At the beach today, seven Canada geese landed on the water in a V-formation. I’ve read that geese are the symbol of loyalty. They stick together.
And V, well, V is for victory.
Seven is the number of deadly sins, the number of spots on a ladybug, of the world’s wonders. There are seven chakras, seven samurai, and seven secrets of highly successful people. Seven is the atomic number of nitrogen, which constitutes 78 percent of our atmosphere.
My husband works late, and I rarely see him. Tonight I will surprise Ben with his favorite dinner: pork chops with applesauce, mashed potatoes, and peas. Actually, I’d prefer he not eat meat, and potatoes are toxic bombs, so I will make him homemade organic applesauce (using seven apples, naturally) with steamed organic peas.
Ben didn’t make it home again. The applesauce was delicious. Goldilocks applesauce, I’ll tell him: not too chunky, not too thin, just right.
On my walk today, I stood in the rain and let it wash over me. Rain is cleansing; it means new life. I stood for as long as I could and washed away all the negativity. It ran right into the storm drain at 12th and Main. I love knowing that’s where it is.
The other 22 percent of our earth’s atmosphere is made mostly of oxygen, argon, and carbon dioxide. I like the word argon; I didn’t know argon was in the air. It’s comforting, knowing that argon is a constant companion, like a parrot on my shoulder. I didn’t even know what argon was, but now I do. It’s an inert gas. I wonder what it has to do with Jason and his Argonauts.
Ben came home to pick up clothes. He said he needed some time away, even though he’d been away. The clothes he packed were blue. I’ve read that people who wear blue are reliable; I’m sure he’ll be home soon. In Buddhist philosophy, blue is the color of the sky and ascension. I must try to achieve a higher state of being, and then maybe he’ll come back. I won’t get the blues, that’s for sure.
Today I woke up with a small headache. I’ve read that the head contains Ajan, the brow chakra, which holds the pineal gland, the gland that regulates sleep and wake. It is also known as the third eye and indigo is its color. The pineal gland is shaped like a pine cone. Maybe I haven’t been sleeping enough. Maybe if I take a walk in the pine trees draped in indigo, my headache will go away. I’ll try it right now.
There are three kinds of pine trees around our house: ponderosa, lodgepole, and sugar pine. Three is a fantastic number. The trinity—body, mind, and spirit. I’ve read that three is a masculine number. Do I need to work on that side of myself? With Ben gone, there is a lot more work. I have to chop and stack the wood; I’m not complaining, it’s a Zen-like activity and the sweat releases toxins from my body. I’m going to stop mowing the lawn, though. It’s symbolic of cutting off my personal growth. My neighbors might not like the look of long grass.
My horoscope this morning said not to spend money. But when I read a different horoscope in the afternoon, it said to make an important purchase. At some point, I’ll have to decide.
At my dance class tonight, I started whirling and couldn’t stop. It was so liberating, to turn and turn and twirl and whirl, I couldn’t stop the motion if I’d wanted to. It felt like a gift moving through me. The freedom of it made me so ecstatic and my energy was so contagious that everyone stopped to watch.
I went to my hairdresser today for the last time. It seems so silly now, to cut hair that will only grow back. It also represents a loss of power. Look what happened to Samson.
And besides, it felt like her hands were too close to my brain. Does she realize that she works next to brains all day long? I wonder if I should mention it. Something tells me no.
I had to stop working for a while; my boss agreed. I worked for the Title Company, but one day I looked at our letterhead, at the word “Title,” and it seemed like such a strange word. Just look at it: Title. It’s a little comical; the combination and shapes of the letters, especially in serif, just don’t convey its seriousness. I started pronouncing it tit-lee, just to show it who’s boss.
But that’s not why I left. I wouldn’t say it was the numbers’ fault, either, but sometimes a combination, like 22 + 22 = 44, was so delightful that I laughed and laughed and forgot what I was doing and had to start over. I loved the look of the numbers, the red ink on the light green page, the columns in neat grids. But I couldn’t keep my pencils sharp enough; I sometimes had to grind them down to a stub to get a perfect point and then they were too small to comfortably hold and my fingers cramped. And the humming of the computer caused a constant slight vertigo. I tried everything to get rid of the vertigo, including ear candles. I would stick an ear candle through a pie tin and light it, rest my head on my desk and let it burn until I felt the flame warm near my face. My boss hated it when I did that.
The ear symbolically represents a spiral and spirals mean ascension. I am sure good things are coming my way; I have done nothing but good deeds lately, joyfully greeting people I don’t know. (They sometimes seem surprised, so they must need it.) I’ve read that Karma, the son of the Hindu sun god Surya, was born from his mother’s ear. This means I need to listen, not only to outer sounds, but to my inner voice.
I had to drop my dance class. The other students were intimidated by my abandon.
I couldn’t drag myself out of bed today. I am so happy to have found my toxin-free, prescription-only mattress. It took several weeks of research and interviews and it drove Ben crazy while we slept on the floor, but it was for his health, just like the flax seed broccoli kale shakes. I’m not sure he realizes how much I tried to help him. I gave Ben brain tests every night, like name ten uses for a paper clip in ten seconds. He’s with a woman now who wears make-up and perfume—she’s a real study in camouflage—and high heels that her vertebrae will regret. It’s hard to imagine her giving Ben a brain test.
On late night walks, I’ve seen inside her house; there is a big screen TV, emitting who knows what and probably rewiring their brains. Sometimes I hide behind the lettuce bin at the supermarket and watch what he selects. I want to shout out, “Don’t eat the peaches!” because they have the highest pesticide load.
He does look happy, but I know it’s only a mask to hide his pain.
A “doctor” showed up yesterday, at least that’s what he called himself. He wore a black suit, but when he crossed his legs I noticed brown socks. I don’t know how they expect me to trust a man who wears brown socks with a black suit. Also, the particular shade of brown in his socks is, I believe, the color of deception.
He asks, “Why do you see meaning in everything?”
“What’s the alternative?” I ask.
Sheesh. And he thinks I’m the crazy one.
On my walk today, I try to imagine that nothing means anything. That trees are just trees, big plants sticking straight out of the ground. But it’s impossible that they mean nothing. At the very least, they are homes for birds and insects and other creatures. They provide shade, and their music in the wind tells us what’s coming.
But I try. I walk up to an incense cedar and say: You mean nothing.
The tree smiles and I give it a hug.
Ben hasn’t called in six months. There are six sides to a cube. He’s an ice cube. The largest ice shelf in the world is the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica. It’s a piece of frozen water the size of France. I’ve read it’s shrinking, and we all know what that means.
Sunset is probably the most challenging time of day. The colors, of course, I experience to the fullest. Seriously, my heart almost bursts from the beauty—shades of pink, the color of universal love. But after the pink is gone, it’s just me under a dark blanket of stars blinkety blinking all night long—how can anyone sleep with all that going on?
What is Avogadro’s number? I remember father telling me why I needed to know, but it escapes me now. I’m not sure I ever really needed it.
I don’t see the doctor anymore. We didn’t connect. I felt like we were speaking two different languages. He could not understand that I wouldn’t put manmade chemicals into my body, and he wasn’t open to manifesting happiness.
I have started marking my territory, a different spot each night all the way around the house, in case he returns.
If I can’t get out of bed, maybe it means I shouldn’t. But I need to eat: the body is the temple of the soul, and my soul is hungry! It takes 13 steps to get to the refrigerator and we all know what they say about 13. It made me laugh in the elevator at work, how the floor we were really on was the 13th, but it was called the 14th. I would push the empty space between 12 and 14 every day in protest, sometimes missing my stop. I will salute any hotelier bold enough to label the 13th floor.
I eat a spoonful of wheat germ, but it’s quite dry. The water from the tap is undoubtedly filled with hormones and chemicals, and I have no bottled water. It’s hard to find water bottled in glass, and I won’t eat or drink anything that touches plastic. Plastic has consequences. I return to bed a little parched.
The phone isn’t working. I have called and called and left messages for friends and family, sometimes a dozen a day, and haven’t received one call back. I would call the phone company, but obviously I can’t: the phone isn’t working. It’s a circular riddle or something like that.
I’ve come to realize the reason I am not making connection with anyone is a sign from the universe. I need to go within, to figure things out on my own.
There are no lights in my house. It’s strange, but it seems that every light bulb in the house went out at the same time. I change and change them, but nothing happens. The good news is that all the machines have stopped humming, and the only sound I hear from my bed is the wind.
I am comforted by the sound of the wind along the side of my house, brushing off the detritus and making things fresh again. It is inconceivable to me that the wind is nothing more than argon and nitrogen . . . and some other things . . . that creates an atmosphere or something. Wind is not properly honored. I think of Ben, letting the Doppler map on the computer decide if he would pack a raincoat instead of just listening.
I will create a dance based on the Beaufort wind force scale. It will be my life’s work. I will incorporate the color of truth using white scarves, waving, to symbolize turbulence.
The wind has stopped. A chickadee sits outside my bedroom window, singing. I’ve read that chickadees are seekers of truth and knowledge.
Looking for the truth, I see only clouds.
An anvil approaches. Cumulonimbus, Cloud Nine. If only people knew the truth about Cloud Nine. It’s actually the worst cloud to be on.
But I’m not afraid . . . clouds are just water . . .
. . . and some other things . . .
Kim Wyatt’s writing appears in Creative Nonfiction, Best American Travel Writing 2017, and the Michigan Quarterly Review. Kim teaches incarcerated students and is working on a novel. She lives in the Sierra Nevada mountains and the Sonoran Desert.
Photo by pontla on Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND