LONG NIGHT OF ANOTHER KIND

On my routine way out the routine doorway to routine work this routine morning, as I closed the heavy dark-brown paneled routine door in that part of the routine, the corner of my eye noticed something non-routine, something that was - how shall I say it - different, something that broke the obsessive continuity of the quotidian.

Nature loves to do that. Some kind of reality insistence was being foisted upon me, something that was on the door and that resembled the door, but that could not be of the door, as my eye corner - which gazes always outside the routine - had insisted. This kind of thing is meant to grab your attention and save you from a conventional bout of zombosis, if you have any attention left.

It will snap your head and focus your eyes, make you lean in closer, make you say What the fenk? To a door, for godsake, all of which I did, excepting a letter or two in the last part. There was a lump on the door. A brown lump. A granular, mottled lump, doorlike in color and texture but not conforming to the panel molding. It shattered my zombie mode into a random number of little pieces that lay scattered invisibly on the ground. I stood there for a take, then hunkered to look more closely at this door tumor. As I got closer and put on my glasses I realized it was staring at me.

I found myself staring into the two onyx eyes of a large, dark toad, in whose mind I was of no importance whatever. He was precisely where he had decided to be. He had climbed up onto what he didn't care was a door, conformed his color to that of the wood (in the night!) and there he was, Jabba the Toad, fully in charge, focused and ready for the day when I zombied out in the grip of routine and found a chance to step out of mode, for which moments we should all be thankful, that's why we love nature so-- not just because of her beauty or wisdom, vast as they are, or because a few of her countless secrets led to the miracle of tv and suchlike artificial distractions, but because she rescues us even from ourselves, breaks the zombie spell, brings us back again and again to where we actually are, if any of us is still paying attention.

As Jabba indicated by his austere presence, there ARE other ways of living and being, and we should be aware of them just in case, the zomboid way being nowhere near the only way; the ways are countless; but then again, he who speaks of the way etc. In any case, you never know when we might need a big cosmic door of a kind to hang out on throughout a long night of another kind; besides, the cool shall inherit the earth.