Character in the Wait
The windshield, thick slab of stubborn ice that didn’t want to budge anymore than I wanted to leave the comforts of Autumn Walk and drive 25 minutes north to Geyserville. Turning on the car, turning on the heater full-blast, even running the wipers and nothing would move. No little chunks of ice, no thin moving contents of slush. NOTHING. So I sat there, exercised an unusually and rare intensity of patience. It felt amazing. I found myself more centered and ready for the day. True, my impatience was seismic in that I couldn’t wait for a mocha (this morning with the lower-than-usual temperatures, needed 4 shots), and cruise to the winery with my music. But, I waited, waited. And finally, it started to separate.
Why do we get so impatient? Why can’t Human Beings have a healthy pattern and practice when it comes to waiting? And what was I so impatient for? I later thought this, mind you. “Is Starbucks going anywhere? … Is the winery going anywhere?” No to both. So I used the stall as a sort of exercise and icebox meditation for the sake of learning patience and more steady composure— I lecture on Composition at the college as it pertains to literature, but it’s more imperative with Personhood, one’s mentality and mood, attitude.
As I drove away with the last bits of silt-like ice being pushed off by the long rubber arms, I thought about the New Year about to land in less than 48 hours, and how to satisfy the aims I now have in place, patience and immediate composition of my character need be abundantly actuated. It’s the ice’s definition and trenchant tangibility that got to me. I should have learned from its fortitude initially, rather than let it unravel and unnerve me. Now that I’m at work, here at my desk looking out at frozen vines or vines with melting ice on them, sipping these 4 cozy shots of espresso, I know already about the New Year. I know where I’m going, I know what it’s meant to do and I’m the one assigning the meaning. That glacial windshield gifted me with these thoughts, the meditation that followed me up Dry Creek Road in my Passat and here to the desk, to tapping on this laptop’s keys.
Because of the ice, and that wait, I’m composed. All departments of my thinking relate to each other logically. Eager to start, to go, to fly through the next eight or so hours with my wild yay-yelling roar. I didn’t expect to see the windshield that way, still. If you want candor from the writer, I expected to forget about it. But, as I noted, it followed me to Geyserville. I just walked to the other part of the property, another building to note something somewhere, and I took a picture of a row with ice atop its skin, melting. The peace there, right in front of those dormant canes assured and reassured me about the coming year, about how I interpret the metonym of the ice sheet— It was a sheet meant to comfort me, counsel and teach me more about me and my moods and how I perceive the world and myself in it. Going into 2017, and past that. Patience… Composition… Composure…..
I’m Composed.
(12/30/16)