I Don't Know What to Do

Was a time when I found it cathartic to lay out all of my concerns and feelings in print, but lately the idea seems wasteful. I've exponentially more responsibilities, now, and my problems seem to jumble all over each other, knotted, as well, with my blessings. If I've time to spend in thought, it may certainly be better spent than wallowing.

Yet tonight I cut the sad figure of a thirty-something man strolling through the suburbs alone. Smells and images permeated the muggy early-summer evening, raising vague memories that I might once have been able to bring more vividly to mind. The particular laundry detergent, redolent flowers, the mist of night-time lawn sprinklers. Perhaps the memories have compounded too dramatically to permit ease in sifting them. Perhaps I haven't the mental energy to do the sifting.

I don't know when the last time was that I saw a field full of lightning bugs, but just as I began my descent down the last hill to the water, with the million-dollar view, it seemed as if all of the lightning bugs that leave my yard dark in their absence had gathered there. Even so, they flashed a somewhat melancholy metaphor — their beacons dispersed as lone voices calling out. How similar might the suburbs look if one were a step removed into abstraction and able to see the prayers and cries of people in their homes as visual things. One imagines the light drifting out into space, not lost, but traveling to one with infinite sight and freedom from time.

I haven't such sight, nor such liberty, but not quite beyond the boundary of hearing, I sometimes sense a voice offering comfort, and guidance, too, although never as concretely as I would like.