Incongruity in a Cloud

I am driving up the road north of Gilroy. I muse about going to Hawaii tomorrow, leaving chilly nights and gray surroundings behind. The car is moving, yet inert and lifeless, and I accept it without thinking, detached, only peripherally aware of anything.

I have driven for miles across a dun-colored autumn landscape laced with concrete roadways that serve us with smooth cunning; we are soothed into complacent living this way. I used to ride my bike everywhere and was a more fit human being then. That was years ago, and I have changed, I often say.

Glancing up at the sky, I see slate-gray clouds mounded over the coastal range to the west and the more distant hills to the east. But look there! High over the Santa Clara valley is a rose-colored beehive-shaped cloud formation that's reflecting the setting sun, now out of sight beyond the western hills. It's gloriously incongruent, soft and formless, with shifting vapors that seem turbulently alive, energetic, free and lovely.

I can imagine there are black insects buzzing around it or that it's a whirling fat tornado of pink migratory birds, like the blackbirds that flock in their millions over marshes and tidal flats. What does it mean, I wonder. Would a wizened soothsayer glean information from such a cloud? Imagining myself to be such a crone, I try but fail to see the future, discern new wisdom. Nothing else anywhere is anything but a shade of gray; the cloud fairly shouts its existence to me.

Who else sees it? Who are all these people traveling on the highway as I travel alongside them? I always wonder and never know. In our billions, we hardly know anyone; we are faceless, sometimes even to ourselves. It's the oddest thing, the anonymity of our existence most of the time. What do they notice, those people I cannot see hunched in their cars; what stirs their hearts and sparks their thoughts? That cloud? The evening sky? Or all those headlights and engines?

The evening twilight is dimming away, the air cooling and the pink cloud now far behind me. I drive on into the night, my destination a large hotel and a warm meal. I am plunged back into the rigid world of our human construct. My mind and soul remain abstracted, extracted from the right angles and petroleum products that surround me everywhere.

Incongruity as a cloud above the highway:  The natural world will not be denied. I am better for the reminder of it all, and thank every single lucky star emerging in the night's dark veil.

The Gratitude KISS (Keep It Simple Sweetie)

Here and there today, I noticed wilting flowers, bird poop, and potholes in the road. That dismal little list hardly accounts for the things I am grateful for, which makes it odd I recall them at all.  It makes me realize something, though, about what I am most grateful for.

In the long intervals of time briefly punctuated by those odd little details, I savored a mellow cup of coffee, meandered along a long line of vendors' tents and tables at the farmers' market, took a leisurely nap, and saw George Clooney in The American at our movie theater here in Pacific Grove.  To top all that off, I had dinner out at a local cafe and a stroll home on this soft late-summer night.  It was a very relaxed and enjoyable day, beginning to end.  That's a fine list of delights to be grateful for, indeed.

I could leave it at that and say good-night, but I keep feeling a sense of gratitude and appreciation for...my existence, I guess.  Just that simple?  I think it goes deeper. 

I appreciate the fact that bird poop and potholes do not rivet my attention, that the world I am privileged to enjoy is beautiful, bountiful and peaceful.  I am not obsessed; I can discern between reality and delusion. I cannot begin to tell you how immensely grateful I am to be able to think clearly about that, to say that coherently, to understand that it is profound.

I work with people who are mentally ill, some of whom are completely undone by a speck of red, believing it is blood and that they will be contaminated.  I work with those who are continuously and forever engulfed in the sound of fierce condemning voices interrupting their every thought, day and night.  I work with people enslaved by drugs and alcohol and those preyed upon by abusers.  They teach me to keep things simple, to appreciate what I have and to enjoy a laugh at any opportunity.

I am healthy, can solve my simple problems, have no complaints to speak of.  Chalk it up to the luck of birth.  By whatever force, I am free to live peacefully.  I am not perfect, and I am very deeply grateful -- almost to an extent that cannot be expressed -- for the ability to notice little things and keep them in perspective.  Surrounding my gratitude is relief that I am fine.  All I need I have, and that's the simple truth.