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As he raised the silhouette shade over the door from the kitchen onto the back porch, he fantasized – he hoped – that some birds were watching, waiting until he brought out their treats. He hoped they now noticed the shade being raised and were beginning to announce the event. Goines imagined them tweeting, “He’s coming, he’s coming!” Did each species have its own sentinel?
And apparently some birds had been waiting and watching, for within a minute of his acting, a bird was nestled on the side of the thistle tube, and a few goldfinches and other birds were fluttering around the sunflower hearts. Even species with no sentinel of their own could notice the activity and join in.
Goines returned to washing the breakfast things that didn’t go into the dishwasher. That morning new sounds rang from the metal and glass and ceramic objects, for he was wearing the two rings he had retrieved from the credit-union lockbox the day before.
He reminded himself that he now had to take extra care, especially with the delicate French press coffee carafe, which had replaced the one he smashed into smithereens a few months ago.
He wondered why he had stopped wearing the rings.... How many years ago had it been?
He had probably stopped wearing them because of the swelling of his arthritic joints. It was true that when he had put on the wedding band and the college class ring in the storage vault, he had had to slip them onto his pinkies. But later, at home, with a bit of lubricant, he had managed to get them onto his ring fingers. He didn’t want to go through that every time he washed the dishes.
The clanging was actually nice. It was like bells ringing....
Goines imagined the wedding ring was singing out pride for its 55 years, the Goineses’ two grown-up children. He imagined the class ring was proud of being from an Ivy League college.
But hadn’t someone else done those things – gone to college, gotten married, fathered children – a younger Goines who no longer existed?
Goines understood so little of life’s riddles, of being’s mysteries. Like the birds, he caught what signs he could and took from them what meanings seemed sufficient for the present moment, and then waited for the following day’s repeats, to live them again, and live them innumerable times more, more or less in the same way.
He made a mental note to consult Nietzsche..…
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If I hadn't already identified with Goins I sure do now. Our birds definitely await my ministrations every morning. Seems like the blue jays are the most active; the second I step out on the back porch they start a distinctive call. WHEE-oo! WHEE-oo! Then the house sparrows and doves. But it us Goin's internal dialogue, how, like me, he seems to have turned from the constant need for something new to taking pleasure and comfort in the mundane and everyday, that speaks to me the most.
ReplyDeleteWhat speaks to you the most is noted! I wonder, though, whether your “taking pleasure and comfort” is, like Goines’, admixed with a tinge of sadness at the underlying absurdity of “the mundane and everyday”? And whether you – again, like Goines – suspect that there is no solution to those riddles of life, those mysteries of being, that whatever meanings you ascribe to your experience are but transient shadows?
DeleteOh yes sir, a sense of loss, that one is no longer so driven, but that in itself is a comfort in a way. They say God wastes all that energy on the young, but the truth is, if we still had it we'd kill ourselves! But sir, I truly believe mundane and everyday are badly under-rated. Perhaps just a sense of being where one should be in life, in our age, doing our best and no longer perhaps so eager for that latest thrill. I am a bit of an Epicurean of experience; like Henry David I do not wish to come to die only to find I have not lived. Suck the very marrow from life, and if your teeth go bad gum it, by God!
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