Sunday, June 13, 2010

the deer and yard

Out in the yard tonight a crew of men worked on the rail lines. I became aware of them when I heard the horns of an approaching train echo up from the flat line of cinder across the asphalt. Men in hard hats, machines, trucks and an idling engine. I was alone in the studio. I was thinking of you, trying to find the words that would speak my heart, make sense of recent events when the disturbance pulled me away. I had spent the day with a friend, with Faf and attempting the nearly impossible divide of feeling the faith and applying it to experience. To win that faith I knew I would have to go even further - that is, to abandon the need for an earthly connection and accept the calling that keeps me absurdly in a state of limbo.
"Could I say something man?" Nowik probed.
"Of course, brother." Though I was scared at the directness of that inquiry.
"You're 36, have no attachments, completed with your schooling. If I were you I'd be long gone by now. I'd purchased a one way ticket to Serbia, find a beauty and start from there."
I sighed. "I know it man." And I did. "What keeps me here is that desire for legitimacy. Or something. Poverty maybe." Though I knew it wasn't any of those things, really. I saw he had experience. I also knew that my fate was different, that I had a real want for love and stability, sanity, sobriety. I knew also that the way faith works is to leave alone and cultivate a strong relationship with the divine. Give up on intellectual salvation, etc. What I desired of guidance would not be provided in a conversation. What I needed to sustain that vision was help and if I asked for it directly I would not find it. I knew this because of experience and endurance. My strength had steadily been returning despite the constant challenge of piecing it (it) together.
"It's the fight man, the struggle, that holds me in place, and also keeps me going, searching."
Nowik dragged on his cigarette and I knew what that meant.
"Could I tell you a story?" I asked.
"Of course."

This is true. About two weeks ago I was working at the Design Center. It was the middle of the day, a warm late spring day. From the window, on a trip from the coffee machine back to my nook in the back of the office I saw a deer wander into the parking lot from what appeared to be Main Street. He was scared, bounding across the asphalt erratically. Clearly lost, clearly afraid. There were others in the office but no one seemed to hear what I was saying or in the regular pattern of the work day just didn't pay it any mind. I told the others but perhaps without authority. Maybe I didn't say it audibly because no body budged. I followed his movements and walked out of the entrance into the shaded north side of the building then watched him cross the lot from behind the morning sun, leap the iron parking rail and trot frightened straight into the east garage of the performance engine shop. At the time, I thought, I was the only one who saw it happen. There were two entrances to that garage and the deer went into the east one. All the men were in the west and since I was there and watched the event I moved into the shade of that entrance and announced what had happened. The conversation went something like this. There's a deer in your garage, I told the first man I saw. What? He replied. I repeated. There's a deer that just ran into your garage, a wild animal. By this time though the three men had seen the disturbance and began approaching the beast which was frightened and wild. It had jumped above an engine block and hooved at the adjacent metal shelving. Tools were scattered, men grew angry and the beast was cut and bleeding. At one point it had run into the furthest back room and began charging at the window, smashing and leaving blood smeared across the plexi. I tried to calm the men. Can I make a suggestion, I said, Can I make a suggestion, I called again from the shaded blacktop. If they noticed me calling out to them they never said a word to indicate it. Then just as quickly the deer ran out of the garage with all the strength and weakness of fear and rage. In a daze it charged past and stumbled headlong into the same iron parking rail and slammed chin first into the concrete, regained composure and trotted off confused past the east edge of the building. Bloodied. Gone. I walked back into work, past the quiet intern, sat, began working and made no attempt to explain what I had just seen.