wanderflee

The second kitchen bulb went out, and so did I. I lost it. I cried over spilt carbon coil. And spilt rain drops all over my bedroom. And spilt uteral lining. And spilt electricity from the nonfunctional dryer into my elbow nerves.

All the work I haven’t done and don’t know how to do. All the money I don’t have, yet keep on spending. All the questions of the next move and which way is right.

I weighed about a million pounds.

I’d lugged computer and notebooks, trying to feel positive, to feel possibility. I went into Delice and felt, instead, sweaty and miserable. Smothered.

I fled.

I couldn’t drive away fast enough. I needed to get out in the open, to a place safe for tears. I ran to the woods.

It was a Northwest kind of day, gray and rainy and foggy. And lovely.

I left the boardwalk on the third trail, not knowing where it went, but knowing it was the right one. I saw turkeys ahead and hesitated. Then I kept walking, toward the turkeys that terrify me, because this was the path that called to me. The turkeys moved to the side. I paused after I’d passed, staring at them, and them at me, each assessing the threat of the other. Then I kept walking.

The mud spread beneath me like elephant feet. I avoided the shiny green piles of shit I thought at first to be frogs. And I looked out on the layers of trees and fog. I felt the burden lifting. I felt the smell of earth and pine enter my body and renew it with peace.

As I wandered back toward my car, I started humming, “Back to life, back to reality,” and smiled at myself.

So I came home. The ceiling in my bedroom has stopped dripping, at least for now, and the landlord actually sent someone over. The clothes in the basement are almost dry. I had an idea for my work project and fired up my computer. And I pulled a chair into the kitchen and changed that damn light bulb. After all, I just told the world it’s my job.