“I was obsessing all morning in preparation for the arrival of the house appraisal professional. He or she would put a value on my house, all within 15 minutes of their entry into it. Wow, i thought. And so, I had much to do, looking down every blind corner of every forgotten window sill, and cob webbed radiator. I cursed the few mice my old cats refused to eat. I found things no good person should have to exhume from behind a hand-curated children’s book collection. Then, at the appointed hour, or fifteen minutes prior to, I fled in my car with nowhere to go. That kind of trek usually begins at the post office, then to the side road next to the library where the internet is free and fast, and I can sit comfortably in my car with the heater on, until finally shoving off with a bump, cresting the eroded ridges of a parking slot off the north common. Now, with cowgirl boots on, I would meet what was to come. Why not go for the tried and true, winding deftly past the fancily painted Victory garage onto old Bobbin Shop road, in search of back road news including pending real estate transactions? Life happens while you’re making other plans. I’ve lived enough to know that I’m not the only one whose life is in total upheaval. I watch all the “For Sale” signs going up, & with a faint disquiet notice farm houses being “retrofitted” where old timers likely just died or were sent away to homes. It’s not pretty. But it is how it goes. I will go myself one day, despite having once been all the rage and a leading light amongst the up and coming. Rising out of the valley on squirrelly mud after this morning’s heavy downpour, I can see the light is going to change. It is going to change all over, in stark stripes and bold assertions, hitting on unremarkable birch groves and dumpy out buildings, making them writhe with otherworldliness. Does it mean we are all basically alien? Because offered a certain slant of autumn solar power & pungency, the world is transformed. One moment giving the hope that we might know nothing about our reality & be, therefore, happily surprised, the next moment striking fear into us, with the threat that our routines and sense of normalcy can & will change irrevocably at any moment. I drove with purpose to an obscure turn that I thought my own special secret, only to find a dull, generic car turning after me, following me into a landscape where I’d meant to disappear. I thought about pulling over, so that my sight seeing could resume unencumbered by traffic, then instead opted to reduce my route to one of negligible interest. Funny how ... how others perceive us, can make us give up on our dreams & enthusiasm. Luckily, in my case, not for long. I eventually had to pull off and run from the car with my camera. It was all happening so fast. I forgot my hat, then it was so windy in the field, I couldn’t not have a hat and ran back for it, to see the other car idly passing mine half pulled into a ditch. They didn’t care about me. Nobody much does care about you. And if they hate you, they don’t know why. Most would rather love, yet don’t get the go ahead. In the end, it was a race against time for what was left for those still paying attention, until all the light was gone.”
