Power Plays and Thunderstorms

“This is a power play!” Alice hissed.

Margie turned her head and looked at her friend. “Oh come on Al, you’re being paranoid.” She recapped the bottle of bourbon and picked up her drink from the kitchen counter. “You know George, he’s as dumb as a post sometimes, he just got the dates mixed up.”

Alice took a sip of her tequila sunrise and glared at her longtime friend. “Why are you taking his side? This is going to cost me a big bonus and Alex is sure to pass me over for that new promotion coming up.”

Margie sighed. “Al, he just got the dates mixed up; he apologized, and he told Alex it was all his fault, what else can he do?” C'mon, drop it and lets get back to this crap.” Margie grabbed her friend’s arm and pulled her toward the great room door. “Jesus, I hate these company things. So do me a favor and don’t make things worse, okay Al?”

Alice seethed inside but let herself be pulled along by her friend.

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When I moved to Maine, one of the many things I did in an unknowing attempt to start to find my way out of isolation, was to sign up for a continuing education writing course. A course, I participated in, off and on, for about a year. Once, the professor gave the homework assignment to write on the topic of “Who am I?” This assignment was intended to stimulate we students into thinking about how we see ourselves, how we think about ourselves and how we portray ourselves to ourselves, and to the world. At least that is what the meaning of the words written on the blackboard had transmuted into after several days of sitting on the back burner of this old brain.

At first, I found myself unable to write anything on this topic. Nothing was coming easily. I could describe myself in terms of roles, physicality, careers, etc. but it felt false for me to do so. I simply no longer think of myself as a permanent entity, even from moment to moment. This is a far cry from where I began in early childhood, when I fell prey to the notion each of us exists as a single, unique, isolated individual, who which, though while modifiable around the edges, is in fact, essentially an unalterable, permanent something. Now while this is true on one level, life has taught me that it is utterly false on another and that my greatest mistake has been in adhering to the sanctity of the notion of permanence. This mistake has led to living much of my life in discomfort of some sort or another. It has taken me almost 60 years to understand that I am literally not one Karen with all kinds of different attributes, but am in fact, a multitude of karens, each with its own conglomeration of beingness. Each of these unique karens comes out of a greater amorphous essence when called into being by passing moments filled with all their varying stimuli, both internal and external. So when I began to think about this assignment I found myself doing a lot of dithering. Finally, I simply closed my eyes and waited. Eventually I saw a woodland dirt path stretching out in front of me, bordered on both sides by tufts of tender green grass and splashes here and there of white trillium. This was the right image, for these days, I most identify with journeyer, one who travels by foot through all terrains, some chosen and others not. When I think of my life, and by extension all life, I see forest, meadow and big city streets, each with their multitude of paths or sidewalks. There is always the one on which I currently traverse while others cut away from it to disappear behind trees or buildings, and as I follow them as far as I can with my eye, I always think about Robert Frost and his 2 roads diverging in a yellow wood.

The Road Not Taken

BY ROBERT FROST

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

These images of paths not taken, at times, call forth regretful karen, complete with heavy salt tears, but just as often, the same images will bring out joyful karen with her buoyant spirit. Yet these karens are not but a moment, and in just a few steps further down this same path, a wood thrush may begin his aria, and regretful karen may morph into hushed, awe-filled karen, or a car may pass, blaring rap, and joyful karen may transmute into melancholy karen. I have no control over these changes as I have none over the overtaking sorrow which came one day when I came across a deer carcass rotting in a field; killed only for its rack, which had been removed to hang on a would be hunters wall. I even have no control over the changes wrought by writing the last sentence, which brings angry, frustrated karen elbowing in to look at these words with these eyes. Change, change, change. Ever flowing, ever transforming into new configurations, none of which are permanent. But we think they could be, or at least I did, and so I spent a lifetime looking for a way to hold onto happy karen, or at second best, find the permanent content self to ride above all the others. Well, it ain’t gonna happen anymore than a tornado can blow forever or than a leaf can remain forever green upon the tree. Our states, our selves, come into being when conditions come right and then dissipate back into the ground of being when not. So what to do? What am I to do when karens full of pain, sorrow or rage coalesce? They hurt and I don’t want them around.

The only answer I have found so far, I found walking. One day, on a trail in the middle of nowhere, on the side of a mountain high above tree line, I got caught in a ferocious thunderstorm. Lightening struck frequently and so close to me. I could smell ozone. Winds threatened to tear me off my precarious granite perch and send me whirling away to crash on the ground far below, and when hail began to pelt down, making already tricky footing even more perilous, a matching storm inside of fear, anger, hurry, awe, etc. became as uncontrollable as the one buffeting me about from the outside. There was no quick way to get down out of my situation. It was what it was, and would be, until it wasn’t anymore; and worst of all, I had no say about any of it….. something I finally understood deep in my bones in that moment, out there on that trail. Life just is. 

In the past, in more normal types of stormy life circumstances, I had always thought that there must be something I could do to alter whatever was going on around me, or in me, …..or both. But in that moment, in this storm, clinging to this mountainside, a sense of utter powerlessness sunk in, accompanied by a laughter producing knowing, that power, is only illusion. Peace descended. I was still scared, but now I was connected with wind, rain and hail….. and all my-selves. We would exist together as we were for as long as was given us; storm blowing, me being afraid, trying to find a way down to tree cover, then at some point we would change, Nature into one of her other morphs and me into another of mine.   It would still take me a few more years to really begin to get it, that people (including myself), are just nature too.