to drop” in these posts over the years, but it feels just as appropriate today as it did fifteen years ago. These are in between days, the waiting time, the waking up and shaking off dread, the going to sleep with the weight of the world sitting on your chest and all of those minutes sandwiched between them - the bank balance staring back at you, the renovations that wait to be done, the nagging reminders of what potential masterpieces sleep in drawers, the guitar waiting to be restrung, the cabinets full of spices. All potential, living in the shadow of unknowing. This is god’s waiting room, and the magazines are dogeared and tired.
The act of creation is good medicine. An egg sandwich, a ditty, a photograph, a stray lovely thought scribbled in a turquoise notebook. They brush the cobwebs away, if only for an hour or two. Yes, I fully admit I am waiting, twiddling my thumbs, staring at other faces, as yes the whole world is mad as hatters, and only that guy in the street is ready to talk about it.
I lived through 1968, I was ten. My mom and dad were big time liberals. They wholeheartedly supported the Civil Rights movement and Pa worked for the RFK campaign. With MLK and Bobby both being murdered my folks were reeling, absolutely devastated. Then my uncle was badly wounded in Vietnam that summer. He received a head wound he never fully recovered from. When my grandpa heard the news about his son he had a heart attack and nearly died. I mean damn, it was a rough year.
But in September Dad landed his dream job with NASA. I remember watching Apollo 8 circling the Moon that December. The reading of Genesis as we watched the moonscape go by seemed hauntingly appropriate, even though the family was not religious at all. It was a very needed shot of hope after a terribly chaotic twelve months. Yeah, things are crazy right now, but we've been here before. As a wise men once said about such times, "We can't wait for a light at the end of the tunnel, we must be that light."
The inbetween days - aren't those the majority of our lives?