Waves

Things happen in lots, similar to the way traffic jams work.  Anyone ever stuck in a traffic jam can attest to the sporadic movement one makes in progressing to one’s destination.  It is the symptom of an over crowded city with run-down roads filled with potholes and debris like old mattresses and tire remains littering the road.

I recall living in Houston, teaching and residing on the east side, trying to get to central Houston to attend law school, and traveling to the west side to do any real shopping and to visit family and friends.  Rush hour traffic was a nightmare, where in, it was about whether you were going to find yourself stuck between rusted beat-up brown pick-up truck hauling a bunch of gardening equipment loosely thrown in the bed or construction tools or scrap material removed from a job and a long Oldsmobile, a tanker of a car which creak and moaned as it shifted across the pavement.

It was a nerve wracking experience in which you learned to have patience, to plan an attach to switch lanes, and to assess your opportunities and honing your timing.  Despite the fact that Houston had multiple lane highways which circled it in layers, a lot like a target and which cut across the target like a giant x, the roads were always solidly packed.

There were several times when I sat in the middle of a ten lane highway, a set of walls rising up on either side of me and the other cars sandwiched in together.  I learned to make mix cd’s back then, music that would take my mind off of the frustration of not being where I needed to be and not making any motion to get there.

I woke up this morning determined to take on the day, actually woke up in time to do some running, skimmed through to 10,000 steps I wanted to hit before I stepped out of my vehicle to take my walk to work.  But then, I arrived at work, felt assaulted by the boss, who then told me she wanted me to go to Houston the week before I had a trial set.  I took it in stride, told her I would try to make arrangements with Valerie to go.  I called Valerie and found out that her brother wanted her to come to Dallas because her parents were not doing so well.

Last week, things had been at a set still, no movement, just me in my car, waiting for the car in front of me to move forward, not knowing when it would happen, only that it would happen eventually, and that I would need to make a move at that time.  The car moved this morning breaking the log jam of traffic and everything come pouring forth.

I find these moments very frustrating.  No, I think a better word for it would be stressful, a kind of pressure which bears down on me.  I place extreme importance on these events, a kind of superstition I have about them, whereby some cosmic entity, the personification of some abstract, universal concept waving its hand about and meddling in my affairs, taking all control from me, leaving me stranded in my car.

In the late eighties and early nineties, I collected albeit for a brief time comic books.  One of my favorites was Quasar published by Marvel.  Sitting here now, I cannot recall who wrote Quasar or who drew it.  It interested me because it was about a normal human being who was gifted a set of Quantum bands, bracers he wore on his wrists, which empowered the hero with cosmic powers.  The interesting thing about the series was that unlike some of the other comics I collected, Quasar was dealing with universal figures. 

One of them was the Universe itself a entity shaped like a tall human man but filled with space and stars who talked in riddles but with such urgency.  Quasar always had to separate himself from the Universe to talk with him, stepped out into a white space and was dwarfed by the immensity of the Universe.  There were other universal characters as well, Chaos whose face reminded one of the emotionally charged but frozen Greek theatre masks and Order whose face was less contorted. 

There was Eon the living planet, a grotesque looking stone face, with bits of greenery.  There was something fatherly in the manner he would talk to our hero and then at the same time, very ominous as if he had schemes of his own which threatened mankind and its place in the universe.

I think I enjoyed these comics so much because they really told the story of mankind, or my own story, the idea that outside of myself there was this large thing called the universe moving on its accord, setting into motion events, which like waves, pushed and pulled me back forth.  I had little say about how I got bobbed about on that ocean of time, only that I will not be able to sit still for very long before a current which hadn’t existed before would pull me in a direction.

Sometimes, when in the ocean, you can anticipate the waves coming at you, can see them from some distance away, slowly or quickly gaining mass, rushing more and more ahead of itself so that by the time it reaches you, it might swallow you whole.  And in anticipating the large waves coming, you can position your body, turning it to the side or all the way around so that the wave is lapping at your back side.  And you can jump vertically so that the wave only hits the lower part of your body, and then rolls away to the shore.

But there are sometimes when the waves appear from nowhere and gather a strength from another world, because its power could not have been drawn from the ocean in which you are wading.  And when these waves come you do not have time to turn to the side or turn around, although you try, and you don’t have time, to push yourself off of the ocean floor, into the air so that the wave only hits the lower part of your body.  No, instead, you fall directly into the maw of the wave, and it pulls you in with its tongue and sucks you under water.  And when you come out the other end, you are completely wet, salt water having invaded your nostrils and having seeped into your mouth.

Life is like that, waves of events pushing and pulling at you, coming at you unexpectedly, and pulling you under, making you wet, invading your openings and leaving a salty taste in your mouth.  And really, you have two choices.  You can go back to the shore and sit in your beach chair under your umbrella and watch al the other beach goers splashing in the water, or you can spit the water from your mouth, blow the salt brine from your nose, run your hand over your hair so that the water drips down the back of your head, and wait for the next wave to come.