Sunday, December 27, 2009

Worff, Harff, Worra-Worra

On the road again, staying with our friends Judy and Paul (who first planted the seed of this blog) in the nw corner of Connecticut, trim little die-cut state I grew up in, though that was down south in the stubby panhandle of Fairfield County, but I digress. Not easy to get a grip tonight. I'd set up at the dining room table, near the couch where my son Matt was trying to sleep, but he kicked me out after observing drily how little I'd written. So now I'm in bed, trying again.

Maybe my problem is the unconscripted, demobilized quality of these days out of uniform, like Confederate soldiers coming home after the war. Not fully post-Christmas because they’re also pre-New Year. They’re either free of the holidays or trapped by them. Or something else.

Sunday was at least Sunday, busy with year-end and decade-end reviews in the Sunday papers. M, T, and W are freestyle. Offices depleted (take a long lunch). Kids on vacation. If not bored, then uncertain. Betwixt and between.

This could be an opportunity. Three days to devote to another cause: what a friend, artist Walter Kopec, calls pondering. Yes, of course, read the new book, listen to the new CD. But also stare out the window. Sit in a café and watch the world go by. Take a walk with little to show for it. Do nothing and say nothing with full expertise. Consider the fate of the tree in the living room, still on duty but facing in “January” that same undefined future that the jack o’ lantern faced in “November”. Contemplate the blank calendar, the blank screen, the blank sky. Welcome the three wise guys: As If, Not Even, and It Is What It Is.

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My advent calendar is winding down, but to not be Advent (about which I know bupkis), it needs to go past Christmas. Sunday’s revelation was the roaring, feral clouds above Route 2, I 95, and the Mass Pike before they finally shook themselves to tatters and yielded to the blue over Belchertown. Clouds have messages, whole pages of mute Shakespeare, especially when they tower and roughen and bellow and insist and take on larger-than-life El Greco Miyazaki Noh Yes Maybe wind-whipped temperaments and seem to have names like Harff and Worff and Worra-worra like wild things having a wild rumpus.

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