Sometimes, I think, and I wonder if I’m doing the right things. If I’m in the right place. If things are going right. Then I turn left and it feels right. Pushing the briefcase that attaches right onto the front wheel of my bike toward the ground, leaning hard, feeling the possibility of the tires giving way. When I feel that and I’m going left, all is right with the turns. And I breathe out. The sun is out, it’s Saturday morning. It’s rather cold. There are coffee drinkers filling in around me, families. I wonder what it would be like to wake up on Saturday mornings for 18 years in a row and wonder what my children are doing, and then be able to know, and then wake up for the next 18 years wondering what they’re doing and not be able to know. And then not know what their children are doing. What’s the purpose of having a family if they’re going to leave you? I supposed the family doesn’t have to fall apart with age. I’ve seen families stay together. Mine has done its best.
But here I am, Saturday morning, not wondering what any children are doing. And the father walking his son around nearby doesn’t leave a lot of room for wondering, for wandering. Freedom, I even want it on this small child’s behalf. Perhaps he would run into traffic. But that’s what brakes are for. To be picked up, that would be the worst thing, when a child might be trying to go somewhere on their own power.
And yet I’m not wandering around right now. I’m sitting. And there are steeples, a dome, and sidewalks picking me up, carrying me even if I don’t want to go. I will write at this intersection again. I actually rather like to be picked up. And I wonder where I’ll be picked up and taken next. Probably to the left.
It’s chilly enough to cross my legs, but my fingers are comfortable. I could sustain this as long as my battery might sustain. Someone just got picked up in front of the dome. She does not look like a child, but I’m not wearing my glasses. He looks like he’s done a shoulder press or two in his time.
I also wonder what comes through when I translate the things in my mind into words. When I’m being self-referential, would an English teacher include a question on the quiz about my state of mind? Would they presume to know what’s going on upstairs, even as I try to write what’s going down in the cloudiest, clearest whey I can? More likely all this fourth-wall breaking will keep this out of the classroom. Thank god. To be in a classroom is to be picked up and not put down for eight hours, five days a week. Horrible. I remember it. And I was given praise and good grades. But it was still horrible. I would never do it to a child if I had a say in the matter. I couldn’t do it. We would talk around, they would ask questions, and we would work together to discover ways to find more questions. That would be the classroom. We’d meet other people and figure out what they might have for questions. But no classrooms. No desks. Our desk would be hammocks and kayaks, with books and notebooks. Our classroom would be the Internet, the voices of people out in the world, the sounds and smells and tastes. Our goal would not be to get into college. We wouldn’t even have a goal, certainly not a shared one. To be alive, a process of adapting and living, and not a process at all. If we might discover shards of that beautiful thought, start probing the word beautiful and use it in less cliché ways (or not at all). That would be the measure of a learning in childhood. Grading is the tool of the managerials. A mechanism for developing the anxieties required to stop learning on behalf of other people. A way to distance oneself from oneself and from one’s society, and rather relate to narratives outside of oneself. How could one aware of such things put another one through such a thing. I don’t ask, for it’s a period. I know people do, and I do not blame them. I can only hope that some will escape. I hope I’m escaping. And I’d love to bring a few ones with me.
There is a family. The parents are wearing caution tape sashes and Sherlockish hats. This is the second group with a few phone-starers with Holmesy hats. There must be an Internetty scavenger hunt, a mystery to ritualistically solve in lieu of a pandemic-canceled farmers’ market. I feel at home here. Not because of the mysteries or the caps and gowns with dome pictures. Nor even the pretty acidic coffee with oat water. It might be something else. Something just outside my field of vision, at least without glasses. The feeling that I can turn right, left, crash, jump, and park, and be where I am. That I might watch a car pass, fast, and not bark like a little fluffy dog. That I might huddle into my sweater on top of my sweatshirt and wonder if it’s almost June. And glance. And feel my fingers become cold, but keep writing. To tap a bit harder. To wonder how typewriters worked. To think about messy handwriting. And come back to the place where I am, contented. I appreciate these moments because they are only possible momentarily. To sustain contentedness seems a contradiction. To hold one’s position is more effort than I know how to conjure. I rather wiggle. And ride the squiggly sine curve. Or perhaps today it’s a cosine, having started the day with a sleep-in. But I believe holding a position with stasis desire is a recipe for that tan(x) “curve”; to bounce from disaster to disaster, losing the thread totally and hoping to come back into the view screen. I don’t need my waves to be consistent, but I’d like them to be rideable. Because I’m still in love with the idea of I. The one. The me-ness. Perhaps one day I’ll do enough mushrooms to see it differently. But for now, even though I see the Way as all things, and my “self” as a part of the Way, I still see myself when I look in the mirror. I still feel my fingers become cold when I am one with the chilly morning. I still feel as though my gut bacteria must have a guild, a society among themselves, and while they are always living, dying, and being replaced, this Gastro Ship of Theseus still sails under the same flag. I hope they like coffee.
I appreciate that the cars drive toward me before turning around this square. Even if I do not appreciate the cars. I am sometimes very sad. I sometimes use the word very when I’m feeling uncomfortable. The consine curve winds along. But remembering the curve reminds that the square has curved edges. And vagueness and obscurity are only somewhat acceptable in prose. My hair is tied back and I feel the tension. But I like it this morning. I think it’s the cold. I think I’m awake.
Roman Ryan 