Postal Portal

Reading for November 1, 2009

The place: 3659 W Diversey Avenue, Chicago. The date: September 22, 2008

It was sixty-two years ago Sister Felicia had spoken of our earthly presence; sixty-three years had passed since I congratulated myself for having everything figured out. Its been a perilous decline, a lofty ascent, and many a hair-pin turn since then. And, just as I liked only the beginning of our first grade teacher's explanation for existence, I found many false starts in self.

“I stood there, leaning slightly on the mailbox in front of my childhood home. Some things vary, some things don't.

While my body and soul vied for time away from each other, a sleep like haunt hummed of a system gone awry – paradox prevalent ~~ “everything continually changes while it stays the same”. I “looked” at the mailbox, the hulk of metal armored in thick coats of red and blue paint that protected me in “tag” games as a child. In these six decades, nothing about it, the chocolate brown bricks of the apartment building, that wire fence, this wooden porch, or that crossing guard, seeing children safely routed to school, had changed. I was as this portal postal, both object and subject, impartially observing and passionately interacting.

Nothing had changed while everything had. Tides of emotion drowned me in anger from the broken glass, garbage, filth, and neglect that fed person on person violence - violence that occurred often here now - violence that never occurred here during my childhood.

I was 4, 15, 21, and 63 years of age, all at once, in this very same moment now. I was powerful and impotent. I was loving non-judgmentally and hating decisively, I was peacefully accepting “now” and hostilely struggling to right wrongs and make the past the future.

Redemption came by a grace I will probably never understand.

I felt the soft late September air touch my face while the sun's easy warmth grew hot; and, together, these two visitors awakened me. I was, again, in a real moment of ordinary time. Calm followed swiftly, silently.

Consummate peace drew upon my path other travelers. They radiated a consuming vision in which people will hold precious the future – as precious as the parent lovingly held the toddler's small hand - as the two walked now, slowly past me...................past me, and the mailbox.”

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Happy daze,

The Captain