Or change really, really slowly.
I nearly died today. One of those moments that happens periodically, when you feel the brush of death closer than usual. Not the slow caress of death from bad habits or long-term illness, but the flirtatious goosing from a near miss.
I was out for a walk, headed to a favourite park that requires walking past some major intersections. Please note that I was wearing a purple jacket, orange and black socks, and green laces on my shoes. Really, I was a jokeresque symphony of colours. Not exactly blending into the background. I have proof, check the picture. The pic is from after the rain (and thus my drowned cat impression) but at the time of this story, the rain had yet to start so visibility was perfect.
I had already started to walk across the street, cheerfully following the instructions of the little glowing white man on the pole across from me. That’s when a truck decided to run the now ended left turn advance signal. Thankfully, the person he cut off honked. I say thankfully because that’s why I looked up and paused and waited for the idiot to pass me by with a couple of feet to spare.
If I hadn’t paused, at minimum he would have clipped me but most likely I would have been perfectly aligned under his right wheel as he hit me.
He noticed me about ten feet past where he would have run over me.
I shared a bewildered head shake and shoulder shrug with the woman in the car beside the crosswalk. Idiots. What can you do?
Life can change like that, one instant to the next. Boom. Crash. Bang. (Anyone else remember that Roxette song? Well, Crash Boom Bang technically.) And all of our life can be gone, all those unique memories disappeared into shmutz on a road. We are ephemeral by definition of our lives. It pays to remember this, at least now and again.
Naturally I kept on walking. Because what else do we do? My life hadn’t actually changed. No broken bones, no death, might as well keep to my purpose. My thoughts churned around the importance of life and all of those typical things and then, as we tend to do, the moment passed and I was back in the musings I’d started with.
About a week before I’d done the same walk with friends. On that walk I came across some banana peels that demanded I take their pictures. Hey, it was my birthday weekend, I didn’t say I was sober during this walk! lol. Here are those banana peel portraits: Banana in Puddle and Banana with Bag.
So here I am a week later, on essentially the same walk, and what do I see?
Oh, banana, poor poor banana. Slowly fading into the past. As most of us do. Most of life doesn’t change in that quick instant, that lightening strike of a car. Most change is slow, changes coming in small bits, microbes eating away at who and what we are until we oh so slowly decay from living until death unto dirt.
Thankfully, it is slow! Meaning there is so much time to enjoy the moments, large and small, crazy and plain, thunderous and whisper soft.
Those goosings from death are a chance to take the appreciation for everything else a little deeper into ourselves. I know this in my head but it’s my heart that needed the reminder.
Time to go live some life. Because what is fed, grows.
Blessings of the deep and wild to you all.
Saturn,
The Abysmal Witch.
