A Dangling Meditation

The thirties were a time when people had very little and there was nothing to hide behind, and that Bull Durham tag dangling from the string coming out of your pocket -- that showed you had it, you could roll with one hand. -- Charles Bukowski, Dangling in the Tournafortia

PHOTO:KCS

Dangling. There is something sexy about that word. When something dangles, you want to touch it softly with your fingers, or study it carefully with your eyes while it changes color and reflects light from various angles. Or perhaps observe it in anticipation of the dangling object falling, losing its precarious grip. Yet it doesn't. It simply, dangles.

I think of a woman's dangling earrings and how they sway or turn with the tilting of her head, ideally when she smiles or laughs. The way dangling metal or feather brushes her skin as though it's whispering a secret, tender and personal. 

In 1966, when Simon & Garfunkel's song, The Dangling Conversation, hit the radio airwaves, I thought it was cool. I envisioned hanging out with my intellectual friends engaged in deep discussion about philosophy, art and literature: Descartes, Klimt and Dostoevsky. 

Even though I didn't know much about those things, I pictured drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and being engaged in a higher form of discussion than the usual chatter of who's having a party and when and what we might wear. Or what happened after the football game on Friday night.

This dangling curiosity sounded like it could just go on forever in a cloud of comfort and bliss and elevation of the spirit and intellect.

I'm dangling, here. Can't you see. I'm dangling. 

So, the other day, I am walking my loyal dog Frida under a firmament of heavenly clouds scudding like runaway roosters across the sky. One minute the white cumulus are pushed away by dark gray thunder heads and the air temperature goes from warm to freezing. Then the reverse happens.

Sun. Rain. Sun. Rain. Sun...

The wet trail emits an earthly scent that makes me want to praise the ground beneath my feet.

I am layered with three shirts, bucket hat atop my head and my COVID mask dangling, yes dangling, from a lanyard around my neck. I am feeling sexy as hell. That's because of my long healthy strides reminiscent, I tell myself, of when I once ran the 880, a two-lap race around the track.

The endorphins have kicked in. I break a sweat as I power up the dirt trail, Frida in my wake. When I approach other walkers wearing their masks, I pull mine over my face. I've had my two vaccinations yet continue to follow healthy standards. It's courtesy. 

My sunglasses fog up when I cover my face with the mask. As my body heats up, swelling with warmth, I pause at a bench to dab my runny nose, remove my top shirt and my sunglasses. I fumble with my mask, my shirt, Frida's leash as if we are taking a break from running the Iditarod through the Alaskan Yukon. We fall behind if I dawdle. Gotta go. Mush, Frida!

We reach the end of the trail before I realize that I have lost my sunglasses. They're not in my pockets or covering my eyes. How many times have I lost glasses only to realize I am wearing them. Not this time.

I must have left them on the park bench when I removed my shirt. Come on, Frida, we're going back. Got to retrace our steps. I'm carrying Frida's leash and my top shirt in one hand. She never leaves my side.

We arrive at the bench and my glasses are not there. I search around. Maybe they fell into the tall wet grass. No dice.

We continue down the trail and meet a woman going in the opposite direction. She's not wearing a mask. She's been jogging. A baseball cap rests on her head with short red curls dangling on the sides. She says she saw us on the road earlier and watched us turn up this dirt trail, asks where does it go?

I tell her and mention that I'm retracing my steps looking for my sunglasses. She thanks me for the trail info and, understanding that I will be heading back her way, says if she finds my glasses she will place them on a rock or bench. Look for them, she says, and continues onward while I muster all the way to where the trail starts, but find no glasses.

I raise my arm that is holding Frida's leash and my shirt, gaze down and there, dangling, like a monkey with one arm hanging onto the branch of a tree, I see my sunglasses. How did they not fall to the ground? Were they dangling from my shirt this whole time?

I am amused and relieved. I carefully adjust the sunglasses as I place them on the bridge of my nose with their temples resting above my ears.

Shortly before I reach home, I hear a voice: "Hey!" I spot a face framed in red curls in the distance peering out of the window of a blue van heading north.

I see you found them, she yells.

I think, what are the chances that I cross paths with her again: she in her van on a main road, me walking on a side street? We must be dangling on the same thread.

Like a poem poorly written / We are verses out of rhythm / Couplets out of rhyme / In syncopated time (in syncopated time). -- Paul Simon