Latch Fatigue

There's a particular intersection on Highway 2 near Nebraska City where a nice, older man missed the red light thus not missing the front of our car pulling out on its green light.  One minute--leaving the truckstop full of plains kitsch, next moment--  life's compass lost magnetic north, tumbling our storylines (and bodies) like so many monkeys from the barrel.

As I mentioned previously, I find the Jack-in-the-Box a disappointing toy:  First, because it becomes rather too predictable.  The fun factor--the surprise part--so quickly isn't...both fun or a surprise.  After the first-- I dunno--three go-arounds of the crank'n pop cycle, it is not surprising.   Crank, sing, sing, pop!  Crank, sing, sing, pop.  Right? As for the fun? The song--perhaps one of the more promising bits--is totally interrupted: Musicalus interruptus.  No matter how much I channel my inner John Cage, it's bound to pop and the song hangs up.  Lastly,  and not at all least, the latch always does seem to wear out and the whole point of the thing--a peekaboo with a bizarrre peeker and a musical score--ends up without a peek or a boo.  Just a rather irritating, unseemly party-guy overstaying his lines in the play.  "Fooled you" in a box--much like the specter of mortality. 

I think we may have a bit of the same kind of fascination and impatience with mortality's refusal to be sensible.  There seems to be a notion of story we cling to--birth, kindergarten, arts & crafts, sex, naptime, death--but, really?  Most lives have all kinds of surprises and the damned latch always. always. always
wears out.

We just don't know when.

After Highway 2 and its broken glass, insurance and C-T scans, I felt a bit like something small with a rapid heartbeat, crouching in dimmed air beneath the hawk shadow.

The predator features rather more heavily in the story than we like to think.  It lurks. It is not timely or sensible on our terms.  It waits and pounces. 

 Blake wrote of the the "Tyger:"
 Tyger Tyger. burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye.
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

And in 5 more stanzas he makes it clear how fearsome and mystifying the Tyger is--fearsome enough to cause Blake to wonder on our behalf if the creator of the Lamb could possibly " dare seize the fire" of the very creature bound to stalk the lamb. The storyteller's narrative is far more opaque than we hoped.

So while the ominous MRI made me feel a bit Love-Story-ish about the arc of my life-novella, Highway 2 reminded me that I don't get to know when or how my Jack-in-the-Box gets sprung.  Is this a comfort?  A threat?

It doesn't much matter.  I'm turning my little organ-grinder handle, toying around with music and anticipation, maybe even paying verrrrry close and paced attention....but there's a tyger out there, too.  The latch may give out, sure.  But really, the tyger might catch my scent, as well.  Innocence/experience. Experience and innocence. Tyger or Jack-in-the-box. Both have "finis" written all over them.



I suspect that old-fashioned toy is a bit of ruse we cling to, the idea we have some say in the matter.  There is perhaps a bit of the toddler in us when confronted with unwanted suspense--sometimes we break it--we go for the clown and insist he stay visible--we break the latch. There--no surprise now!

In hide and seek, I never liked hiding.  I sometimes made noise in order to ensure being found on my terms. Like breaking the latch, this is pretty silly.....and pretty human. Long ago, even before the proliferation of speeding bullets, we went looking for the Tyger, with fairly fragile weapons.  There is something in us--marvelous or horrible, I don't know--that doesn't want to wait it out, doesn't want to see the same old punch line, feels better hunting the hunter, even if it risks an early "finis." Freud framed this as a "death wish."  This has been widely misinterpreted as a desire for death. 

I think it is more a fatigue with fear--the real latch fatigue--when the dread of turning the crank one more time seems unbearable, when the walk in the wilds seems just too frightening; we are fatigued with our own latching to life.  This is not a desire for death but rather more a desire for agency--for some say in the matter.  Tired of being stalked, tired of the small disappointments or surprises--the small losses along the way--we long to run full tilt into the shadows, break the latch, reveal the architecture of the story and wrest it into our own hands.

I used to wonder about those sailors who put to sea, even with maps limned in monsters.  I think I get it, now.  It's not so much an ark as an arc. 

How to Build an Ark

Stop counting.

Empty all vessels. 

Do not sharpen what cuts.

Breathe in

what is unbelievable—

that which seems most obvious:

Heartbeat and bread,

firelight, 

the beading of night upon leaf.

Like the past—it is only in the face of perishing

we find a way to float.  Unlike the past,

lumber is not needed and the timing

uncertain.  Meanwhile, whenever possible, practice

practice floating.

 Scupture photo and poetry by Julia Dadds
 Sculpture: Falling Man by Ernest Trova 1969 at the Laumier Sculpture Park

Boy Hiding from stock photos.