Certain streets are driven hundreds of times, arterial and venous, a system to circulate people in transition. One drives them almost eyes closed, the life on their sides largely unnoticed. The storefronts and gas stations, the bowling alley facades, whatever. It blurs, ongoing, a tangle of traffic signals and directions. 

There is nothing unexpected. If it is explained to  as such, it makes sense, listen: for any given situation, there are infinite (nearly, or maybe there an unbound limits, real analysis, in the heartbreakingly elegant notations of infinitesimal calculus) possibilities. Unbound possibilities. Lots of things can happen, let’s say. In terms of probability then, it is likelier that an unexpected thing will happen than an expected one? Predictive or constrictive outcomes are less likely. But really, the unexpected things shouldn’t be labelled as “unexpected.” Chance is predictive.  Chance is less likely? Or more likely?

Back to streets. So asphalt and rubber do their thing, and the human body moves along, unobservant. Until something different happens, the unexpected (is there such thing?) easier to notice. 

It is impossible to say I expected to be driving, head lost in a million thoughts, swimming in thoughts, and look up and see something that swelled my heart and stole my breath for a second. The disparate rectified, when I looked up, and on the side of the road ahead of me, was the brightly lit window of a music shop I never noticed once the  several hundred times I took this path. Glowing, soft butter yellow walled, with a row of hanging cellos (gripped by their necks, back to front, so only their curving ribs presented ) in such woody warmth I think I gasped. The contrast, the shape, the color, the beauty, the oddity, the overlooked nature of it, the perfection in the moment - revelatory. 

Cellos hanging, their f hole wonders reminiscent of symbol(ism)in infinitesimal calculus, of the unbound. 

Traffic kept moving. I wanted to circle back, but did not. A wall of cellos. 

To glimpse such a beautiful thing, and so briefly, is unexpected. But there is no such thing. So it either did not happen, or it the experience or outcome was exactly right. 

The whole rest of the drive I wondered, what just happened to me? And who knows what I did not see on the side of the road the rest of the way home.

Improvisational strings. Here you go: 

I have a pile of manuscripts on my desk. Years of work, and more still to do.

Aside from the work, there are questions. What does this new life look like? What’s next? How do I make this work? How do I make time and space to write and pay my expenses? Maybe I need a plan. I thought of Knut Hamsun’s Hunger. Writing, frustration, love, cakes, and ships: Dear God, this could end on a boat in Oslo.

I drove to Winter Garden yesterday.

There is no place in Florida that makes me feel like Winter Garden does, the abandoned orange groves and still raw developments rising from nothing, the contrasts inherent in the place. The drive was long, and my mind darted from thought to thought. The sky hinted at rain, a dull white.  It felt like winter. It is winter. At least, an approximation of it.

I like driving and thinking.

Years ago I took a drive, around Valentine’s Day.  Fredericksburg, Virginia on winding farm roads, everything under feathery snow save the cleared black asphalt. White and black, pale afternoon light, chimneys and smoke, paint peeling from clapboard, split rail fences, a horse’s tail flick, glimpse of the moon before twilight. On that drive, I thought I saw a flash of my future.  I so clearly pictured myself in wool, in a drafty farmhouse, looking out over the same kind of snow. I held the picture in my mind. It was weird, because I was only a kid, but it made sense.  I’d live a life of seasons, of soup and sweaters, then spring and summer, writing it all. 

I never lived that life I imagined.

I have lived many lives, discrete chapters, and I suppose they are connected, but they don’t feel it. I would like to imagine myself as Zeus, sending myself out in animal form, accomplishing the task at hand, and folding back the swan or bull. (A sudden blow: the great wings beating still) But maybe I am less Zeus and more cat, and on life six or seven.

This is far from a farmhouse, this sundrenched city life. It is unexpected, but I am grateful. I will walk to the library today. I will watch my feet on the cement and note the incongruities of litter and fallen leaves. The pile of manuscripts waits and I know I will be ready eventually.  I don’t need a plan. When does life work like you think it will?

Suggested Reading:
Hunger by Knut Hamsun
Leda and the Swan by Y.B. Yeats