Turnstiles

I went out to the pond tonight to make a few casts. I've been sidelined from time on the water and on the vise while I deal with some issues in my elbow and forearm. It's been interesting these past few weeks. I've filled the time I would normally spend walking the mud with a nine weight or spinning at the vise with things I used to do or that I had forgotten to do. Part of all that has included going back through these old posts and notebooks tucked away here and there with scribbled notes and obscure thoughts. There's also been time for silent introspection.

But I can only take myself seriously for so long, so after I shut the woodshop down, I grabbed the six weight and made a cast. It didn't hurt as much as I thought it might, but enough that I wrote off the idea of learning to play the guitar or the piano anytime soon. The pond in the setting sun was beautiful and quiet so I stood and stared at it. Some would say I pondered. I wondered for a moment if the arm will ever be the same, if this might well be it. I saw the reflection of my face in the water and two words I had just re-read in one of those battered notebooks answered my question.

I remember the exact moment I wrote them down. It was years ago, on the way into a job meeting at one of the office towers downtown. It was one of those buildings with the fancy marble street level lobby and glass front with multiple revolving doors. The day was much like today: clear, bright and hot. Nobody in Boston wanted to be at work. I checked in at the front desk and was told my contact was still at lunch and running late. I sat in a leather chair and waited. I watched people pass the front windows. Some were obviously taking their time to get wherever they were going. Most were clearly intent on getting to their destination as fast as possible and seemed to be agitated navigating around the slower moving ones. In those few minutes I realized I had become one of those people. I took a deep breath, got up and told the receptionist I was going to have to reschedule. I walked outside, bought a four-dollar coffee in a twelve-ounce cup and sat down on a bench in a postage-stamp sized greenspace. People continued whizzing by while I put on my dark glasses and wrote down two words.

Outside within.

I didn't know what it meant at the time, just one of thousands of fleeting thoughts I've written down over the years. I still don't know exactly what it means, but the idea is still as clear tonight as the day I wrote it down.

Somewhere in my childhood I saw an old lion in a zoo. He was sitting on his haunches in the shade of a bush just staring at all of us staring at him. There was a lioness in the background with two younger lions pacing back and forth. I recall locking eyes with the old lion through the fencing and the glass of the enclosure. It may have been a split second or a full minute, but I wondered at the time if in his mind, through his own memories or in genetic memories passed down, he was somewhere in the grasslands of Africa. Wherever his mind was, it was beyond the confines of the walls around him. I've seen that look a lot in my lifetime, including in the mirror. I always think of that lion.

I've seen it in the face of my best friend as we talk about our lives and our families. I've heard it in his voice when we talk about what we do and what we've done. We have ongoing discussions about not being part of the herd, about taking care of our own the way we were raised to in a world that we were not raised in. Change is inevitable, and in most cases is a good thing, but there's still a lot of good in what got us all to this point in time. Reconciling old with new and vice versa, well that's a discussion I'm not having here. It's a personal thing. Or it should be. And it is for him. He does it far up, or down, one of the many rivers he fishes by himself. Unplugged and disconnected for a few hours, it's his savanna.

I've seen it in the eyes and heard it in the voice of the pride and joy of my life. Six months ago, at the age of twenty-one, she made an audible and changed the course she was on. She came to me and said things were not working for her, presented a plan and asked me what I thought about it. After we talked about everything, I said it was a good plan and I supported her. Then she went out and executed it on her own, in a new place among new people, with a re-lit brightness in her eyes and self-built confidence in her voice. I'm doubly proud because up until now I've held the family record for jumping off the moving bus and figuring things out after I landed, carrying the old and forging the new.

So, in the falling light tonight, I switched the fly rod to my left hand. It's going to take some time.

Hold my beer.

I'm stepping through the turnstile.

Outside within.

Littles Pond

13 July 2022