smile

I had a meeting this week that had to have been arranged in another time -- a gift from the universe to help me out of the kind of day my mama warned me about.  It begins like all bad days and leads to what I always do.  Lace up, pick my Pandora mood (jack johnson usually works), and slog it out.

It felt right immediately, all the energy previously tied up in resolving the currently unresolvable now  diverted into the effort required just to pick them up and put them down.  And so I go my own way down the trail, alone, outrunning my looping thoughts.  I am surprised at myself when I realize that I am smiling at my unknowing appointment as I run toward where he sits on a bench at the trail's edge.  It happens before I have a chance to reconsider, the smile is returned, we recognize we are here and now is the time for our conversation.

We discuss, however briefly, Casimir Pulaski, Asian history, population density, Schopenhauer, oak trees, Great Lakes Brewing Company.  Or maybe we just stand in the slanting sunlight as the falling leaves float over our heads to their own meeting with lake in front us.  I rest on my right leg, right hand on hip, left leg extended.  His legs are crossed, elbow draped over the back of the bench, smoking cigarette held loosely between fore and middle fingers.  We gaze for an indeterminate pause over the wind-rippled water.  The leaves skip unevenly on the surface before coming to terms with their return to mineral and liquid.  It is a short stretch of prescribed infinity that will never appear in any history.  I turn to leave and he offers "You'll be just fine.  It's your smile that brings you here ... your spirit" and I say, "yes, we are pair."  As I turn to make my way, this cosmic messenger smiles one more time and makes for me a sign of peace and I remember this from Mother Theresa which I had read only hours earlier:  Peace begins with a smile.  I am gone with nothing more than an impression, which is more than enough.