“It’s so nice to be home, cooking onions for a rice-based saute, although it’s late in the day, almost bedtime. The sun in going down. It was windy today, and I almost got blown off my feet a few times, while working in a rose garden, with northern exposure. Pruned branches, dead geranium stems from last summer, all of it, was hard to contain. But the sky was a pure, robin’s egg blue, and I spent the day happily enough, taking out a few old stems from blueberry bushes as well. When I stopped at the store a mile from my job, for coffee, I recognized the cashier. The one I might have dubbed “the sullen teenager” last year, but in my heart, I know better. I always hold soft spot, for socially challenged counter workers. I have to assume that, for whatever reason, they are not in a venue that can possibly highlight their innate talents, which only contributes to what presents as sullen. Being pretty challenged myself, I try my best to break the tension, inherent to such situations. “How was your winter?” I say, after he’s had a chance to enter in the cost of my purchases: a sticky bun, two local newspapers, and a coffee. “All right”, he says, “but slow.” I can easily add agreement to his statement. “Yeah, geez, mine too”, I say. Now we are deadlocked. It’s then, that I take stock of the fact that his left arm, is in a sling. Suddenly, it all seems too personal. I don’t know if he wants me to ask, or if he wants me to ignore. I wish sometimes, that elaborating comments came easier to me. However, I tend to leave well enough alone, and go against my nature, which is to get to the bottom of everything, as fast as possible. “Have a great day!” I say, and gather my things up, awkwardly, without a bag. The door at this general store is a bear. It’s a heavy inward pull, followed by a stumble into a screen door that seems intractable, and angry. Part of the charm. Obviously since I have not finessed any further rapport at the register, I must get out as fast as possible. Which is very, very awkward, and not attainable in one smooth motion. I’m glad its early in the tourist season. Things are still bare bones, right now. I am but a blip on the radar. Practically, invisible. No one knows I’m still driving on studded snow tires, aggressive ones. The things I’m thinking about as I drive, are completely disconnected with anything anyone else would ever be thinking about. In fact, the mysteries I’m trying to solve concerning the arc of my life, are so obscure, and unremarkable, that I can’t think of one person in the universe, who would even give a shit. I can’t tell if I’m envious of a group of men from my town who go to Florida to play croquet in white suits, in varying degrees of altered consciousness. The world actually seems so bizarre at the moment, and between deaths and wars, and the complete demise of reality as we knew it, I must finally conclude, that sticking close to plants is not a bad strategy. That, and helping people finish records, and setting up treasure hunts, for the under-age-five generation. And realizing that there are probably only a few individuals in your life who will feel like home. If that. And many, many others, who will want to play games with you, off and on, for as long as decades, just to get the upper hand.”
