The Vortex & The Sweet Spot

the spaces we keep sacred

There is a vortex outside my window.

The rules seem not to apply here.
Traffic signs abandoned
Skateboarder flip and circle.

The sidewalk mysteriously ends.
Everyone tries to park here
Drive the wrong way up the one way
Or k-turn.

It has swallowed shopping carts, toddlers, an errant stroller.
One time a man wheeling a toilet tripped over a small crack
And that turlet shattered everywhere in the vortex.

I’ve spent this last week COVID-y - two days sequestered in the front room of our condo, surrounded by vessels of water and medicines, work machinery and camping gear, in the hopes that somehow my person would be spared. It’s the most practical space for this our preliminary venture into the land of coronaviruses, more than four years in the waiting. The only room in our space that features windows on two sides, it features cross ventilation at night, harkening back to the TB porches that made Colorado architecture distinctive one hundred years ago. It’s a tender relationship I have with the wind - I viscerally hate the strong and constant swirling sort - but too much stillness is also unsettling. Soft, summer breezes within earshot of the creek are medicine.

The sweet spot.

Up on the bluff, several chapters ago, I would sit in the covered alcove on the porch watching the trees dance in the canyon below. Of course there were also days when I hunkered in the laundry room - the only entirely windowless option - knees pulled to my chest chanting ‘there’s no place like home’ as hurricane force winds clawed at the shingles. When I learned that Jon died, I started to think of the soft wind differently - like music just out of earshot. A lingering ice cream truck around the corner.

Or is it?

Haunting is such a strange thing - a thing that won’t quit you, that gets a bad wrap in horror movies. Melodies are haunting in a way that can be rather lovely, if you ask me. Lyrics too, perhaps, for the wordly-inclined, which you might think I am. But I’m both - enthralled with the content and her musical container.

I for one am most frequently comforted by my fellows on the other side of the everywhen - Hunter whose essence dissolved into a slow moving hurricane named Otto, and Jon who is - for me - a sweet summer breeze.

Rapunzeled in my room I printed off a few pages of the MCAT study guide referring to chemistry, which is my current intellectual pursuit. Armed with the free coursework from CMU and the mantra of my fellow micro student “chemistry is simple - just break everything into smaller steps,” I’ve endeavored to sweep away the cobwebs between the stoichiometry I memorized decades ago and a lot of what feels frighteningly more like algebra. It’s an impossible test - they say - designed to break you, or trick you into studying what you really need to know. And between me and that testing day lies a return to organic chemistry and biochem, boogeyman adversaries that intimidate more than haunt.

Doctor just means teacher, turns out, so it’s a logical step and I’m getting over myself (I swear), with so many years of teaching experience. It also refers to a tropical breeze. The healing, musical, teachery mishmash.

I dance between digging my heels into the work and staring blankly into the small screen of social media snacks. I know we’re supposed to think of these morsels as garbage, but with great frequency I find connection and humor, and yesterday found that my favorite band has added a show in Colorado Springs, at a venue that doesn’t quite exist yet. Without clear thought, I rushed to purchase the first single ticket I could find that was under $400, and then texted a friend who has followed Magic Giant with me for years. It was hours later that I looked up the venue -I assumed it was downtown near the intense gentrification that has replaced abandoned warehouses - a dead zone of industry.