Do we ever get too old to make the same kind of transparent excuses we made as children? My dog ate my homework is a classic. Another one I used to hear, it seems from my colleague and friend Mark, was “my homework flew into the ditch as I was getting on the school bus”. Also from Mark, something he borrowed from the universe of published thoughts, “do good, and avoid evil”. I have experienced a lion’s share of hungry dogs recently, and I guess I have to acknowledge my own part in all of this. The experiences of children might be funny in the retelling, but for adults, well, the rose of innocence is already tarnished.
I have spent many sleepless hours in the middle of the night gnawing on things done and left undone. Stripped bare of the defenses that build up during the hours of consciousness, I have a well-rehearsed list of failures waiting to confront me and my pillow. I guess it must be the same for all of us. Somehow I find reassurance when I balm myself with the hope that some of the people who populate my world are giving pause to their own failure to step up, to take responsibility. Wanting others to shoulder what rightly belongs to us is an easy habit to form and a tough one to break.
Last summer, the outside mirror on the driver’s side of my truck was side-swiped on a narrow, heavily-traveled street here in Santa Fe. That could be just about any street. “Damn,” I stomped, on discovering it. I quickly felt responsible, although I couldn’t help but wonder what went through the mind of the guy who clipped me. I was parked against the curb, my truck and outside mirrors passed muster for Ford. The only reasonable thing I could have done to prevent my loss of $307 was either fold in my mirror (practical) or not park on a busy, narrow street (not so practical). It was an accident, if you believe in such, and what I learned from it stays with me each time I park my truck anywhere in a city that is rife with narrow streets and stingily marked parking spaces. I wonder if the guy who hit me even remembers the incident four months later, or did he just blame some unknown person who obviously didn’t know how to park his truck. I wonder what happened to his outside mirror.
Recently I bought a set of table legs, handsomely and typically crafted during New Mexico’s WPA arts flourish of the late 1930s. At the same yard sale I bought a slab of cottonwood, probably 20” wide, to use as a table top. “I wonder who I could get to put these pieces together,” I commented to a local guy who was junking with me that day. He quickly offered to craft the table for me. “Man, how painless is that,” I relished to myself. Oddly, after leaving the pieces at his place, he joked to me the next morning at the neighborhood coffee shop that I could make a gift of the table for his recently-acquired warehouse apartment. “It’s just stuff,” he grinned. I declined. Later that day I bought him a bit to use with his drill for joining the top to the legs. He’s not returning my phone calls, and he hasn’t acknowledged the note I left on his door a couple of days ago. He’s in town. His two Great Pyrennes were at home. “Damn,” I should have followed my gut instinct and collected the table parts that day. Maybe he’ll do the right thing, maybe he won’t. He really hadn’t done anything to earn my trust. I wonder what’s going through his mind.
I live at the end of a narrow and heavily-parked dirt easement. On any given day at least a dozen cars line the outer edges and so-called defined parking spaces of the easement. To consider this in any way a friendly parking situation is laughable. Introduce one vehicle parked in an unfriendly manner—the sign says NO PARKING—and the playing field suddenly becomes virtually inoperable. From the neighbor who brings in the foreign vehicle, a girlfriend sleepover who apparently has become a regular, well, the story just has too many details. Let’s just say that the dog ate his homework. It would be equally relevant. Rather than stew over it—I had left a note on the windshield as I squeezed my way out to go for coffee—my landlord suggested that I knock on the door, ask them to move the car and not park in NO PARKING again. Apparently they weren’t even home when I attempted to rouse them. I shake my head and chuckle when I think about the third time I returned home that morning, having decided to park on the side street rather than squeeze my truck through the narrow opening on the road to my parking space. Yes, Booth is one of those typical Santa Fe streets, made for vehicles the size of bumper cars in an amusement park. No fault, no blame this time regarding outside mirrors. There were no parking spaces. I wonder if my neighbor will have his girlfriend park on the side street now.
Someone has suggested that I’m sending messages to the universe inviting conflict. I’m ready to believe it, so in the middle of the night, when I’m caught off-guard, my defenses down, I try to practice sending the right kind of messages, and tonight at 3:00 a.m., I’m sitting at my laptop, working out the responsibility for the vibrations escaping my mind and messing with my world.
Stepping Up—Santa Fe, New Mexico (October 22, 2007)
R. Harold Hollis
I have spent many sleepless hours in the middle of the night gnawing on things done and left undone. Stripped bare of the defenses that build up during the hours of consciousness, I have a well-rehearsed list of failures waiting to confront me and my pillow. I guess it must be the same for all of us. Somehow I find reassurance when I balm myself with the hope that some of the people who populate my world are giving pause to their own failure to step up, to take responsibility. Wanting others to shoulder what rightly belongs to us is an easy habit to form and a tough one to break.
Last summer, the outside mirror on the driver’s side of my truck was side-swiped on a narrow, heavily-traveled street here in Santa Fe. That could be just about any street. “Damn,” I stomped, on discovering it. I quickly felt responsible, although I couldn’t help but wonder what went through the mind of the guy who clipped me. I was parked against the curb, my truck and outside mirrors passed muster for Ford. The only reasonable thing I could have done to prevent my loss of $307 was either fold in my mirror (practical) or not park on a busy, narrow street (not so practical). It was an accident, if you believe in such, and what I learned from it stays with me each time I park my truck anywhere in a city that is rife with narrow streets and stingily marked parking spaces. I wonder if the guy who hit me even remembers the incident four months later, or did he just blame some unknown person who obviously didn’t know how to park his truck. I wonder what happened to his outside mirror.
Recently I bought a set of table legs, handsomely and typically crafted during New Mexico’s WPA arts flourish of the late 1930s. At the same yard sale I bought a slab of cottonwood, probably 20” wide, to use as a table top. “I wonder who I could get to put these pieces together,” I commented to a local guy who was junking with me that day. He quickly offered to craft the table for me. “Man, how painless is that,” I relished to myself. Oddly, after leaving the pieces at his place, he joked to me the next morning at the neighborhood coffee shop that I could make a gift of the table for his recently-acquired warehouse apartment. “It’s just stuff,” he grinned. I declined. Later that day I bought him a bit to use with his drill for joining the top to the legs. He’s not returning my phone calls, and he hasn’t acknowledged the note I left on his door a couple of days ago. He’s in town. His two Great Pyrennes were at home. “Damn,” I should have followed my gut instinct and collected the table parts that day. Maybe he’ll do the right thing, maybe he won’t. He really hadn’t done anything to earn my trust. I wonder what’s going through his mind.
I live at the end of a narrow and heavily-parked dirt easement. On any given day at least a dozen cars line the outer edges and so-called defined parking spaces of the easement. To consider this in any way a friendly parking situation is laughable. Introduce one vehicle parked in an unfriendly manner—the sign says NO PARKING—and the playing field suddenly becomes virtually inoperable. From the neighbor who brings in the foreign vehicle, a girlfriend sleepover who apparently has become a regular, well, the story just has too many details. Let’s just say that the dog ate his homework. It would be equally relevant. Rather than stew over it—I had left a note on the windshield as I squeezed my way out to go for coffee—my landlord suggested that I knock on the door, ask them to move the car and not park in NO PARKING again. Apparently they weren’t even home when I attempted to rouse them. I shake my head and chuckle when I think about the third time I returned home that morning, having decided to park on the side street rather than squeeze my truck through the narrow opening on the road to my parking space. Yes, Booth is one of those typical Santa Fe streets, made for vehicles the size of bumper cars in an amusement park. No fault, no blame this time regarding outside mirrors. There were no parking spaces. I wonder if my neighbor will have his girlfriend park on the side street now.
Someone has suggested that I’m sending messages to the universe inviting conflict. I’m ready to believe it, so in the middle of the night, when I’m caught off-guard, my defenses down, I try to practice sending the right kind of messages, and tonight at 3:00 a.m., I’m sitting at my laptop, working out the responsibility for the vibrations escaping my mind and messing with my world.
Stepping Up—Santa Fe, New Mexico (October 22, 2007)
R. Harold Hollis
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