Below Minimums

That’s what they call heavy fog in aviation lingo. So thick you can’t land in it.

Lately I’ve been dealing with my own weather forecast issues. Mainly an overload of 100% chance of stagnation and Ice Fog and the resulting lack of a horizon. After two weeks of all this fog, and even though I know that this is January, and this is what always happens this time of year up here, the gloom of it is really getting to me.

On a gut level I know I am still surrounded by mountains. Bauer. Cook. Saddle. Abercrombie to the North. Mount Spokane to the south. I know that overhead the sky remains blue, and that some place, if you get high enough up into the mountains, the horizon stretches out as far as the eye can see.

But not down here.

I’ve felt trapped and overwhelmed. I said to myself earlier in the week, if this doesn’t end, and end soon, I am going to have to embrace ultimate irresponsibility and just disappear to Key West. For a month. I have a free round trip ticket. It just takes a phone call.

But none of this would be exactly affirming to my credit rating, my resume, my academic success, or the feral cats that seem to have worked their way into this really nice status of codependency. I don’t even know that I like cats. I’m not that much of an honorary lesbian. I like horses. And dogs. Cat’s? Not so much. But these two, well they have adopted the futon and the porch and they stare in at me as I write, and if they weren’t there, I’d miss them.

I’m trying very hard to accept that I now have two very wild cats. Just like I’ve been trying even harder to accept that if you live in Pend Oreille County in January, you’d better like fog.

To stay sane, I’ve been doing a lot of singing into people’s voice messages likely. I suspect this defines a leading indicator of some sort of yet unnamed syndrome.

Last night it was if “You’re happy and you know it drink at Azteca.” That went to Misty and Brett. I sang “Song Song Blue” to Mikey. I sang to Chase “I can see clearly now (your trick is gone)”. I sang to Brandon a stunning melody of Morning Has Broken, I’ll Be Your Angel of the Morning, and Feeling Groovy.” I haven’t started singing to my family or co workers yet, so it’s not terminal.

Some of these people have retaliated. I now have Starland Vocal Band’s “Afternoon Delight” endless circling the fog in my brain, seeking permission from the tower to land.

Besides all that, I am also nearly finished reading Eat Love Pray. You know-the chick book. The one that lead me to write about my embarrassing rant at Dairy Queen the other night.

I don’t want to type this out loud. It seems like an admission that I may have to someday later live down at a football game or that will be announced at Cabela’s. But, I sorta, ok-I really like this author. Right now she’s in India (in the book) and I am at a point where I don’t want the book to end.

This is very problematic, because it has to end, like, as in end last Tuesday, because I need to write a paper on it due, uh, now.

Anyway, while the author Elizabeth Gilbert, who sounds more like a cast member of Little House on the Prairie rather than a resident of some Ashram in India, was just minding her own business telling her story, she stumbled onto my story.

Or rather the conflict I’ve been fighting ever since my accident: This very obvious fact that I am stationary. And hating it. Of course, most people I know would beg to differ. I am hardly leading a stationary life. And Really, I can see their point.

From their perspective, any fool who has a daily 140 mile commute is not exactly stationary. But to me, coming home to this fog, this inability to see out of my own head, and missing a completely satisfying lack of escapism via blurring milemarkers, this is prison. And I have been not very grateful lately about my condition. I am not thanking the universe, or God, or the miracle of 4-Wheel-Drive, that I am able to live through a winter in this marvelous, stunning place.

Today it seemed as if God finally heard my desperation.

This happened right after I’d read in EAT, LOVE, PRAY an observation that Gilbert herself had heard repeated from some zen master: You cannot see your reflection in running water, only in still water.

Let’s just repeat that ok?

You cannot see your reflection in running water, only in still water.

Alrighty then.

I pondered this for a minute.

I mean, I actually stopped reading.

Then I thought, what the hell do they know in India anyway? They have never grabbed 18 gears, seen a Technicolor wide screened windshield, or been hypnotized by the life blood of a thousand headlights and taillights keeping time with the moon. They have never driven, illegally of course, from Baltimore to Sacramento in roughly 50 hours.

It was a short lived argument. I quit fighting Gilbert’s truth.

I suspect that the real reason why I am having so much difficulty sitting still, again, is because I am supposed to be learning something right now. Having what spiritual types call “a breakthrough” or what people who don’t travel to India to be silent and meditative for a few months usually refer to as “getting a clue”.

So the fog, the fighting the fog, the restlessness, and all the antsyness is for a purpose.

How cool.

You see I have this little reading chair. It was my grandmother’s and I sit in it and read and rock and sometimes when my conscience isn’t looking, I even take a nap. The magic rocker rests in Kelcy’s room, with a view of the river and the deer and the wild turkeys, and some of the larger Matchbox Trucks my folks have given to me over the years. In this chair, I can sit still and read while also rocking my autistic self right into satiation.

So I was just sitting there, rocking and being really bitter and angry about having to stay put and all of the sudden the room got very, very bright.

If you even think for one minute that means that a burning bush or angel appeared or that I’d left something on the stove and the house was engulfed, I’m sorry to disappoint. It isn’t that good.

The sky cleared.

I finally saw everything that had been around me all along. My rocking chair has a view of God. Rather than being pissed about the fog, I should be plenty grateful.

The skies finally opened, it had happened all at once, and it was as if God heard my misery.

I felt this sense-and no, it wasn’t induced by my fourth glass of ice tea that morning, that God was saying to me, “Tim, you are being such a dork. Look. All of this has been here all along---All this blue. This pure snow. This sharpening, crisp combination of horizon and river and valley---I created it.”

Stay with me here, I have not started going to church again or anything like that.

Besides, I am really not very good at revelation. I usually resist it.

I even back talked God.

“It’s about time. Look what you made me do. I’ve been singing on people’s voice mail like crazy, just to overcome the fog. Last night I sang “Sleeping Single in a double Bed” into a man’s voice mail that I barely know.”

I realized I’d quit the endless rocking in my grandmother’s chair. Beauty emerged all around me as the bull pines shed their hoar frost in sudden, heaving showers of crystal. How mesmerizing! These crystals that kept catching the sun light and filtering all the brightness into an explosion of brilliance only to disappear as quickly as they first appeared. Fleeting yet magical, I think revelation is like those Crystals. At least it is for me.

The water on the river, especially with the sun on it, became ever more difficult to watch. The reflection was too intense to look at.

I put down the book and began taking pictures.

“Thank you God-I need this!” was all I could think.

And since God seemed to have come to visit little old me, while I was sitting in my grandmother’s rocker, I had the sudden urge to ask a simple question, especially while I had God’s attention. My query was kind of like a version of What Would Jesus Do.

OK God, so let’s just say that if you, God, were going to sing into someone’s voicemail, like right now, at this very minute---I was sorta wondering what song would you choose to sing?”

Now I totally swear I am not going all Shirley McClain on any of you. I repeat, I am not really into all this revelation and prophesy stuff, and I don’t usually talk out loud to God, but no lie, no sooner had I posed the question, then this is the response I got.

“I’d Like to Teach
the World to Sing
in Perfect Harmony.”

Who knew? Sung straight from a Coca-Cola Commercial. It’s the Real Thing.

You go God. Coming to an answering machine or voice mail near you. And sure to get stuck in your head. For eternity.