Wandering in

Last week, at this time, I was in Dallas with a friend. We went to an outdoor sculpture garden. One of the installations was hard to figure out. There was something that looked like a sealed off stainless steel service entrance. Heather and I approached and, I tucked my head back in surprise. It was a door made of brushed glass. Then, upon entering, a black hallway that wrapped around to another double doorway. We opened those doors and stepped into a room with soft sandstone benches and, above us, an open window to the sky. It was a space, in this beautiful place, where we were asked to stop. To look up. To see what passes by. Just sit and see.

And when the sky rolls by like that, in this fabric of grays -- something I would ordinarily clump together into one dismissed color -- I could see it. The way the shapes shift. The way the shades evolve and fold into each other. Then a patch of lighter white. A bauble of blue.

Today I spent six hours watching a television show, the whole series in one day. Some people would say that that was a waste of time, but, not for me, today. The main character has cancer and she first turns radically self-indulgent, then she backs her way into love. Into slowing down her life. Into seeing her husband, her son, her neighbor, her brother. Her life.

I think that's way it needs to be with me. I need remind myself to see. Maybe it's slowing down. Maybe it's focusing on one small patch of my life. Maybe it's not permitting the blur.

I suspect that I am in the process of backing my way into love, too. Not like Cathy, with stage four cancer, but by just being the age I am, closer to the terminal end. It would be easy for me to lash myself for all of the time I wasted, all of the years I clumped it into one blob of gray, but all I can do is realize that I am here. On this night.

I wandered into a coffee shop to write a letter to friend, and there was a bluegrass group called "Porch" playing. The lead singer, here in Cleveland, had a star Nashville voice. Amazing. Near the end of the show, the lead guitarist's niece got up to sing a Gillian Welch song, Miss Ohio. She's sung in LA at the Whiskey-a-go-go. I really do not know how to adequately tell you of my marvel. At the music, at the ring of family supporting the group, at this young woman's voice. Her uncle's harmony. The bottleneck blues. I was smiling at the woman, and the women watching the woman, and, even this capacity to feel part of a family -- if only for a moment -- that I will never know.

I just wandered into it. This moment. Just as I wandered into that installation last week. I don't exactly what it all means, but I know it is something. Something I'm going to straighten it out sometime. For now, I just must give thanks. For that square of sky. The quilt of gray. The tv show. My inclination to get out of the house into the world that holds the sky. It all brought me here. Sitting. Looking. Seeing. Hearing a stunning song in a small beautiful box of time.