It Only Looks Red

Dear Kate,

I don't really know what I am worrying about.  If I so will it, I know there really is nothing for me to worry about.

Maybe it goes like this, on one level, in about an hour my family is going to gather around a laptop to help my son with his first year university stuffs, fees to pay and stuffs to go over together, so that his ideas of how thing and people should work for him will be adjusted to align better with reality, as the rest of us attempt to adjust to his adjusting.  There is no drama in any of this, but dramatically is how I expect it to play out.  The heart shall always over-adjust on the side of caution, for the sake of peace.

There is no peace in me, that's what I am saying.

Just now I finished work and walked my dog, fed her (very happy about that, for she wasn't eating for the last two days), tried to distract myself with a book, closed it, and picked up another that would distract me better.  Words from Abraham Heschel told me words are useless in a moment like this; so I folded up my mind and pray, if I could call it that.  I wasn't praying for anything.  If God wants something from me he should be the one asking.

I am under the influence of half an antihistamine pill, long expired but still exact.  Wildfire smoke and heat, this morning I felt both in my dream, up my nasal, before waking, and too that God wanted me to speak about it to my family, my children: climate change.

One of the things to set up for my son is a student bus pass, one reasonable monthly fee for him to travel all zones always, like an answered prayer to a free man--if freedom to him is from the urge to control, not freedom to control.  I intend to say to my family a few words about these, our climate-changing habits, our burden to change the changing, our freedom to refrain from freedom.  But what words, though, Heschel?

My son would rather drive, I know, be in the driver's seat.  All his friends do, so he feels obliged to reciprocate, to offer the convenience and comfort that were frequently offered him.  That's what he said at first, that he wasn't personally resistant to public transit.  Then they grew on him, the convenience, the comfort, both now making him offers he can't refuse, every new morning, every chance they have.

Last week he was protesting to mom while I was downstairs working, my office door opened because of the heat, and I could hear every grumbling syllable, to him infused with the most urgent meaning, to me the deepest sadness.  He didn't like the idea of busing to work, and from what I heard wanted the world to stop and listen to his grievance.  I was on the phone with a client, didn't know what to do, how to stop my son from stopping the world.  So I cried.  I tried to pick up my own voice to speak to someone who is dispossessed of more than a private vehicle, but of his root, his heritage, everything that he is.  My voice was strong but calm, enough of both to comfort the man, cover my tears, and overcome the outcry from above.

The sky was red this morning, and stayed pinkish and heavy through the day.  The whole world smells of the incense of our offering, for every convenience another shade of red, every comfort layer of smog.  The pill was magic, even in half, broken for me.  My nose stopped itching almost right after.

There really is nothing for me to worry about, if I so will it.

Yours, Alex