This is a public post from the Dispatches franchise. To read the last of its kind, click here.
6/28/21: The path
I’ve been running the same 1.58-mile loop in the mornings for the past few weeks. Today, I went out at 6:15 a.m. to beat the forthcoming heat. It was the right idea — when I got to the path, there was a breeze in the air.
I am not actually sure if I felt the breeze, or if it was the choppy water around which the loop is designed that caught my attention. I was becoming used to observing the giant pond so still; the juxtaposition of my body bouncing up and down on the gravel, traveling east to west then east again while my eyes tried to focus on the water — a flat, ice-like surface for the ducks floating by.
The ducks float together
They find each other by the edges of the pond, bordering the running trail where some greenery and moss brush up against the concrete walls. Then they start to float inwards where they meet other ducks, flapping over from elsewhere edges. I have started to take note of where they meet to idle. It’s almost directly under the rising sunlight, which in the early morning hours hits the center of the pond.
Lately, I’ve been imagining that they have constructed a sort of sand bar right there. It is their own version of a public square at which they gather to discuss the latest from the outer edges. “How’s it over there, on the West Side this morning?” “Just fine, but the pond level’s a bit low and my feathers are getting the brunt of it.”
Must be nice
The basic wonder of observing nature, so overwhelming that sometimes it can take you out of yourself completely, is often interrupted on the path. Usually, it’s by a thought that bottlenecks — it just won’t pass through — or another runner who pit pats right past me, taking with them the intimacy of the fleeting, wondrous solitude.
When it’s a thought, it tends often to be the kind I want to hold on to. I guess that’s why it seems like it’s bottlenecking. I thought, for example, while evaluating the ducks who were convening under the rising sun: How picturesque is this. Then I imagined myself taking a photo. A photo of the ducks in their square. A square shot of the square!
Next, I imagined the caption. The first one, which never would have made it, was “Must be nice.”
At first, it surprised me because it was a different note to hit from the naive and quite romantic bewilderment that punctuated the previous state of observing. This one was a bit more self-deprecating, or maybe it’s cynical. Apologetic? Disappointed? Fueled no doubt by my own desire to be perceived as…
Do you find that there are specific ways you want to be perceived?
How different are these desired perceptions from how you perceive yourself? What motivates them — is it a fracture of insecurity in your own monologue or a gentler ambition towards greater integrity? When you have come to embody the traits, do you still wish to be perceived those ways, or is it enough for you to know how you are?
I wonder how often I do this -- think in captions, I mean. If it’s more often than I’m aware of (I think it is), does that mean there’s a veil of cynicism-for-the-sake-of-the-output that cloaks how I think? Do I become more cynical, more self-deprecating, apologetic, disappointed, etc, because I am thinking in captions? Is dispelling the possibility of such behavior as simple as acknowledging that it might be here at all?
Would be nice. Might be true. Because now that I’ve taken the simple thought this far, it seems what I meant by the caption, really, is that ducks have the better idea, that is must be nice to have the better idea.
We’re all here to convene at the square. To at the most basic level, connect — talk tides and depth and feathers and all. Yet often we stay at the outeredges, staring at the concrete walls that separate us from the elevated loop. That keep us close to purported safety. We practice our climb and fantasize about this theoretical life outside of the pond. But the thing of it is, the life of a duck — it happens in the pond.
Temporary tattoos
After the run, I go to a coffee shop that is right across the street from the park. I order a latte with oat milk if I am not thirsty, just want the caffeine, but if I am parched, I make it iced with room for “shit loads” of oat milk. I say this every time I place the order — “room for shit loads of oat milk, please” — and the barista indulges me with his generosity of spirit, a half-hearted giggle, every single time.
Today I noticed that he wears two silver rings on his right hand: one is on his middle finger and the other’s on his thumb. The thumb ring conceals part of a tattoo that travels up his wrist and covers most of his arm. I haven’t thought to ask him what the tattoo represents but I do wonder what he was thinking when he got it. Whether it’s tethered to some great life achievement or upset or if he was trying to figure out some way he’d been misunderstood, or actually, finally, understood, and if this marked some milestone he wanted to etch into the fabric of his life’s progression. If none of this is true, what kind of stillness, string of innocuous actions, portended its presence on arm?
What are any of us thinking when we make a decision to color the surface of our exterior?
Getting dressed is like a temporary tattoo and in my life, it’s an important one.
I have come up against that last fact in many different ways. First, by trying to prove with every morsel of strength that’s in me that style is more than “just fashion,” as if the assertion needs to be made as a sort of defensive disclaimer — it doesn’t.
Then by deliberating on how to prove this, bending myself into uncomfortable shapes that get stiffer the longer I stay.
At one point, I even attempted to reject it (fashion, style) altogether but the fact endures still that when I wake up and I go to my closet and I put on the clothes that are in there, I am making a crucial choice. The first one of the day on what I will say for and about myself.
It’s the first echo of my voice, the first chance to employ any agency. A nonverbal expression that impacts how I feel and then how I think and then further how I’ll engage.
But I take it all off at the end of the day because it’s temporary, not like a real tattoo — permanent skin ink, courageously reflecting the furrows of a life that is rich in progress.
The post office
I stopped home after my coffee this morning to use the bathroom and collect a bag of clothing that I had to ship out from the post office. I have been spending lots of time at the post office lately, shipping garments I’ve auctioned off for charity. Winners of the garments drop in as if the last bits of coffee in a percolator, so often I’ll wait for the coffee to accumulate, the number of shipments to rise — no less than 3, no more than 5 — and then take the clothes to deploy.
Harsh yellow light flickers over head and the white noise from the fans that stand at either side of the post office are loud enough to make you go crazy or, depending on where you are that day, they’re quiet enough to make you go sane.
There is always a line at the post office. And today it was really hot, so there were three fans instead of the usual two. On average, it takes 35 minutes to get to the front of the line but I had to wait twice — I’d mispelled an address in Spain and had to re-box completely.
It was no fun. It never is but to be honest, I’ve enjoyed going to the post office.
I always expect that someone will act out — yell at the guy in front of him or one of the people behind the plastic screen that separates employees, enduring the flickering light and white noise all day, from the patrons, who I always think, just want to move on with their days.
But actually, the last time I was there, a gentleman at the front of the line let a family of four, not yet in line, handle their dealings before him. No one else in the line objected, or grunted, or made some other passive aggressive stink. We all just kept idling.
I expect the employees will be fundamentally uninterested in making it any easier to get a box shipped or stamps purchased. But it never happens this way either. They’re patient as hell, in fact. I imagine they have to explain, over and over again, how it works to seal a box, or fill out a customs form. I wonder how many addresses they input in a day. How many stickers they pull off the folds of envelopes and press down to ensure the contents are safe. How many receipts do they rip out of their printers? I think about what they get on their lunch breaks, whether they keep their name tags pinned in, or pull them off when they step out. Do they breathe in the still air deeply or rush back in pursuit of AC?
Today, I referred to the woman who helped me by her name when I was thanking her for the service. She looked back at me, smiled and told me to have a good day. I promised I would and wished her the same. It was among the most genuine exchanges I had today.
Sometimes, I find, it’s the unfulfilled expectations that actually fill me up.
On the path this morning,
I saw these gorgeous wild purple flowers growing to the right of the loop. I have spent so much time staring into the pond, thinking about the ducks that I almost forgot there’s a city to the right. I don’t know why this provoked a thought that sped up my run as if I was trying to chase it -- the thought -- to get to a pen and paper so I could catch it and seal it within the pages, but it did, and I did.
