If my colors all run dry

I had left the coffee shop, zipped up my winter coat, eased my leg over the seat of my bicycle, and had pedaled slowly away towards home. I felt a little better, but I was mostly just working my way, with some effort, through a depression. The absence of the vibrancy and tang of life is something I have become somewhat accustomed to, from time to time. It’s always hard. I don’t have the words for how hard.

That late afternoon, all I knew for certain was that I was not well. Health, by my measure, is when I am as aware of other people and the world around me - as I am aware of myself. That afternoon I was far too aware of just how I was feeling. Still the sun was shining and the sky was blue. I could see that much. And so I didn’t go straight home. Instead I pedaled and coasted around the sidewalks in South Park.

I am often trying to find words to say something about my experience of l living in the world. And I often doubt my ability to put into words what sometimes seems to me to underlie otherwise ordinary beauty. Sometimes, I sense something compelling – almost overwhelming - within the natural world that my words just don’t seem to quite convey. I give a reasonable effort.

That afternoon I really was not feeling the mystery.

But in truth I don't know myself fully what I am seeing even when I do feel fully alive. Oh, I can usually see that there is some kind of beauty out there. But I sometimes have a sense that there truly must be something much more than just the colors and shapes and textures I see. And it might be something beyond words.

But they say that depressed people are the most realistic about the world and life. No illusions. Healthy people, of course, must have their illusions. That’s life. Of course, these, too, are only words.

Right there in front of my eyes, as I rolled along the sidewalks in South Park, with the nearly setting sun at my back, I saw a large maple tree near the gazebo. The tree was bright red, almost in flames. I rode underneath the branches already strung with Christmas lights - lights that will glow in the dark nights when the trees have dropped their leaves and the branches are bare.

I rode on around a loop, seeing a few pink petals hanging onto rosebush branches. I turned again and nearly ran over a squirrel crossing the sidewalk. If the animal hadn’t frozen in its tracks, it might darted just wrong in an instant and my bicycle wheel might have broken its furry back. As it was, I missed that squirrel by less that the width of its bushy tail.

I rode on. With a few more half-hearted pushes on pedals, I rode along the street along the far side of the park - or the near side. The distinction is hardly important. And then there was another maple tree.  Two of them, bright orange. The sunlight of a setting sun coming through the leaves from the other side.

I turned again and rode on the sidewalk along Massachusetts street. Cars and a pickup truck driving by. The pickup might have been red. I slowed even a little more as I rolled past, on her left, a woman, well bundled, walking. I noticed the late afternoon sun on pale Sycamore bark, the broad trunks of trees with more years than mine, perhaps. Who knew? Who cared?

And then, just a little farther on, I saw a yellow tree by the county courthouse. A fine limestone building. Old. Limestone. A clock in the tower. There were some light shades of yellow-green in the lower branches of the yellow tree. The leaves would all be on the ground soon enough.

All of the colors of fall were represented. Red and orange and yellow. And the sky was sky blue. And I just rolled around South Park in a kind of holding pattern. No place to land.

Finally I turned and pedaled on down one of the sidewalks, angling through the park towards my home.

I had passed some time in a coffee shop earlier that afternoon trying to get out my own head, or at least to try to expand my sense of the world beyond the emptiness of my own feelings. There were other people walking back and forth on the near sidewalk - and the far sidewalk – the sidewalk across the street as I gazed out of the plate glass window of the coffee shop. On the near sidewalk, I saw a little boy crying in the arms of a woman with gray hair. More people were standing in line on the far sidewalk for a concert at the Granada. And more people. People just walking from there to here or from here to there. People whose pain and pleasures I cannot directly feel. Ever. We are – each of us – alone.

But we are all alive. And I do want to believe that we are somehow connected to each other. But, at least, it is something for me to be reminded that this life – however full or empty it feels at times to me - is not just all about me.

At some point, I had plugged my device into the speaker box and I had played some tunes from Pandora. After a while I realized that I - and the few people with me in the coffee shop - had possibly had enough of the sad songs I was playing. Leonard Cohen does sounds a little gloomy, sometimes. I switched over to the Eurthymics. Perhaps it was a timely coincidence. In the strong rhythms and the bold lyrics of the song, I heard the sure lifting voice of a woman, Annie Lennox, singing, “I was born an original sinner ...” I caught the smile on Abbi’s face – she is one of the baristas at Aimee’s – as she stepped lively up the steps. That look on her face surely meant more than I could read or more likely that I could ever say. We had caught each other’s eye. So what if I can’t know just what is behind those eyes? But I don’t think that I am mistaken about everything.

I had watched Abbi sweeping the floor as I took occasional sips on my glass of iced tea. The refill is free at Aimee’s. Or you could look at it this way: You pay for thirty-two ounces of iced tea, half poured twice into one glass. The tea tasted good. It’s not always about the words. And there will be new crumbs on the floor tomorrow for Abbi - or someone else - to sweep up. 

I sat quiet – mostly - at the counter that afternoon. I had told Abbi some of my troubles and perhaps she understood some of what I had said. But she surely couldn’t understand it all. I couldn’t even understand myself. And even on my better days, I wonder about who I am and why I am here. Perhaps, I think too much about it.

But here is the point that I am trying to make. The world out there beyond myself does help keep me from spiraling down into myself – my aloneness. And yes, water swirls down the drain in the opposite direction in the other hemisphere and dishes get dirty and the dishwater spirals down in the sink either way. If you look, there are coffee shops and maple trees. They might mean something. I might not be able to say what. But I can try.

And there might be this: perhaps we find something of what we have lost of ourselves in the eyes of others. It’s just a thought. At least I could try to borrow some of Abbi’s hope on a day I couldn’t feel my own very well.

And I still look forward to the day when I might somehow embrace more fully some of the lives of some of the other people around me. And even when I cannot feel the fullness of life - or the mirth of beauty – I haven’t yet lost everything. I do fear the valley of the shadow of death. But I have learned to take comfort where I can. I still keep on trying to get through the shadows to the valley of love and delight.

I told Abby, as she had stood for a moment near the front door when I finally left the coffee shop, that I felt ‘this much better’ - and I held my thumb and index finger just a fraction of an inch apart. But I had been glad to have passed a little time with her – and the others at some distance – it helped to be with people who weren’t me. Their pain and pleasure are their own, but I can sometimes be encouraged by the pleasure they express. The words spoken that afternoon weren’t the most important thing.

I rode away on my bicycle. Abbi still had a tile floor to mop.

And if the patterns hold, I will be laughing loudly once again. My cup will run over.

But not that afternoon.

After riding around South Park, and through the alleyway I usually pass through, I eventually parked my bike and sat on the bleachers at Central Middle School. I could feel the warmth of the sun, finally almost down. I’m not talking about an emotion, now, but the plain warmth of a nuclear fire ninety-three million miles away. The sun was going down – as we say. The earth is turning toward tomorrow - come what may. A brisk autumn wind moved the fading grass in front of me. I made some notes. I didn’t really feel all of it, but I felt enough to keep me going. I would go home and get some supper together for me and my wife.

So is this what remains? These words? Will they make sense for all time? Will they make sense tomorrow. They’re only words. Reality will always exceed my grasp. But I am part of it.  I think – for today - that life is a gift. Even though I don’t feel the gift part.

And I think that those last words try to say too much – and then say too little. For now, I just see through a glass, darkly.  Timely coincidences only carry me so far. This afternoon the squirrel with the bushy tail didn’t die - and then it ate acorns and chattered to the other squirrels in South Park. And I suppose that it will have to be enough for me to say that sometimes just a glimpse of the light in someone else’s eyes will just have to  hold me until tomorrow. Or a colored leaf against a blue sky.