Young Woman, Old Things

Lately I’ve been making new things out of old things. Re-twisting bobby pins, cutting up my brother’s old t-shirts. I can’t say they are turning out very well, but I’m making them nonetheless. I’m a resourceful person, I think. My end product might have bare joints and exposed seams and duct tape showing through cracks in the surface. It may appear a slovenly structure, but the things I make are as stubborn as I am and they will hold unless deliberately disassembled. They will be sturdy. Impractical, perhaps, and maybe there was an easier way, but this was my way and it worked, despite all the detours. You can’t tell me it didn’t; disheveled as I am you can’t tell me I didn’t show up on time. You can’t tell me it didn’t turn out ok.
I know, it was supposed to turn out so much better than "ok". It was supposed to do so much more than simply “function”, a mere meeting of requirements. But I have such a hard time letting go of the messes I’ve created because, in their own ways, they work for me. Maybe not as well as something else might, but my clunky old things seem so much safer than all these new things, gleaming with the lustrous chrome of possibility. How very intimidating.

There is a new break in the fence around my neighbor’s pasture. It’s a good place to look for old things; the house there was built before the first world war. When I find reels of rusty wire or old pots and pans all corroded and full of holes in the woods a ways from the house, I like to think they were left behind by the farmer that was called to fight, or by his grieving wife who could no longer bear to remain in the home she shared with her only love now passed.

Today is a surreal day here in the woods; strange things balancing precariously on the tips of the branches. I reach up to pull my head back onto my shoulders but it is so light it cleverly evades my grasp and continues its floating about, wandering aimlessly. It is looking for the Strange Things. Then we see one, my head and I. It has leapt down from its branch and scattered itself all over the ground in the form of white, hard things. We move closer and my heart leaves my body to join my head above. They are bones. I wonder if they are human and I venture closer. They are rib bones; humans have ribs. There are vertebrae; humans have those, too. My heart flutters in my throat, imagining excitedly the crime scene tape and uniforms that will cover the area once I have made sure of my discovery and called someone. 911? City Hall? My dad? I don’t know, and vaguely it occurs to me that perhaps I have been watching too much Criminal Minds.

I pick my way around the bones and finally see The Skull, half-hidden in the grass. Pretty purple, yellow, and white flowers are springing through the eye sockets and out from between the grinning teeth, life and death careening into one another, the wreckage cumulating in this eerily cheerful display. My heart settles back into my body, though, as I approach and see an ivory snout poking out into the grass. They are cow bones, probably a calf dragged here by the current resident to be disposed of by coyotes. Poor little calf. No more crime scene tape fantasies or intrigue; just something dead. Do the bones smell strange, or is it just the lofty imagination of my hovering mind? It must be my imagination, because these bones are clearly Old Things, half-buried and sun-bleached. When I realize the age of the bones suddenly they seem more peaceful, as if quietly laid to rest in this sun-dappled forest by the brook; as if the little calf has long-since forgiven the coyotes for desecrating its remains. Death is coexisting serenely with the life around it, and I sit nearby to listen to the water and watch the skull-flowers rustle in the subtle breeze.

Old Things are safe things, my floating head tells me.

But New Things are exciting, in a frightening sort of way. I just wish I didn’t have to let go of the safety of the Old Things in order to experience the adventure of the New.

Because I do so love adventures.

Take me on adventures but make me feel safe, too. That’s probably too much to ask of you, but I figured it was worth a try.

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