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Journal
Entry September 8, 2003 I picked up a hitchhiker today. I hadn’t meant to; he just tagged along without my knowledge, and I didn’t even know he was there until I had driven about a half a mile down the road. I call him a he as though I’m positive that he was male even though I’m not. He could have been a she for all I know; I couldn’t tell. But I believe that he was indeed a he since he seemed to enjoy listening to Eminem immensely. Now you might argue that if he enjoyed listening to Eminem, then he was probably more likely a she, since Eminem seems to attract more women than men, and you would be justified in making such an argument. However, it was the way that he listened to the music that made me believe that he was a male, relaxed, with his head tilted back and a glazed look in his eye as though he was seriously pondering the beat of the music and felt that, out of reverent sort of respect, the only way he could enjoy it was just to nod his head slightly in time. So, I’m going to say that he was a he. I don’t know his name. He didn’t tell me, and I didn’t think to ask. So, I’ll give him one now, so I can have something to refer back to him in the future. I think I will call him Wizard. Wizard the lizard. I’m still not sure how in the heck a lizard got onto the hood of my car, but there I was, sitting at a stop light, when the thing went running across my windshield wiper blade, jerking his head back and forth, and, although I had no way to actually hear his thoughts, I’m sure they were something along the lines of, “What the heck? Where am I? One minute I was sunning on a happy little branch, and now I’m on this hot metal thing with a strange looking human staring at me.” Then, the light changed, and he disappeared so that was the end of Mr. Wizard the lizard. Or so I thought. I had reached the next stop light and was starting to decay waiting for it to change when I spotted a tiny little head peeking at me from around my windshield wiper. The sight was too much for me, and I burst out laughing, something which I’m sure made the other drivers around me want to step on the gas and get as far away from me as possible, but to Mr. Wizard, this tiny effort somehow created a bond between us so that, when the light (finally) turned green, he crawled a little ways up the windshield and planted himself there, tilting his head up as though he felt he was the now the navigator and needed to point the way. In response, I turned up my music, and so we cruised, listening to the angry voice of Eminem and enjoying the fact that it was one of those rare cool mornings. He disappeared when I got to school so I don’t know where my newfound friend is now, but I like to imagine him sunning on yet another happy little branch, now fueled with the brush with adventure he’d just experienced and spending the afternoon with daydreams of California. It’s strange how sometimes that imaginary boundary that we’ve placed between us and nature seems to disappear, and you find yourself somehow able to communicate with animals (or lizards). It’s almost as though animals can sense the fact that we are all one in this world and love us simply because they know we are things of creation and beauty just like they are. My mother always tells me that whenever I chose someone to marry, to make sure he’s good with animals and, in turn, animals love him. Animals, unlike us, only see our inner self and are not, in the slightest, flattered by wealth or class or fame. They could care less if they live in a shack or a mansion, all they care about is that personal connection with someone else, and, when that’s achieved, the relationship seems to turn telepathic in that, although we cannot communicate through normal means of speech, we seem to know what the animal is thinking and the animal, in turn seems to know what we’re feeling. When my dog was alive, this relationship existed between us all the time. I always knew was she was thinking, and she, in turn, knew exactly what things would irritate me the most, do it, and then turn toward me with a “now whatcha gonna do about it?” gleam in her eye. My aunt and a friend of mine had a conversation yesterday that really struck me. The emails were these:
“…the butterfly landed at my
feet and all I could think of was that I wanted to pick it up and hold it but I
was afraid that I would hurt it more if I did. two emotions went through
my mind--first I wanted to cry because such a thing of beauty was dying and then
I felt such joy and gentleness.” “honey, you
did exactly what you should have done.....left it alone........it did its job
though I think it hoped to relay a message to you .........as far as the
dying......she died with honor as she knew she would, her mission in our world
complete.....joy was the right feeling to feel as someone's soul entered into
the other world..........”. It didn’t seem unusual to me that, after having such an energetic
connection with life that I would pass a funeral procession on the way home as
though I had started a cycle of life that needed to be completed.
I hate passing funeral processions because they always bring with them
that sense of death,
a prickly sort of excitement and unrest in the air that starts at my fingertips
and works it ways up to the deepest portion of my soul that I often forget
exists. This is the part of the
life cycle that I hate the most. Birth, I have no problem with.
Things can be born all the time with no argument from me, but it’s
death, that ending and deep void like the Earth has realized that it’s lost a
part of herself, is what I have problems with.
But, for me, this is not unusual. I’ve
always seemed to have a problem with things ending.
I always turn off a movie ten minutes before it ends and stop reading a
book twenty pages before the end. One
friend of mine was utterly distressed to learn that I had spent days watching a
forty-nine episode anime only to stop watching it at the forty-eighth episode.
The strange thing is that it’s not really a conscious thing.
It just happens, and I realize later that I never finished that.
However, whenever I do finish something, I’m always left with an empty
sadness and find myself either rewinding the movie or restarting the book or
hurrying to start a new one so that the death will be quickly forgotten and
something else can be born again. I
guess, in my weird thinking, that by turning the movie off or shutting the book,
it never really ends in my mind but, instead, continues on forever.
I remember when I was in the eighth grade and the teachers would always
ask us what we wanting to be when we grew up.
I always said that I wanted to be a vampire because they were immortal.
To a fourteen year old, nothing in the world sounded better than living
forever.
What do you want to do?
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