Quiet

It is the day after Thanksgiving. I click off my television and its interminably and colossally boring broadcasts about something dubbed "Black Friday." Now one may truly be thankful. There are hardly any cars at this moment on the street where I live. I do not hear a sound. This is most unusual and wonderful. Alas! The peace was just shattered by a honking horn. One mustn't talk too loudly about good news. Gremlins will always notice, it seems, and place their greasy fingerprints on your little park bench of tranquility that you lovingly dabbed with a sleepy powder blue shade of forgetfulness and upon which you foolishly placed a "WET PAINT" sign.

Okay, stillness again…. and I won't celebrate or shout about it. Will just enjoy its no doubt, short-lived presence and pretend I'm in Comatose, Oklahoma (pop. 14). Am not a numerologist, but I like that number for some reason. Perhaps my childhood baseball hero, Gil Hodges' uniform's number has something to do with it. Why "The Sooner State?" Maybe it's the imagined tranquility of a quintessentially middle American place where boisterousness and shouting is positive and purposeful like when statehood is achieved, one's Laurie has become one's girl and Judd has gone the way, providentially, of the snake under the Virgin Mary's feet.

The sandman is a pal o' mine but I've given him short shrift in recent months. Soon we'll revive our friendship and a rich dream life will hopefully work its curative magic again to set right the current imbalance between consciousness and oblivion. Stephen Foster's "Beautiful Dreamer" (1864) has always had a special place in my heart, even as a child. Also, Kellette and Kenbrovin's "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" (1918) struck a chord as well with my younger (pre-kindergarten) self. Somehow, I "got" the melancholia and wistfulness of the tune. Peace at a price? As I blew bubbles from a toy bottle of soap with the little plastic wand that enabled my floating creations to dance and wiggle, I became aware that my pleasure had a cost: fragile spheres of playmates that played with me only briefly. I had to breathe life into them, literally and often, to have any more than short-lived company. This endeavor, alone in our family garden at dusk on a summer's day only heightened my precocious meditations:

"Fortune's always hiding,
I've looked everywhere.
I'm forever blowing bubbles,
Pretty bubbles in the air."