Armchair Zen

February Sun

Tuesday, 5:52 pm

The road is covered with an inch of icy, snowy stuff. The sky is pink on this day of the Full Snow Moon. I’m writing blog posts in my head as I drive. The voice in my head changes from my own to the great narrator voices, reading my post aloud. First it’s Anthony Bourdain and his comma-specked lilting tone. The voice morphs into Peter Coyote, then Sam Elliot’s slow Texas drawl. He could read the phone book and keep us transfixed. A car 200 feet ahead spins a full 360 degrees in Interstate traffic. Fortunately we’re all moving at 28 miles an hour, so we stop and watch. The car comes to rest broadside in the middle of three lanes. A near-miracle, it hit no guardrails or other cars.

Tuesday, 6:02

The air is about twelve degrees. The defroster is on high and can barely keep up with the ice on the wiper blades. Now Bill Curtis is reading my blog aloud, I’m writing about how exciting it is to be driving home in the light after three months of darkness. “6:02 pm”, I start, “That’s 18:02 if you’re in Europe. Is it easier for us to add 12 hours or for Europeans to subtract? Maybe we have the jump on them because we use the am/pm nomenclature so often.”

Tuesday, 6:08

Starting again to write a blog post. Someone in a hurry passes another car on State Highway 7. He’s crowding the oncoming traffic and someone in a white Jeep starts to swerve left to avoid a head-on crash. “Why would you pull left?” I ask the dashboard aloud. “Always pull right.”  I’m trying to think of the names and voices of other great narrators, great tones. Jack Palance. The ubiquitous Mike Rowe. Carl Sagan.

Tuesday, 6:12

It’s my own voice again. The post is about driving home. I’d quote the time and begin to formulate thoughts then something would disperse the thoughts and I’d start again with a new time. The whole while I hear voice-over artists speaking my words. Now it’s Dennis Leary, and his tone doesn’t fit. Now I can’t stop thinking of Dan Rather, who has a good voice but you just don’t think of him as a voice-over artist. It’s getting dark now, and the Snow Moon rises on my left, accompanied by brilliant Venus in the evening sky.

Tuesday, 6:21

The Moon and the Evening star (which is not a star at all, but a planet) shine brightly. I’m thinking of a walk tonight in the full moon. A Snow Moon Walk like my son Ryan and I took two or three years ago. The moon is so bright it casts deep shadows on the snow. It’s bitter cold, twelve degrees. I think about a post called “Moon and Star”, about a personal philosophy. It’s about constance and change. It’s about the fleeting impermanence in our lives and about the cosmic constant of the universe and its occupants. It’s difficult to think of the entire universe as transient, but it, too, shall pass as all things must.

Tuesday, 6:34

It’s dark. It’s cold. It’s February. Andrew Zimmern’s voice begins reading my post. It’s a good voice, but predictable in its gait and inflection. Still, a good voice. The road is empty. Everyone’s home already, apparently. I begin to compose again. “Tuesday, 6:34.” I’d start, “and I hear the voices of narrators reading my latest post.”

Be at peace,

Paz