June 21, 2008

Sometime yesterday evening summer crept in soft and sultry. I think I was at the Usual with the Cantaria gang after our dress rehearsal. The big moon was trampling behind the thinnest blue cloud. I think Cantaria sounds exceptionally good this time, and I have not always thought so.

My valerian is taller than I, and jousts with the dogwood for room. The yellow columbine I bought for DJ puts forth for a second rank of blossoms. The water gardens team with fish, and with vegetation, though I am still waiting for a flower.

I drive to the park beside the French Broad and read Tolkien when I can snatch a moment. The motion of the river past the still trees is hypnotic. When some red neck woman in stretch pants is not braying indignation at the top of her lungs over the cell phone, it can be paradisal.

A phrase like "braying indignation" sends me to what I believe will be my personal theme for the summer. In the past I have traveled summers, so there was not time for concentrated introspection. But I think it is time, and past time, for me to confront the deadliest of the Seven within me, which is wrath. I don’t think people who know me would consider me particularly angry; part of the proof of that is their astonishment when I, publically, am. But I know it. I know that most of yesterday was sunk under strata of fury, and only exhaustion brought me out of it. My wrath is not spontaneous or irrational, and that is the root of the problem. If it were merely crazy, I could observe that and steer a course away. I have a long, slow fuse; I consider and weigh; I allow a hundred chances for the cause of my anger to right itself. I assume that I am misinformed until I can assume it no longer. So, when the anger flows up around me, it seems justified; it seems rational; it seems, in fact, necessary. But if it were all those things, it is still futile and wasting. I come out of it ugly and exhausted, and though anger does right some wrongs, the ones it has not righted I still cannot let go, and the morass around them deepens, and my fury deepens, and, whether I am right or wrong, no good can possibly come out of it. The last damnation is my refrain, But I am right, uttered, as if by a child, in the assumption that will make the difference.

Who is listening when I cry, But I am right? No one, apparently, to whom it matters.

I look at my father in his last hours and see that he is weighed down by suspicion and fear and mistrust. I will not be weighed down by these, but I will by anger if I don’t steer a different course. I remember DJ’s observation from a magazine that people like me are "over-observant and indignant." Few things have been so self-revelatory. What do I do about it? Catch myself, stop myself. Leap into cold water if the same infuriating thought enters my head twice in the same day. I don’t know. Maybe mindfulness will be a start. I cannot yet be Buddha. I cannot stop wanting the things I want, or believing that injustice can be challenged and fought and sometimes defeated. But maybe I can develop a sense for when the battle is lost, or when, God help me, I may be on the wrong side.