pang, anchored

After a little work, I managed to get the cover off and was working my way down to the board when I realized that there was still a DVD in the drive.  Curiosity redoubled my efforts and I managed to free the disk.

It was the movie 9 to 5.

Jeff’s movie.

I felt a pang of misery, sharp and so intense.  It passed in a moment and I was able to be sad, but objective, about my find.

In an old and broken DVD player I’d had a while, it would have been odder to not have found that movie – it was one of his favorites.   The disk is badly scratched and I don’t know it if will even play.  I liked the movie too, but not as much as Jeff did.  It was right up there with Mrs. Doubtfire for him.   I might watch it, I might not – haven’t decided if it would be honoring or just… sad.

I still think about him – when I see a classic car or a freshly planted flower – but it usually doesn’t hurt like finding that DVD did.  Even if only for a moment.

I got down to the circuit board and – if I can find a cutter – it will do nicely for the project I have in mind.

The DVD… will sit quietly on my counter while I figure out what to do with it.

——————

I have a running joke about being the Master of Space and Time, but one part of that gag is not a joke.  Over the years, I’ve had a few moments of being at exactly at a specific moment in time and at a specific space. It’s not so much the right or wrong moment or location – but about specificity. Of being so very much in the present and the moment.

The first time I noticed this was on my back step at an apartment I lived at years ago.  I was reading a book on a sunny Saturday afternoon with a cool breeze in the air and a can of soda at my feet.   For just a clarifying moment, everything lined right up.  I was exactly where I was intended to be.

Not destined – I don’t really go for that – but that things had happened to get me to this moment and more things would follow from that moment.

I guess I’m not describing it well, but it’s a feeling of connection.  Of being anchored in a moment in space and time.  Strangely reassuring.

I forced this once while waiting for friends by standing in a particular and ideal spot and bracing my feet against the turning of the world.  At that moment, that was the place I was – on some seriously cosmic levels.

This leads up to today when things did not go quite so well.  I was in a fast food restaurant, waiting for my late scheduled physical therapy appointment this morning.  I had eaten and was sitting there with my phone and an open book.  I was struck by how everything – a billion years of history and planetary movements on a galactic scale – had lead me to that moment.

In a Burger King.

It was not enlightening.

Or profound.

Instead of safely anchored against infinity – I was weighed down by the moment.  And everything that would follow.

The moment passed and I finished my drink and went to physical therapy early.   It put a damper on the day, to say the least.

What does this all mean?  Is there depth here?  Or do I need to get out of my head more?

I don’t know.  But even with the risk of being weighed down, I’ll still going to look for those moments.   It’s a zen thing, I think.  To be in the present – and to be present there.