World Is Crazier and More of It Than We Think

I’m walking in our new neighborhood, early morning before it gets hot. I’m wearing a straw sombrero that was half-price at the local thrift store, and a white-on-white embroidered cotton top that I bought at a bazaar in Istanbul—yes, when I journeyed to Byzantium, which years later feels like a figment of my imagination. Anyway, as I walk I’m listening through an ear bud to the first Harry Potter book, which I started as a way to feel connected to my grandson, but is actually quite enjoyable and very well performed. Now a dog-walker waves and nods, and a gaggle of turkeys crosses my path, promenading in front of me with their plumage fanned out. (I understand that the correct term for a group of turkeys is “rafter” but “gaggle” seems more fitting.)

Everything is absurd and incongruous.

And so, I let myself be glad. Why not? It’s way too easy to go the other way.

Last night some friends had a belated birthday dinner for me. I guess when you turn 75, it’s okay to have a protracted celebration. It’s especially okay when you focus on gratitude and friendship. Also, there was pizza and ice cream.

Birthdays. I remember my birthday fifteen years ago, when I turned 60, which of course I thought was a pretty big deal. Then, as now, a walk was always a good way to commemorate an occasion, and Monte and I went walking. There had been recent rains, and we waded through the creek in tall rubber boots, exploring the water’s new meanderings and pulling out some of the debris from the previous week's storms. It was branches, mostly, and uprooted trees, but also pieces of fence, and wire road support, and a stray yellow rake, and most memorably, a volleyball, upon which was written the words "Life is Good.”

I always wonder about such things. Whose was it? Where did it begin its journey? How did it come to be caught here in the culvert? (It harkens back to one of my favorite fairy tales, The Steadfast Tin Soldier. Remember how a gust of wind -- or was it the mean, scary jack-in-the-box? -- blew the tin soldier out the window and he was picked up by a street urchin who placed him in a newspaper boat and set him sailing in a rushing gutter which swept him along and tumbled him into a deep canal where he was swallowed by a fish, and discovered by the cook who cut the fish open...)

I know. That is a major and irrelevant digression. But the idea of it intrigues me. Whether it's a tin soldier or a volleyball, a piece of beach glass or an Indian pestle, or me in a sombrero sharing the street with turkeys, I like unexpected travel and improbable outcomes.

And that gets me back to where I started, which is that my whole life has been about improbable outcomes, and my course has been determined as much by chance as by choice.

I am thinking too of one of my favorite poems, “Snow” by Louis Macneice. I found it in a book that my favorite (and only) daughter bought and presented to me in a little book shop in England more than a decade ago. And these are the lines I love most:

World is crazier and more of it than we think,

Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion

A tangerine and spit the pips and feel

The drunkenness of things being various.

Maybe just this once I will not obsess about the open wound that is festering on our country and our souls. You know what we’re dealing with, and it keeps getting worse.

But in this time of shared trauma, loss, and disillusionment, I aspire to what Nick Cave expresses here:

Collective grief can bring extraordinary change, a kind of conversion of the spirit, and with it a great opportunity. We can seize this opportunity, or we can squander it and let it pass us by. I hope it is the former. I feel there is a readiness for that, despite what we are led to believe.

Hope and protest and constructive activism acknowledge that our world is worth saving. Let’s stay strong and fight back and never relent, taking necessary time for walks and friends and whatever heals and fortifies.

In the words of the volleyball, “Life is Good.”