Imponderabilia

It was late and I was tired after a twelve and a half hour shift at the factory and I knew I shouldn’t have done it – but I turned on the radio to listen to the news as I drove home in the freezing rain and the dark. It was a poor choice, tired and worn as I was. The highway was dark and the lane markers covered with snow and ice. Reports came through of the war in Ukraine and more bombings in Gaza with unnumbered civilian deaths. Reports of earthquakes in South America, of wildfires in the south-west, of another school shooting in the heartland.

Everything hurt.

It seems like I feel that way all the time these days. I am exhausted and weary from work and still grieving old wounds. Everything hurt in the cold and dark as I drove through the night, crying alone in my car. Alone and cold in the dark on a lonely road between here and nowhere.

“The world is dying,” I said aloud as I clicked off the radio with its ceaseless bad news broadcasts. “The world is dying,” I said again, “and there is nothing to replace it.” Someone once described this as a time of monsters and I will not disagree. The world is dying and full monsters. The human ones are the worst.

I arrived at home and made dinner for myself but in the process I broke a glass pitcher given to me as a wedding gift. Then I spilt a beverage on the couch which will probably stain the fabric. I tried to put it all out of my mind by watching police dramas on TV until bed, but when I finally slept I struggled with dreams of my ex-wife.

 “I don’t want the world to see me, ‘cause I don’t think that they’d understand,” the song says, but I say, “I don’t want to see the world ‘cause I don’t understand it either.”  I am lonely even in my dreams. Separated and alone and I think that maybe I should go ahead and separate myself from it all. I can’t fix it. I can’t change it. Why not go live out in the desert?

I remembered the stories of those devout men of faith who lived as hermits beyond the fringes of civilized society, or in caves, or alone atop high pillars, relying on ravens to bring them food day after day for forty years. I know it sounds fantastic, but ravens have been known to bring gifts to people they consider friendly, so why couldn’t these avian benefactors bring bread to hermits in the desert? It may be a pious legend, but it could still be true.

I woke the next day, still weary. Still worn, still pondering all the imponderabilia of this strange life. But with a stretch and a cup of coffee I was ready to step out into another new day. As I drove to work there was a carpet of fire across the eastern sky. Maybe the world is on fire but the sun is rising in the east and I think that I can try again.