birth signs of a new world

Today I jogged outside for the first time in ten years or more. Although the goal I set was modest I didn’t make it. Early on I thought I was going to have a heart attack. You know when you're driving in your car and you see somebody trying to convince themselves they're running but really they're walking in a stupid way. Today that was me. For about an hour after I kept thinking I was going to pass out. All day since I've felt more grounded than I have in 5 months.

This afternoon N. and I went grocery shopping together. We just needed parsley, strawberries, and milk. You know when you're shopping and some idiot keeps getting in your way trying to have fun with his kid? Today that was me.

Right around mall closing time I went to get my hair cut. The woman who cut my hair had a lot on her mind. She said Jesus conquered death and defeated Satan and no other God had done that. She said his name was on every tongue. She said recent events told her that the end times were close. She said earthquakes and storms and even the President in power now read like signs and wonders straight from Revelations. She got in my face and peered into my eyes to see whether I saw her point. She said these were signs but more were yet to come, that they were birth signs of a new world.

You know sometimes it does feel like the end of the world and you could almost agree with a person who spoke to you in such a manner? Today that person wasn't me. This world doesn't get to end on my kid. I gently made my case against her vision and we left it as friends who disagreed but in respect. The haircut's pretty good.

bookmark

One curiosity of having the little one on hand is that I newly feel the deep swells of emotion with regularity. I'm not the sort who's used it. More the type who identifies with over-linear Dickens villainry and keeps a lawyer on retainer to vet his admissions of love.

E.g. tonight. With the house asleep, I was considering the half of the Obama address I'd caught, working on some b.s. nonprofit restructure plan and (despite that) letting a sliver of Oboptimism surface in my consciousness.

Then there's a climactic stirring (like a tiny Kool Aid man punching through the fabric of space-time) and through the quiet the kid gives a mighty and woeful cry. I run upstairs, dash through his door and find that he's a full foot from his pacifier.

It's an easy crisis to avert -- pacifier finds kid, dad consoles kid through awkward patting and something akin to the worst massage you ever got in your life. But (without the option to not do this) I imagine him older, feeling at once the totality and please let him do well let him be okay of his emerging personhood.

Only the fact that I'm an emotional Excel spreadsheet keeps me from busting out crying. Instead it's like a bookmark for a cry, a little hiccup.