Just when I thought I was over my old job, it got cold again.
What does one have to do with the other?
In Charlie’s office, there was a coat rack in every room. I particularly liked the one in the leg office, because during the appropriate seasons it was a patchwork of familiar colours and fabrics, long wool coats of gray and black, navy and maroon peacoats, and scarves all piled on top of one another, so that if you were first in the office that day and you weren’t the last to leave, you’d have to reorganize the whole thing to retrieve your articles before venturing into the autumn or winter or early spring evening. You could often tell whose coat was whose by style, or by scent (I could recognize the perfume or cologne or tobacco). It was all very familiar and made me feel at home.
But this morning, my scarf and leather jacket are simply hanging over my desk chair, and they look very lonely.
The strange things we miss…
3 comments:
*sniff sniff*
Just reading your description of the cool breezes and fall make me long for all things north of where I am. ::sigh::
Leeann,
This is Sam Wlaker. I wrote to my sister not long ago about missing the mountains. I think I know a similar feeling:
"Every time I look over at the Monument, or beyond up to Pinyon Mesa and see the clouds rolling down over the foothills, I’m home--for a moment. I can see the clouds dipping down the valley from the Storm King enveloping the hills tree by tree, then spitting cold snow against the big casements at the house, and I smell coffee. I can see the road down to the Dominguez cabin on the 2v covered with yellow Aspen leaves and that black black mud caking underneath my boots and brushing onto my jeans as I step. I can see the cliffs above the S-cross dripping in the thaw of morning frost after sunup. I can see three little goat’s heads peering out from the barn not wanting to soil their hooves in the fresh snow. I can smell wet cows, huddled underneath the oaks down by the Little Delores and I shake the snow off my hat to lighten my load. I look down and see fresh deer sign, still steaming in the grey light of the creekbottom. I hear the cows lowing, singing lullabies to their young in tongues not made for men. I step low and smell, soaking in the moment--and the early snow. I stop and listen to the sound of that which I dream Heaven to be the perfection; the water flowing reluctantly under dirty, leaf-clogged glaciers; the cows surviving under their thick hides and the oak branches; the melted snow dripping off brown leaves then down my neck to my boots. I speak to the cows, they know my voice and do not alarm the others. I walk amongst them, slowly, and feel their breath on my thighs. It’s warm and momentarily soothes the ache of damp cold skin. I love it so.
I take a deep breath once again but smell asphalt and exhaust and vinyl. I find myself standing in the traffic of life, staring like some lost fool trying to get his bearings. It all rushes by me now—the cars, the houses, the billboards—the people. There are no lullabies here, just crude mechanical sounds not made by breath and water, but steel on steel and rubber on asphalt. I have work to do now, and it’s not in the mud but here in this world of bricks and plastic where leather and flannel have no place. But I just lived a whole glorious day, even a life, in a single moment. Someday, I’ll get back to my Narnia, but I know it won’t be the same way as before."
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