 |
Nutshell Kingdom: Keeping Track of the World
2007
There was a brief moment where I thought that I figured out how to keep track of the world. I was in a town renowned for its snowfall and since a storm was expected that night, I sheltered my car under a free-standing carport on the near side of the parking lot. The snow came as advertised, with an electricity in the air and occasional blasts of muted thunder. I stayed up into the night listening to Thelonious Monk records on an old record player someone had left behind from who knows when. Around two, I heard the a crash that was the carport collapsing. Following soon was a knock on my door.
The guy who lived in the next room came in, dressed in a black Stetson and blue plaid flannel dressing robe. He smelled like bourbon. "That your car I heard getting smashed?"
"Guess so," I repiled. "Good thing I don't ride a horse. That would have been messy."
He had a tatoo of a dandelion near his clavicle. Hard to kill. The guy's name was Tre and he lent me the keys to his '78 Bronco and explained that he didn't plan to be sober enough for driving for a good long while.
The next night, after the snow had stopped falling, I went out and climbed into the cab of that Bronco. The snow had piled deep onto the windows and clung tightly enough so as to not fall off as I closed the door behind me. The truck smelled like cold coffee and Skoal. I laid down on the seat and looked out at the streetlights trying in vain to pierce the foot or more of snow collected on the windshield. Outside, there was no wind, no noise at all. I felt like I was in a crystal coffin, just resting, not dead, not really.
It took me two weeks for the snow to melt and for me to have my car fixed and get out of that town.
Since then, I have tricks of looking at the world. I have walked through cities looking up for the peregrine falcons that nest on the tops of tall buildings. I have sunk myself up to my eyes in rivers, looking straight out at the surface of moving water for as long as my breath would hold. Sometimes, when I can't sleep, I will switch ends of the bed and lie there looking at the headboard opposite until my eyes grow heavy with newness. Each time darkness comes and each time that darkness is swallowed up in light. Over and over, like opening and shutting your eyes very slowly.
You have to take notice of the world at all times or it will slip away. It is like tracking a wild beast. You just have to look for it in different ways...constantly. See, it just changes and goes from dark to light to dark again and sometimes when it gets light, what you need to be seeing has moved on and that's when you might have to stand on your head or crouch down real low to find it again. All I know is that you can't rest too long or you will find yourself lost.
