" … mechanics trade not in forgiveness and grace but in grimaces and unintended mistakes."

Today's THE day. Anticipation's finally over. The over-long wait, the thrumming great uncertainty, the fussing and worry fall away today. The planning's moot now, the preparation phase completed. The coordination of all the picky pieces won't ever matter again. I won't even remember the adaptations which had become my new normal, not after today. Tomorrow that dream will have come true or a nightmare will have ensued. Whichever comes to pass, aspiration will have slipped past. A breach in the wall separating past from future opens before me now, promising only future ever after. The past will be gone by the end of this day, this BIGDay.

This seems to be the way we parse our time, into preparation and passage, pre- and post event times, with a narrow, one-way bridging alleyway between. We pass like contrite camels through that passageway, eyes forward, our backsides trailing behind; heads first, tails always losing the race. Nobody lingers in that space in-between. That space, so long anticipated, hardly exists, even for the moment that it does exist. We are not there, but somewhere on the way to somewhere else. The wedding, the surgery, the funereal celebration hardly conveyance at all, a mere milestone placeholder holding almost no place at all. We will remember the call if we remember anything at all. People might take photos as if that passage could only ever have existed in photographs, hardly two-dimensional, shallow, and so tiny.

This day will play itself out. I'm to experience a follow-up procedure to correct the lens misplaced in my earlier cataract surgery. I've grown weary with the lack of resolution from that first attempt. Five months and counting into a recovery that never came, more of more of different than the same but still not resolved. I see both better and worse, one of those neither/nor curses no one considers likely beforehand. After, the probabilities emerge smirking about how nothing guarantees any sure things. Almost anything's possible, though hardly likely. Every outcome always held a real possibility, though only one, perhaps the least likely, would prove to be the only possible result. No matter how lucky anyone feels when their BIGDay arrives, luck has almost nothing to do with anything then.

We roll dice thinking that we're exhibiting some special skill, the continuing shill in our dance with randomness. TheBigDay imparts no special mastery to anyone, just an overwhelmingly hope-driven sense of sudden possibility, as fine a surrogate for mastery as has ever been devised. We pass through these portals as little more (or less) than ping-pong balls blown in an uncontrollable wind. Should we somehow pass to another side, we'll be rewarded with a fresh beginning again, however the outcome pretends initial success. Later, we might come to know how the transition turned out. Initially, we'll imagine that we know, that anyone could know, and this imagining might as well be good enough, since there could be nothing more (or less) then.

Yessiree, wear the lucky underpants today. Shave, then comb that hair. Wear the shoes that make you seem a more solid citizen that you've sometimes been. Put on the brave face. Steel those eyes. Leave all sense of surprise behind on your dresser top. Abandon your coat in the car. You have far to travel today, then from there to somewhere else. I'd accept anywhere else by now, even a comforting unknown in exchange for the disconcerting same old that yesterday promised. Honest, I'm terrified. My doctor passed me a tranquilizer to be-still my overly-enthusiastic heartbeat. I won't likely meet my maker today, but I've an appointment with my mechanic, which should rightly shut me up tight, for I know that mechanics trade not in forgiveness and grace but in grimaces and unintended mistakes.

©2018 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #FallingSideways, #PureSchmaltz