Who Are You
Plugged the aux cord into my iPhone (which Verizon is daily telling me is old and I deserve the new 15), lowered both front windows in my old CRV since the temp was a luscious 64°, and eased out into the dark ink of 4 a.m. with a slight pause at the stop sign near the entrance to our neighborhood to press PLAY. Then Roger Daltrey magically raised his working class swaggery voice—Who are you/who, who, who, who…
Great song. Even better question. Who are you?
I drove fast to work, faster than the limit. I could count on one hand the cars I passed, so basically just me and God on the highway. Maybe God saw and thought Easy, pal. Or maybe God saw and said Fly, man, fly. Then again, maybe God watched me while God’s thoughts were more focused on children dying in Gaza, and Georgia. I like to think God still saw me with one of his ten thousand eyes and thought Fly, man…(I’m typing the word fly but remember, I’m driving a 2013 CRV).
“Eminence Front” begins.
As I fly/drive, I chew on an article I’ve tried to read once a month for the last couple of years—"Twitching With Twight" by Mark Twight. The story of how I stumbled upon Mark and his words is a crooked little path for another day. I’ll just say he has a face in the fitness space, but his heart is about the depths, a.k.a., the soul. He’s a searcher with a distaste for rules and excuses, and he knows his way around words and sentences. I’m in. I find him trying to tell me something, not sell me something, and that’s a seismic difference these days.
Why once a month? Well, that article is the kind, at least for me, that stirs the pot, rattles me awake essentially with Daltrey’s question - Who are you? I need, no, I want someone or something to tase me regularly with that question. To keep me on the search. Because, as Walker Percy wrote
“The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.”
About five minutes out from the UPS complex, another song starts. Slow, distinct piano plucks. Then a kettledrum followed by the crash of a cymbal. Then more piano, rolling, falling on purpose. “Love, Reign O’er Me.”Ooh, God, I need a drink of cool, cool rain.
I keep flying.
Asking.
Searching.