11/92

Lost

Moving in a car, passing a memory, caught but not held.

She was driving towards a familiar destination. But to start here is not fair. However the difficulty is, there is no real starting point for her. For that matter there is no middle, or end. I know that all things have beginnings and ends. But this was not her experience, and this is about her.

She was born in a place not found in memory, though, once, on a business trip, she returned there. The experience of growing up was not cold or warm for her. More like shades of shadows, a familiar uneasiness. More easily mark on a map than on memory.

As the herd of automobiles and their riders became restless. She sensed the light turning green.

Once again she tried to find the balance, not too fast or close, not to slow or distant. As cars moved past, close, fast, people and their cars. Have you noticed, like pets, cars resemble their owners. The balance for her, today, was to blend, not be noticed, invisible. An unlikely balance, for it depended on others. At best an uneasy balance, never the same moment to moment. But this is too literal, and may lay too near.

A dull green metal mass, impatient, greedily pushes from the rear. Ahead slower obstacles require her to adjust and assess. This is a difficult yet routine event, driving to work. Not the driving, the need for balance. If the roads were empty, barren, she could dance, or dream. But not today as masses hulk and swerve, driven by others like herself, she wonders.

Yellow then red, some rest others stare impatient. Holiday Inn on the right, two for one - $49 kids free. Waiting at the counter, walking down the hall, unlocking the door. A stale smell and touch. The room was rented, for the night. A secret shared. A blue dress, soft, with a thin black shiny belt. Too old, now, to think this was a lasting balance. Too young to let the memory be lost. No real peace expected, only the hope of a memory to be lost in, the shadow of easiness to lie in.

The light turns green again. Again the herd moves her forward to her destination.

It was a familiar route, one driven daily. And each day the uneasiness looked for balance. Each day she passed that same Holiday Inn. Sometimes unnoticed, othertimes caught and held.

Music, yes, I must not forget the music. The music transported her to work also. As familiar a path and destination as the road she traveled now. Magnetic patterns on a ribbon of plastic inserted into a slot on the dashboard. Time unnoticed, the herd which surrounded her forgotten, the balance, for a moment, forgotten. Some memory becoming too real, too lonely to bear, remembering some balance unnoticed.

Sometimes the music worked, many times not. In any case she would arrive, pull between the lines painted on the cement floor of the parking lot. Gather, lock, and walk. Finding the plastic card. Releasing the glass door next to the newspaper vending boxes.

Familiar now, after 16 months. The people knew her, she knew them now, enough to feel warmth.

Each day the transition to work was not noticed. She could never understand why, as far back as she could remember, she feared work. For a long time, younger, she thought she was lazy. A helpless feeling, but now, she knew she was afraid of someone, always present, unnamed. Anger and impatience worked best to meet this fear as it approached, each day. Each day this showdown occurred, usually early, returning from a dream. Sometimes she lost. But, more recently she was winning. The addiction was strong, the lost escapes missed.

Needless to say she was overly self-centered, she thought. Earned a good living, dressed well, took vacations to far away places. Could be worse, she would reassured herself.

As I mentioned, she worked. Work was too much like family, like growing up, each day. No escape, not anymore than from this body, these fingers. A puzzle, a mystery of people and function, of otherness. She saw them through a glass, like images on the video display terminal, the window of her work world. Knowing there is more but not comprehending. Not any more than the nanoseconds and pixels generating the characters that combine to communicate the waves of images from and to others.

Haunted by the thought of meaning. This is the thread, but only the thread and only the thought.

Time at work, an envelope entered, people, boundaries, tangled. She was paid for this time, and this is what defined her. This paid for her existence.

Habits, routine, patterns of existence. Including windows and doors, constructed and paid for.

To be held, close and gently, protected from her deepest self, for an eternal moment. Remembered as a memory, but only the pieces not the whole. This she felt that she remembered, but with no context, event, only the feeling that it must be there, please.

Now, a life within windows and doors. No real doors in or out, but then on occasion some spectacularly large windows. These were the spaces that lived, that needed no meaning to be complete, needed never to be complete. She found these everywhere on occasion. In the waves of cars, the pixels, the boundaries, the tangles, the memories, the prayers to some silent God.