Determined

She is famous among those of us who pay attention. Famous for walking back and forth along Tunnel and River Roads. She roams as far out as Bee Tree and far into town as the Asheville Mall. That’s about a 10-mile range. You can see her striding determinedly along the edge of the road most every morning and then again in the afternoon. There’s something about the sight of her on the side of a road that hardly anyone dares to walk—handbag clutched to her side, blonde-white hair tight to her head—that I find strangely affecting. It’s hard to tell exactly, but I’d say she’s in her early 60s. Tall. Seems Scandinavian. Once, in a heavy rain, I pulled over and asked if she wanted a lift. She didn’t look at me, her head down, a quick shake in the negative. I’ve heard this is the case for many people who try to lend her assistance. Is it fierce pride? Necessity? Never do you see her looking weary or exhausted; even when she is moving slow, there is steadfastness demonstrated in her gait, a one-foot-then-another brand of doggedness. Often, she’s almost speed walking—her free arm swinging out elegantly, stride elongated a couple of notches—and in those moments she looks almost happy, as she were made to walk, becomes her fullest self inside her strides. I assume she is going to work, maybe at one of the big box stores. Though lately I’ve come to believe she never stops walking, like the mythical shark that can never rest. That maybe she is making that loop endlessly, from the mall to home, home to mall. Or maybe there is no home. Or she never makes it to the mall. That she is doing it for those of us who notice such things, who have come to believe she is telling us something of the utmost importance. 

War v Peace

Ten minutes into the new Avengers movie I knew I was in trouble. The small theater was full, half with adults with kids and half with adults, and the sound was earthshaking. The movie rumbled like an elephant barreling down a bowling alley. I was expecting it. I’d seen enough blockbusters to know what I was in for. The strangely thin CGI effects, the video arcade war games. The flat, unfunny banter the superheroes tossed off back and forth on invisible headsets. (I counted one laugh from the audience, not a single cheer.) Iron Man’s weirdly calm monologues inside his armor suit, as if all that hyperkinetic flying about didn’t jostle him an ounce. All the bloodless mayhem, fight scenes so fast you can’t tell who is doing what to whom. All of it present within the opening scenes, set in predictable motion, the next hour and a half already predetermined. I didn’t care who they were fighting or why they were fighting. I wasn’t supposed to. This movie was about itself. The bad guy? An operating system, a rogue computer mind as subtle and dangerous as a human mind, with a jacked up superconductor brainstem. Once again Hollywood was taking about itself, showing off its muscles. It didn’t take long for the thing to take human form—part Darth Vader, part Terminator, part bored dandy thug. All of a sudden the team of super heroes, who’d been divided and nearly defeated simply by being forced to see their own dreams (Holy Cow, Batman!), only to come back together as a unit, bonded by the call to duty. But now they weren’t slaughtering the enemy; they were evacuating an entire city. Their love and care was so thick I almost gagged. America was suddenly both the avenging angel and the peacekeeping angel. At the same time! Disgusting. I went out to get another beer and check on the state of dusk in the parking lot. If I stalled out long enough, I’d miss some important plot point, be spared connecting the dots.

Move

Reading Oliver Sacks' memoir, written at the end of his long & illustrious life, inspires me on a whole host of levels. Just at the level of accomplishment, of course, but more deeply—& more interestingly—concerning his suffering & the setbacks he weathered & overcame. Growing up gay in a unforgiving, unseeing society, being deeply shy, working under the demands and pressures of two high achieving parents…I see him moving through it all, living it, & I take heart. Maybe it’s the vantage; that he’s looking back at the full span of his life. That he can see the overlying architecture & perceive the vast underground root network of his life. Maybe it’s this place—this stance—that allows him (& the reader) to place the down periods & the difficulties in perspective. Whole decades lost to drug abuse, to grief, to delusion; whole decades caught up in pursuits grand & small. A passionate journey, indeed. For passion is the main ingredient in evidence. Passion & curiosity. Fearlessness & persistence. Sacks quotes the poet Thom Gunn: "At worst one is in motion; & at best, / Reaching no absolute, in which to rest, / One is always nearer by not keeping still." I hear one of the classic blues tunes running in my head. “You gotta move.” Not motion to keep from drowning, not restless agitation, not even progress in our Western, scientific model. But the movement of a body finding a groove, in a line of poetry, in the brush’s path down the paper tracing the eye’s perception of the model’s body. Moving through the mundane day as if great adventure informs everything.