FEELINGS

overhead

This morning talking with my friend Carole on the telephone, I mentioned that I feel something generating in my world. Don't know what and don't have any answers. It's been a day of wet eyes on the verge of overflowing all day long, and did a few times. Eyes wet with joy, sorrow, respect, appreciation. A lightness within. A feeling that I'm engaged in something way more important than I would dare suspect. It's this that makes me feel like something is generating. The something doesn't necessarily have to be a thing, as I'm sure it is not. My suspicion is something like new insight and deeper understanding is in process within. That's as close as I'm able to get to put a finger on it.

Every once in a while somebody will talk to me in a flattering way of what I'm doing for Jr, which I hear and receive with gratitude, yet at the same time think as little of it as I think of blame. Sure, both trigger the ego before self-control can get in there. After a short time the ego rush to the positive or negative is over and I don't entertain it anymore. I'm not doing this with Jr for ego purposes at all. In fact, I'd be happy to do it with no one knowing about it, except I need a lot of help, and it shows up as I need it.

This has something to do with the damp eyes too, the help, the offers of help, the freedom Jr's friends speak with me with. This morning talking with Jr's neighbor and friend Jerry, he told some of what he went through with his wife in relation to what I'm going through with Jr at present. Jerry had two years of it. It was hard. There were times we both were wiping our eyes. I've learned that the people close to Jr all love him. He has no clue of the immensity of love his friends feel for him. He's getting plenty of prayerful attention too.

Actually, I also need to regard what I left out above, that this generating energy I feel has something to do with Jr. A feeling he may have just a few more days. I see already he won't be able to go to his doctor's appointment next week, even if he takes a temporary turn for the better, which I don't see happening any more. I see him on his back on the bed, the cover up to his shoulders, mouth gaping open looking dead. I see him like this so often, I don't think of it as anything like a portent, because that's just how we look sleeping on the back with mouth hanging open. I've seen that so much, it's just about the way he looks to me anymore. I don't take pictures of him looking like that because it feels to me like disrespect.

I don't like to think I'm a prophet who can read a feeling and divine something artful from it in a psychic kind of way, because I know better. Jr isn't either. How many times I've heard him say, 'I have a feeling somethin bad's gonna happen today.' Those days always go by without him getting news of something bad happening. Once, for fun, I said to him, 'Bound to someplace.' He didn't appreciate it much. It slighted his feeling, and Jr pays attention to his feelings, takes them seriously. The way I'm doing here with my own. I find this common among mountain people, the respect given feelings.

I found I've told everybody I talked with today that the interiors of all our vehicles are made of fuel. It's plastic and burns fast. Advertising fire extinguishers. I found two in Jr's house, one in the back of a cabinet, and the other out of sight on a corner table. They are both out in the open now where they cannot be missed. The counter from the kitchen is a kind of turning point visible from everywhere in the room. That's where they are. In plain sight. Makes me think of Gerald Leftwich of Emergency Management, who I'm sure would say the same thing, but with a whole lot more experience and knowledge of the subject than I have with one such experience.

When the man from Farm Bureau came to settle with me about the truck, I mentioned I'll always have a fire extinguisher in anything I drive. He said he had one in his car too. I can't help but think of this as a very important issue, because it's something we never, ever think about, that the interiors of our vehicles are more dangerous than the gas tank where fire is concerned. Everyone I talk with about it, like me, had never thought of the volatile nature of the plastic everything.

I remember in the 1950s when they found steering wheel posts amounted to big blunt spears in a wreck. So they started sinking the steering wheel in the center to cushion the blow. Insurance corporations and auto corporations know there are a lot of car fires and people getting burned up in them. One is too many. It's accepted as a rule that auto makers include a jack for replacing a flat tire. Seems a small, though functional, fire extinguisher would make a good gift from the people that make incendiary bombs for us to drive around in.

Nobody thinks a smoke detector in a house is too ugly to look at to have on the wall or ceiling. A small, but good fire extinguisher in a car can be just as acceptable an aesthetic object. Of course, you get children playing with them, blinding each other with them, law suits from hell. So mind my own business. I'll keep one in my vehicle and tell my friends about it.

It's like one of those insights that come to you and you feel like you're the first person that's ever lived who thought that. You tell somebody in awe and wonder and they think little of it, because they've known it for a long time and it's nothing to get up about any more. Wasn't ever, as far as they're concerned. And there you are. Experiencing how kids feel, like, 'Daddy, look at my new dress.' She has to stand between him and the tv for him to see it and he yells at her to get out of the way.

It also doesn't do to talk to just anybody about your feelings. It's part of the casting pearls before swine syndrome. Some people understand and you can talk your heart out to them. Some say something so indifferent it hurts and makes you swear to yourself you'll never open up to anybody again. We know who we can talk freely with and who we can't. The ones we can talk freely with are our friends. They're the valuable people in our lives, the ones we can turn to and cry.