Desiderata at 5 AM

Prudence and experience teach you that it's wise to stick with the routine, the ordinary, and the safe things in order to make it to old age.  But what am I to make of that now that I have reached my middle years and life seems mundane?

Not being so wise, I guess, I am up at 5 to make my way across town in time for the 5:30 swim. I am driving along thinking to myself, "Yuck, rain" when I look up and see what seems to be a tribal ritual in full swing, vividly displayed in sedate and peaceful Monterey.

I sit up higher. What could this mean? Up ahead, I see city trucks with flashing lights.  And there's fire!  There are men and they are looking at something, and yes, there really is fire.  Now I'm awake.  I squint to see exactly what could be on fire in all the wet and cold.  There are two men in yellow safety-striped foul weather gear.  Are their feet on fire?  I see bright, open, leaping flames in the middle of the dark street. I need to take a closer look.  I feel my heart beating, wish I had my camera.

The men are looking intently down at the ground and one of them is holding a long broom-like wand shooting blue spikes of fire, waving it back and forth through the flames.  The ground actually is on fire and white-hot tongues of it are licking upward in the dark morning.  Their work truck lights are flickering off nearby plate-glass windows and the rain-slicked streets shine with the firelight and beams from headlights.  And there is no sound.  The silence perhaps is the most eerie thing.  The wolves of death are not howling, the winds of time are not whistling in the rafters.  The rain is pattering on the roof of my car.

I imagine the layered meanings of this scene, the symbolism, the overt oddity at least.  Is this a signal that evil lurks even in quiet conservative places where nothing much happens? This could be an ordinary city street transformed from pavement to ritual altar upon which smokes and leaps a white-hot bit of hell.  Pure hell and the men are doing the bidding of the devil himself, captured in the middle of the night while they were out clearing drains and now forced to set everything on fire.  It's a battle, a test of wills.  The men cannot resist the evil intention of Satan and are stunned, cowed, forced to do...work?  But why is Lucifer intent on setting Monterey's wet streets on fire at 5:30 in the morning?  Why not Las Vegas or LA, the dens of iniquity?  It is very possible that the calm complacency of our small town needs a bit of bone rattling and I am lucky witness to the vanguard forces that intend to rattle the bones, set the place alight, bring it to ruin and ash.

With the hunched silhouettes of the two men playing with open flame in the dark quiet of a rainy morning, I can surely expect to see some large monolithic slab rising up out of the chilly ground and an orchestral blast of grand music.  Can't I?  There is no giant beam of light splitting the dark from the far edges of space and no mothership in sight.  Not that I can see anyway.  My eyes are riveted.  Thus Spake Zarathustra rings across the reaches of my memory, and I look for a femur to throw up in the air with my fellow apes.

Deep sigh.  No leg bones in reach; just my umbrella.  My fingers touch its sensible nylon fabric and escort me back to reality.  I guess I'll get back to slogging, doing ordinary good in the world, go quietly amid the noise and haste, miss my 15 minutes of fame.  My glory will live and die in my own mind.  I'm just me.

The signal light turns green; I shift into first.  My imagination subdues itself gradually. I shift into second gear and accelerate away from the fire-bedeviled scene, the yellow-clad men disappearing in my rearview mirror.  It could be worse; hell could actually be my daily reality and misery my constant companion.  Playing it safe could make it safe for others to emerge from their own infernos, I guess.  But the flame had such a sinister appeal and stirred up a little of evil in my soul.  It would seem that even the most sedate among us have a shadow that lies in obscurity, that howls at the moon and emerges when bidden by fire.