morethanenoughtruth

Of course it was my fault.  These things are always my fault.  In my universe, if I love something it dies.  Dick Hellman was a most ardent fan, especially when I wrote of things that might raise eyebrows.  He actually liked them.  His favorite was Massage, a piece that recounted a top to toe titillation that somehow led to a rip-roaring release of absolutely everything.  I managed to tell the tale with honesty, yet hold on to a degree of decorum.  Dick loved it and made a point of telling me so.  He liked my stories about inventions created in service to military aero-space, engaging his own memory of personal engineering triumphs.  We shared a similar work history.  He, ever the gentleman, hesitated to veer into what might be viewed as braggadocio but, spurred by the group’s acceptance of my own chest-beating, felt inspired to write some of his own at-a-boys.  It was good to be one of the guys along with the likes of Dick Hellman, but now he’s dead. 

I just this month wrote an exposé concerning our string-theory strung-together universes postulating that we humans each create our own.  Mine is the one wherein my one-of-a-kind only daughter is terminated by a vehicle—and now there’s Dick getting harvested by a car that seemed not to give a damn.  Jesus famously said, “The kingdom of heaven is within you.”  It follows as the night the day: “So is the kingdom of hell.” 

My fateful day in 1963 Pennsboro, West Virginia, April eleventh to be precise, was the first lovely day of spring following yet another ravaging winter of frozen.  Everybody was outside enjoying that first morning when even sweaters could be tossed aside.  Not I however.  I had to write.  Completing my baccalaureate at a local teachers college, I had to finish a term paper or bust.  I was up and down, first writing, then up patrolling the windows to check on the kids.  Dale was trustworthy, and Melanie was way too smart to get into trouble.  Of that I was sure.  All would be well.  When a motorcycle broke down and pulled off the road at the far end of our property, the kids came and asked permission to watch the effort to get it up and running.  I agreed, reaffirming my instruction to stay off the road.  They promised, and I returned to work.  Then…

Dorothy sat at her typewriter fingering the keys, not choosing any to strike.  She looked out the window, past the ancient oak tree and saw an old car coming round the bend, emerging slowly from beyond the fringe of willows where a two-lane bridge spanned the creek.  It was a sedan, faded green, dust from the road etching a soft haze on the window glass.  The old man inside wore thick bottle glasses, a concession no doubt to cataract surgery.  In 1963, intraocular lenses had yet to be invented.  He strained, stretching and squinting, to see over and beyond the steering wheel.  An oncoming car had stopped for a chat with the across-the-street neighbor, pulling over onto the wrong side of the road.  Confused, the driver’s decision wavered as he veered to the right, off the asphalt and onto roadside gravel.  He didn’t see Melanie who had spied a pretty pink stone and decided to harvest it.  Time slowed, then inched forward, like the old car.

Dorothy looked out the window, unseeing.  Instead, she huddled, now only a slash of thought in a crook of the oak tree, where lowermost branch joined trunk.  It was a good place to be, the breeze sorting through new green leaves.  It reminded her of her tree at grandpa’s house, where she could swing higher and higher, flying with the wind right into blue bowl of sky.  Her mind reached for the dense center of grandfather oak.  She whispered, “Tree, I am here.”

“I see you,” breathed the oak tree, rattling his branches.  “I know you and your children.  You love them more than life, but now you aren’t seeing them.  Look!  The car comes closer.  It’s going to impact your little girl.  Don’t be afraid to see what is real.  You think you should stop it from coming, but there is nothing you can do.  Nothing.  Humans are strange and wonderful creatures.  I have always known them since first I split that acorn husk.  They are good, for the most part.  But they don’t know themselves, don’t have the courage to be who they really are.  Maybe it’s because they aren’t firmly planted like me.  See my roots?  You can see how strong they are even before they dig deep—deep into the earth. 

Well now!  Humans have to move about.  With no roots they must have a hard time knowing they belong anywhere at all.  Isn’t that true?”  The old oak sighed, leaves rustling gently.  He sensed the young woman standing by the window, her eyes first wide with terror, then dead with denial.  A firm understanding with the earth was for him a source of substantial pride.  But in some ways he envied the woman her ability to freely walk upon the earth, to move and act and yes—to accomplish.  “No wonder she toils at her pitiful little typing machine.  I wish I could create a poem, or a story.  God knows what a tale I could tell.  I’ve seen so much, felt so much, remembered so much.”  My heart shelters hers, he thought, arching his branches over the spot where her soul huddled, a refugee from terror.  “Dorothy,” he spoke firmly, the north wind gusting through his topmost branches.  It sent chills rippling down his bark, “You know what is happening to Melanie.  You do know.  If you keep that from yourself you will be slashed from top to bottom like a tree split in a lightning strike.”  Dorothy shuddered, her center of knowing dancing a phosphorescent jig on the tree limb.

“I know,” she said and dived off the branch, tumbling over and over, finally steadying into a glide.  She veered to the right, banked a degree to the left, willed herself up and up, just clearing a roof’s ridge, and thudded down onto an eaves-trough.  She clung to the metal edge, reeling from what she had let herself know.  She could see her oak tree, now far across the yard standing quiet and still, and she missed his solid center.  As she visualized the strength of the oak, she became that strength and was thankful.

“If indeed you are strong and brave, and have good eyes, you can see everything from here,” a crisp voice beside her announced.  Startled, she jumped and turned to face the corner-most clapboard shingle that was pointing urgently toward the road where the green sedan approached, crunching roadside gravel.  The shingle gathered up his importance and nodded.  He inspected this fragment of a human, feeling strange to address a consciousness so foreign, albeit just a disarticulated thought.  He brushed the edge of empathy, but skirted it with care.  “She wants to see,” he mused.  “Needs to, if I am correct.  But won’t let herself, if I am equally correct.”  He gazed past the disambiguated thought and watched as the car rolled forward, the bumper nudging the girl’s shoulder, spilling her onto the roadway.  The right front tire caught her shoulder and slowly rolled over her head, crushing her skull like a hairy melon.  “You saw,” he said.

“I saw,” Dorothy gasped, and pitched forward, tumbling from the eave and dropping to the walk below.  The spirit that was her knowing spiraled and coiled tighter, spinning into itself until it was a ball and rolled slowly down the walk, bounce-bounce-bouncing gently down-down-down the steps, out to where the child lay sprawled beside the road.  It nudged a still small hand and stopped.

The road rumbled to the ball, “Why are you here?”  She waited for an answer, and hearing none, stretched herself from east to west, and from west to east, on around the bend and across the bridge.  It felt good to stretch, since it was what she did best, extending in her mighty concrete and asphalt web from sea to shining sea.  The road was a well-grounded entity, more in contact with the earth than even the oak tree with his venerable roots.  The road rolled over the land seemingly forever.  She perceived more than any human could ever hope to see or know.  And she did even more.  She understood.  She knew why that living sphere of anguish hid beneath the child’s pale hand.  In that moment she pitied the woman, still standing by the window, having sent her soul alone to acknowledge what she herself could not.  The road smoothed her mighty lap and accepted the child as she lay ruined, her blood slowly pooling about her head while the siren from the approaching ambulance grew louder and louder.  The road groaned, touching the pain of the woman and of the child, one of body, one of mind.  And in the touching was born an understanding shared by the woman and by the road.  Dorothy turned from the window and walked slowly back to her desk.  She sank to her chair and began—began to type…

Did I see what happened?  I must have, but now fifty-six years later I have absolutely no real memory of it.  Blocked?  I hope so.  I have tried to tell that story, tried to write it down, but have always failed.  I got close with this silly fiction told in the voices of inanimate creatures and objects.  Maybe leaning on Dick’s Hekkmann’s strength I can do better:

Much later in Ritchie County’s main courthouse, Judge Max DeBerry personally             questioned witnesses to the accident.  It was my first time to hear the information:

   Gale Hammond, retired Pennsboro High School Principal explained how he made ice cream
that first day of good weather and wanted to share it with the neighbors.  His expansive nature came through in his testimony: “I made some peach ice cream in my old hand crank mixer with what was left of last year’s canning.  It was super good, and I wanted to share it.  I hailed a couple of ol’ boys headed into town and they crossed over to my side of the road.  We were catching up while they ate, and then everything happened.”

           Judge DeBerry asked, “Did they come into your house?”

           “No, they stayed in their truck and ate while we talked.”

          “Who else shared your ice cream?” the Judge queried.

                       Hammond gulped and cleared his throat.  “A boy whose motorcycle had broken down,     

                       and the Taylor children, Dale and Melanie.  They all came over and had some.”

           “Did the children have permission to cross the road?”

                       “I told them it was alright if they were careful.  Then after they got their ice cream, I made

                        sure they were back on their side safe and sound.”

            “Where was their mother?”

            “In her house.”

            “Did you see the accident?”

           “I saw it all.  When the old man came around the bend he slowed down and looked
           confused.  My buddies were parked on my side but were heading the wrong way to match
           his understanding of things.  The old man pulled off the asphalt onto the Taylor side, to go   
           around the wrong-way truck, and ran over the girl.  It was horrible.  I picked her up and  

           carried her to the Taylor’s front porch.  I called out.  Mrs. Taylor came to the door and

           asked what had happened.  I explained that Melanie was gone.  Mrs. Taylor didn’t seem to

           miss a beat and said that moving her might make it hard to heal her injuries.  She said to
           put her back carefully just like she was, so I wouldn’t get into any trouble.  Worried about
           me, she was.  She went back inside then and closed the door.  She must have called the
           ambulance, ‘cause in just a couple of minutes I heard it while I was watching over the   

           child’s body.”

           The Judge, pale in spite of his long experience with such matters, told Mr. Hammond to      
           provide personal identifying information about the men in the truck to the Clerk of the   
           Court, and to step down for now.

    
           I heard one of my attorneys whisper to the other, “Let’s sue the whole kit and caboodle!” 
           Later I told him to forget that.  I didn’t want to make any money out of what had
           happened.  My daughter was not for sale.  The old man took the accident especially hard
           and swore to never drive again.  That, I agreed, was for the best, but I felt bad for him.  I
           remembered how my grandfather, a retired preacher and Watkins Products salesman felt
           when returning to his Model T after a sales call at a private home.  He drove off, crushing
           one of the children who had crawled under his car to enjoy the shade.  One evening as the
           sun was setting, I gathered my thirteen month old, Lane, snug for the night in his footie
           pajamas, and walked with Dale, my five-year-old, down the road to call on the old man. 
           He cried when he saw us, but I comforted him.  “Don’t worry,” I curved my mouth and

           crinkled, my eyes dry with what felt like a fixed stare.  “See, I have two more babies. 

           We’ll do ok.  I know you didn’t mean to do it.”  I left then before I might intrude into his

           personal grief.

          Judge DeBerry came through for me, granting me custody of the remaining minor   
          children, but in keeping with West Virginia jurisprudence, I had to wait for seven years
          before I might be granted dissolution of matrimony…

All this came boiling to the surface last week with the killing of yet another loved person.  Dick Hellmann liked my writing; I liked his.  That’s what we do at the Monday Morning Writers Group.  He was definitely part of my universe of constructed reality.  Since 2010 when I first joined the group, I have been making a place for myself at the writer’s table.  I come early every week and make sure the furniture is arranged to accommodate the group’s needs.  I like to make sure any extra chairs are rendered inaccessible to those who would camp on our periphery, engage their smart phones, and spoil our time reading and listening and socializing.

It’s been a time for me to try and understand myself, even though I thought it was about getting them to understand me.  They are still wondering what I am about.  There are some things yet to be explained—like why I wouldn’t accept that Melanie couldn’t be fixed and needed to be given a soft berth in the house rather than being carefully fit into some crime scene configuration along the extended berm of Mountain Drive.  Why was I the only one who couldn’t cry?  Why did I run around consoling everybody else when I was surely dying inside?  My thought process doesn’t yet arrange itself around that part of the story, but it will.  If I keep attending MMWG, and singing in the choir at Church of the Redeemer, and showing up for the camaraderie of bible study, and if I keep on writing and writing and writing, maybe I’ll get it figured out.

Nothing just happens.  Is it some kind of cosmic happenstance that caused you and me to be living at this precise time in the construct of universal reality?  How was it that we came to be living beings at this exact juncture of what is?  If we could have chosen the most important century to inhabit, in the most influential political entity on earth, given the most fascinating technological amazements ever to be achieved in the history of history, how could we have chosen better than here and now?

Things keep happening to remind me of this serendipitous truthiness.  Last week my phone went bad like it always does when I venture into West Virginia.  When I returned to Ohio it did its best but couldn’t engage its GPS, so I chose to duck into my son’s house and borrow his WIFI to urge my iPhone back into sentient service.  It worked.  Then I left and stupidly abandoned my purse on his living room couch.  My phone is so much smarter than I.

That senior moment required that I meet Lane and his sweetie the next day and retrieve the purse that contained all my credit cards, cash, and personal ID.  Lane set a time and place to meet: The Starbucks close to Northgate Mall.  When I got close, I asked SIRI to find it for me, but all she would do was search, and search, and search…  The intersection of Colerain and US Route 275 is interesting enough, but how many times can you negotiate it before you begin to feel more than a bit foolish?

Finally I just gave up.  I rolled into an available parking lot and meandered about, turning the steering wheel wherever inspiration dictated.  I kept an eye out for the little green Starbucks Siren, but it was nowhere.  Finally, one set of turns put me into a parking area close to Colerain Avenue.  I hesitated, looked straight ahead, and there at eye level in six foot high green letters was STARBUCKS.  Not only that, but my Highlander was lined up with the premiere parking space right at the front door.  It was empty and beckoning.  “Come hither,” it said.  “Park.”

Was that the serendipity that I love to blather about?  It keeps happening, assuring everything stays on track, toward what I don’t know.  But I’m glad it does.  Like deja vu, whenever it happens I assume I must be on my right path.  I pulled in to the space, locked the car, entered the coffee store, and ordered a decaf tall cappuccino.  No sooner had I sat down to wait than a dearly familiar male voice behind me said, “Mom?”

What I’m daring to suggest is that we, all of us, create our own realities out of where we find ourselves as physical manifestations.  There is considerable physics to support this wild possibility.  String theory talks about multiple universes that overlay and interlace each other.  Maybe they are created by you and me as we swim in special realities, yours and mine and ours.

I continue to marvel at the somewhat agreed-upon stories shared among family members.  Everyone, it seems, has a slightly different remembrance of things past.  Trial lawyers and accident investigators speak of how differently various witnesses attest to what happened.  According to them, that is just an aspect of human nature.  What if it isn’t just faulty memory, but different lived experience?  What if in my universe things play out just a wee bit differently from what they do in yours?

Last year our Thanksgiving gathering met for gustatory celebration in Richmond with Kurt and Company.  This year it was in West By-God Virginia at Dales five bedroom log cabin in the back of beyond.  Last year was when I finally got the courage to read one of my writings to the gathered assemblage.  They liked ‘Aunt Margaret’ well enough that I was enticed into thinking they might like to try again.  So this year when I crept down the stairs on the big day and found only Dale at the long table swilling coffee, I clutched my folder of reading possibilities even more hopefully. 

Last year Dale wasn’t present for the first ever meeting of the Martin-Taylor Literary Society.  He had to deliver mail to Ritchie County, something to do with ‘sleet, snow, and gloom of night,’  This year I had them all three under one roof, and the house was yet asleep.  The screeching, shrieking, and yowling of as yet uncivilized genetic arrangements had yet to commence.  Peace reigned.

I poured my once-a-year cup of real coffee, mellowed it with authentic Half & Half, and settled down to make the most of it.  Soon Lane slid into the big kitchen/dining area and followed my lead, determined to coffee-up and socialize.  Dale, with his Grizzly Adams physiognomy, owned his end of the great table that had benefited from its inserted leaves.  Lane sought balance claiming his end from where he and Dale could exchange meaningful glances and reminisce about but not reenact childhood altercations.  When Kurt followed suit I knew the gods were smiling.  Kurt, ever sensitive to artistic balance, helped Lane hold down his end of the table.

I had claimed the middle ground, where I could enjoy the progenitous surround to best advantage, and try to mediate sibling ribaldry, as well as rivalry.  Having serendipitously assembled my entire first generation of living children, I was on a roll.  There was only one piece that was sure to please this particular group—’Isetta.’  I pulled it out and announced, “I’m going to read a story about your dad and me that happened back in the day right here in Ritchie County.  Listen up!”

The bright blue picture on the first page grabbed their attention and we were off!  Lane’s and Kurt’s ears were pricked, remembering last year’s ‘Aunt Margaret’ and laughing ‘til they cried, but Dale had already met this tale since he has the morethanenoughtruth.com app on his desktop.  His face said, ‘Been there; done that.’  He picked up a pen and addressed his crossword puzzle.  I stopped mid-sentence and slid ‘Isetta’ back into its glassine folder.  “Wha….?”  They bawled in unison.

“I’m not going to compete with the New York Times,” I growled.  “I read; you listen.”

Dale, in a rare moment of acquiescence, agreed to set aside his puzzle and bend an ear.  I retrieved ‘Isetta’ and proceeded from literary interruptus.  It held their rapt attention all the way from driving the spunky little vehicle through town without benefit of headlights, to nearly  dispatching the town drunk along the byway.  Even the liquored-up words of Obadiah Johnson came to life as never before, to the hoots and merriment of Dale, Lane, and Kurt.  Never have the words tripped so satisfyingly from my tongue as on that Thanksgiving morning, lubricated by the emolument of genuine Half & Half in my coffee, and falling on the fairly negotiated attending ears of my three sons.  By the time the following generations descended and began to incite the standard day-long riot, the second annual meeting of the Martin-Taylor Literary Society was a fait accompli.  It was good.  It was very, very good.

It had been a long and lovely summer, living at the widow Shaw’s home down the hall from Daddy and taking voice lessons from Madge Weeks.  She drove every week from her home in Darien all the way to Westport just to help me improve my vocal performance.  Life was good.

Juliette Shaw had two daughters, Carolyn who was my age, and Sharon a couple of years older.  Sharon of course got a room of her own, and I split a bunk bed with Carolyn.  The three of us didn’t get to be anywhere near close because I was always studying or practicing, while the Shaw girls were off socializing with friends.  All this was possible because of Daddy’s ability to project a need to be rescued by wealthy women.  Yes, it was complicated.

Then my idyll suddenly took a turn.  One day as I was vocalizing arpeggios for Mrs. Weeks, Daddy stuck his head in the door to the music hall.  He was just passing through on his way to work.

“Got a minute?” Mrs. Weeks asked.  “Want to hear how well your daughter is doing?”

He hadn’t thought to be caught up in such a time devastating complexity, but agreed to listen.

Mrs. Weeks began her accompaniment to Gounod’s Ave Maria, and taking a shallow panicky breath, I began to sing.  How well did I render the piece?  I don’t really know.  I got through it without stopping or running from the room in terror.  When the last lovely piano note hung as an echo in the room, we looked around to see what Daddy thought.  He was gone.

Madge Weeks set her jaw and slid off the piano bench.  She marched across the room into the hallway and located my Dad.  He was scrutinizing the paintings that graced the Widow Shaw’s entryway, and seemed mildly startled to see my teacher.

“Did you hear Dorothy sing?” she asked—a fair question.

“Yes,” he assured her, clearing his throat.  “Er—I was just admiring Juliette’s new acquisitions.  The Gounod sounded fine.”  More throat clearing.  “But now I’ve got to get on the road.”

I was privy to that exchange because Mrs. Weeks came back to the piano and shared her parent/teacher frustration with me.  According to her, it was common for parents to behave that way.  “Don’t feel bad,” she commiserated, “He’s got a lot on his mind.”

My Dad and I spent a lifetime making excuses for each other.  We did a spectacular job of reciprocal disappointment.

Lord, you have touched me,                  
And you have known me.
You are there when I sleep,
Still there as I rise.
You understand my thoughts.
You light the turnings of my path
And speak meaning to my days.

No word slips from my tongue
That you first have not heard.
You challenge me on every side.
Your hand is laid upon me.
Such intimacy confounds.
It is more than I can bear.

Where can I hide from your spirit?
Where can I flee from your being?
If I scale the vault of Heaven,
You are waiting for me there.
If I turn spitted over coals in Sheol,
Your blessing cools
And soothes my brow.

If I soar pink and purple
On gilded wings of dawn
Or sink with groans and bubbles
To the ink black
Bosom of the sea,
Even there your hand reaches for me
And draws me to your way.

If I drown in darkness,
You fill me with the light
That darkness cannot hide.
Night shines as though it were day.
Your darkness and your light
Are both the yin and the yang
Of my soul’s complex desire.

You called my soul to life
As I floated in the womb.
Thank you for this my form,
So exquisitely wrought.
My bones and my flesh,
My blood, all are yours,
Though made in mystery
And knit in pulse and blood.

You trace my geometry of form,
The secret alchemy it hides.
My formulae were writ upon your mind,
Encoded there before I ever was.
It was your dream that made me, God.
Can I be aught but good?

You who dare to ply such skill
To make this miracle of me,
Can you not arrest the grip of rage?
Silence voices taut with pain?
Heal the leper, lame and blind?
Guide the crazed back to sane mind?
Declare the Brotherhood of Man?

But must you do it all?
You’ve done your part.
The rest is up to human kind.
What shall we say to those
Who offer up your name in praise
But wander from your way,
Who chant your song from choir stall
But chase the beggar from the gate?

Look deep into my heart, O God.
Is selfishness my game,
Or is my promise really yours?
These hands you made for me,
This mind that toys with rhyme,
Can they ever learn to do your work,
Or are they only meant for mine?

It was your dream that made me, God.
You called my soul to life
as I swam,
fluttering gills and twitching tail,
recapitulating the phylogeny
of the ancients, wet and
naked in my mother’s womb. 
My DNA spirals in your thought,
a twining universe of suns.
When I sleep I dream of you,
grasping tangles of raw force
that throb and pulse,
energy that summons thunder
to the palms of your hands
and sends it cavorting
out across the darkling plain.
I hear you toast, “To Life!”
as your face incandesces
the radiance of a million suns,
and you hurl nascent galaxies
out beyond the swirls of yearning
that grip the Milky Way. 

Then the darkness of the cave
replies, “To Death!” a blessing on
the gentle peace to come.
But that’s another day.

This day I live!  I breathe!  I recall
with thanks my Cambrian ancestor
exploring an ancient shore, its gills
reaching for air as it rides the tide up
a sandy beachhead.
Curious, it persists
and evolves at last
a better tool for tasting air,
pure free-wafting air,
not captive to watery depths,
but gasping to be freed
from its primal watery grave.

Eons skate the aching curve of time,
and gills become alveoli. 
Lungs are born to capture air.
My ancient uncles breathe,
and now do I.
Breathe deeply upright hairy biped
I have become.
Breathe and cry and shout!
Give voice to Bach, Mozart, and Beatles.
Oh Fortuna!  Carmina Burana
shouts of brave fortune
that gave us tools to sing with angels
and join the rowdy music of the spheres.

Daedalus tried to fly on air and fell,
but other winged phyla soared.
Air offers a multiplicity of uses.
Birds can sing and fly. 
That’s hardly fair.
When I return to spirit,
I will fly—and sing.

For now I sleep and dream and hope.
When morning comes
and dream gives way
to thought, wrought solid,
but leaving in its granite wake,
a cheerful crack of whimsy. 
From such splits in ancient truth,
spring-fed streams of fancy
feed the flow of thought at play,
a Holy Spirit prattling
even to the dreams of day.

See now, as morning dawns,
and shadows flee, I am newly thankful
for all God has created
and declared it “Good.”
His living eyes tear up with love
for all I am and ever hope to be.

Come spirit God,
inventor of all burbling blood,
and stalwart bone.
Join me in my paean to ecstasy. 
Sing with me in heavenly harmony,
as worlds implode
and galaxies are born
to spiral, gasp and die.
We scintillate in laughing arcs
of love and light and joy,
while time implodes,
and all that was and is
and may ever yet become
thread the needle eye of Now.

Sitting at my friendly computer desk last night in my cozy flannel PJ’s, lining up lovely words into erudite phrases, I was lulled into a relaxed state of wellbeing.  Then something wiggled inside my right pajama leg.  I was up in half a flash.  It’s good the blinds were closed as I shrieked and tore off the entire bottom half of my sleepers.  I only stopped my frenzied jig when I spied the instigator of my terror, a big black cricket, creeping away to hide hopefully behind a white wicker wastebasket.

Why was I so afraid?

First: Things that wiggle don’t belong inside my pajamas.

Second: Things with exoskeletons are unnatural and meant to be observed from afar.

Third:  Things without any skeletons at all are weird and inspire a natural revulsion.

By deduction:  The more different a thing is from me, the more I am repelled by it.

It just may be the case that we are hard wired to fear the other.  Xenophobia is a feature of not just being human, but of being a sentient life form.  No wonder we assume racial differences to be perceptive demarcations.  But just because the big X is a natural feature of being a living creature, that doesn’t mean we should accept it as a fixed and irrevocable cognitive error.  We are intelligent.  We can undertake a fine tuning of our perceptions to make them more accurate and more loving.  We must try.

I can begin by acknowledging that it was actually a tiny black cricket—not a big one.  Why is it so easy to jump to the conclusion that scary black things are big?  Our subconscious always so readily connects for alliterative possibility, big black bugaboos vis-à-vis white wicker wastebaskets, easy to hide behind and restore hope, given their whiteness and their dainty thoughtful interlocked pattern of construct.  In my confrontation it was the cricket who demonstrated the enlightened intellect.  Bless him!  No doubt his perception of me was big, pink, and butt-ugly.

In retrospect, having calmed myself, I remember that this particular arthropod, so typically given to singing with gusto, was undertaking a studied silence while scaling the inner mystery of my pajama leg.  Perhaps it was because his music isn’t actually song.  It is more accurately an exuberant scritch-scritching between hinged parts of his scary exoskeleton.  Those induced vibrations author the happy reverberation we enjoy as cricket song.  Soft cotton flannel no doubt had a damping effect on the acoustics of his music.  Empathy is always a good approach to rivalry, whether inter- or intra-species.  How frustrating it must have been for his urge to expression to be muffled by my fusty old flannel.  When you gotta scratch you gotta scratch. When you gotta’ sing, you gotta’ sing.

Finally, I need to make the acquaintance of the individual cricket before making unwarranted conclusions about his character, motives, and personal integrity.  He might have actually been Jiminy Cricket, of Disney fame, personifying high conscience in the physiognomy of a bug.