{bumper cars}

Swirls.  All at once, we spin.  In & out of motion with our days and with our people.  Like bumper cars,  mad-crazed, we press our pedal of go.  Faster.  Keep up.  In line and of the pack is our only precedence for speed.    We move out of necessity and all too often without caution. For stillness creates havoc.  Damage.  Wreckage.  To be out of commission slows the swirl.

Movement defines us.  It sets our margins.  For error and for status.  It activates our person and initiates our intentions whether well thought or scarcely considered.  There, in the car, you grip the wheel.  Sweaty palmed & suffocated by the collective fumes of go.  Stagnate, the right foot treaded sole mashes harder for hurry and for ahead.

Around the track of cluttered, life happens.  This circuit is our days.  Distance is never really measured and, despite the rush, our speed is never clocked.  We just go.  Bumping & banging into the next.  Wide eyed with a devout drive for destination.  And yet, the circle has no end.  No finish line.  No new hidden curve where the traffic is clear for a straight-a-way hallelujah kind of drag race explosion.

The bondage of the bang-ups burn us.  It belittles our nature for progress.  Trapped in someone else's wreckage, not to mention our own self induced carnage, leaves us in a car ladened with turmoil and anger.  Imperative shouts and groveling gestures get us no where, yet the jerks and the obscenities fly.  It's in this clustered mess we call for fairness and for freedom.  And yet, this anointed stillness settles us to a halt.  Fuming with furrowed brows, we wait.  A claustrophobia sets in.  Fear and fervor intertwine leaving us grabbing at the next car to create a space for motion once again.  To open up room and to relinquish the ugly touch of mistake.  But bitterness and grief, all too often, are our arms.  Pushing only to create a bigger, more massive mess locked in even greater and more complex.

And, there in his grease spotted coveralls, he switches us off.  The powering down in unison is alluring narrowing us to nothing.  Jumbled still, the sounds of the tilt-a-whirl swoosh-lifting and the uncontainable laughter from the merry-go-round's dance become more vivid to our senses.  He takes his time.  With a hat crooked atop his head  much like the jagged state of his fingernails, he hobbles over with a deep history of this crumpled scene. He reaches with slowness and conviction.  The dirt of us evident under his nails.  The work he's put in has forever stained his appearance.  Yet he works on.  Tugging just so.  Stepping back to survey and then re-situating just a bit more on the calamity before him. His efforts are fine tuned and untwine our battered edges.  Through his diligence, we are made for motion once more.

It is there in that brief moment of stagnancy, refuge is realized.  The dings of discomfort and the pangs of proficiency subside.  In his cautious care, we wait to be unraveled.  Hobbling back to his station house, overworked and underpaid, the well worn attendant powers up the levels of electricity once more.  Go is now an option for gain.  He settles himself just sideways in a slumped fashion on a splintered stool. Watching us once more through the cloudy, cracked plexiglass window of us.  There.  Attending to our needs.  The erratic sparks of human crackle; his ceiling meets our movement.  The friction is there to remind us of pace, moreover grace. Energy is through him.

Thankful I am for his crooked nails storing the dirt of me.  For his steady stare through my cloudy plexiglass.  For his hobbled history and his hand on the switch.  There are days where my right foot burns with such wretched intensity sending cramps into my calf from all the mashing.  My claustrophobic cries are maddening and full of fear.  The wait is more than I can handle; the stillness is more than I can bear.  It is in these self-proclaimed blitzes for victory that I seize into myself and wipe my tears on his grease stained coveralls.  He never winces only waiting until I'm through wiping my wetness & human on him.  Then he goes about unearthing and untangling his holy in me.  In & out of motion with our days and with our people. I am reminded of his pace, moreover his grace.  I take my foot off the petal once more.

.mac :)