Found

Perpetually damp.  What could be a great band name is, instead, an army surplus backpack filled with fifty pounds of rocksalt and weights that only dries out in January and February.  Though the canvas may not actually dry out in winter, it may just freeze.  Impregnated with years of sweat and smelling like a Herb Brooks’ hockey team, the pack sits as far from human habitation as is possible in the garage when not in use.

It’s in use this morning, making the laps around the track and up and down the stadium stairs better approximate a climb.  Walking into the wind isn’t so bad, but walking with the wind has the odor hanging like an extra twenty pounds on my respiratory system.  Did we really smell this bad?  It’s no wonder girlfriends were in short supply in high school.

Such are the memories triggered by stimuli when the mind is at rest.  The cardio may or may not cleanse the arteries, but letting the muscles and lungs work helps cleanse the mind.  Until my eye catches a flash of purple lying on the track, sparkling in the morning sun.  A small piece of something, covered in purple sequins.   I pick it up and the mind jolts and lurches back into operation, like a manual transmission abused by someone who hasn’t ever dealt with a third pedal before.  Or like me, when reality intrudes on my groove, as it constantly does.  Mets.          

What is it?  What was it?  Did someone lose it?  Why did I stop to pick it up?

I create a story in my head, because that’s what people do.  It is a fragment broken off of a marching band prop.  I imagine the construction of the prop and its transport to the show.  I imagine how happy the kids and parents were as the band played, and in that happiness, no one noticed the fragment broke off.  It laid there on the track until I found it, and created my happy story for it.

Is any of that true?  Beyond my finding it this morning, who knows?  The happy stories we tell ourselves don’t have to be perfectly true.  Only the unhappy stories you tell yourself or others have to be perfectly true.  I’ve found it best just to stick to the happy stories.

Here’s one.  There are three cities that would like me to be their next CAO.  As I weigh the challenges and opportunities in each and wait for contract drafts, the mind-clearing cardio was helpful, until the purple flash.  Perhaps it is a sign.  It looks like a seashell.  Maybe that means something.  It is purple.  Maybe that is the sign.  Turns out, I’m not big on signs.  Someone once asked my zodiac sign.  I said December.    Metaphors, however, are another story.  Oh, I’ll metaphor you, dawn to dusk.     

That backpack probably even means something.  But I’m not so interested in shouldered weight at the moment.  We all carry what we carry.    

What we find as we amble along is the more interesting topic these days.  Things.  People.  Places.  How they catch your eye (or you catch their eye).  How you interpret them (or they interpret you).  What they mean to you (or you to them).  That’s why I stopped for the purple shiny metaphor. Figuring all that out is the gambit in the days ahead. But here’s the rub; you can’t ever possibly know all that in advance. 

So how do you fill in the gaps between what you know, and what you happily hope?  By trying your best to leave everything and every moment you find, better than you found it. 

Perpetually, positive.