Humanism Finds a Place at Our Table

Just published this on Dallas Morning News
Humanism Finds a Place at our Table

Summoned to jury duty, wondering if peers were up to task

Just posted this article in Dallas Morning News:

http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/latest-columns/20151021-diamond-wilson-summoned-to-jury-duty-wondering-if-my-peers-were-up-to-task.ece

For George

He is one of the few people who sees life from thirty feet in the air. His forearms are darkened from long days at the stern, and he carries the salt-water breeze in his eyes, even when he looks away from the ocean. Waves slap the belly of his boat, but he stands unjolted, for he is not only part of the ship, but its heart.

He leans against the prow with his arms bent, fingers loosely intertwined, and with a Carleton curled between his lips. The wind teases the smoke out into the open where it gets lost among the turquoise hills and valleys. 

As he looks over this cool desert from his perch, he can spot the spiny metal strip that lurks below the surface. It is the backbone of a monster who, face down, engorges itself on the blood of the earth that lies miles deep into the ocean floor. As fierce as any known by seafaring Greeks, this underwater monster, the ocean rig, would shred his boat if he ventured too close to where the thirsty metal breathes.

These waters have shown him many great and terrible things, but none truer than a reflection of himself. Indeed, when he looks into the waves, the man he sees there is noble, honest, and ever-growing with the tide. Mirrors show the man only as he is today, but the ocean...the ocean conjures both the past and the future in its dimensions and creates an outline of the soul.

He flicks the butt of the cigarette into the water, straightens, and walks away. The time has come to find his place on the shore, to quit the space where birds fly and join his feet again to the gravity that calls us all. He looks to the water and it winks at him. Of course he'll be back. His home address isn't in street names and numbers, but shifting coordinates of degrees as he chases the sun as it dips daily into his ocean.

The Bridge

His every footstep landed heavy, choices stamped in cement too hardened to notice them. Below him snaked thousands of blank eyes, souls rushing through life at the pace of heavy traffic. The melody of rubber against concrete silenced the dull thud of progress as he walked the tightrope between now and his destiny. 

He looked at his feet as he walked, the only flash of color in this world of gravel gray. See, the sun was shining brightly that day, but he shut his eyes against the glare instead of embracing the light; he found its brilliance to be as blinding as its absence at night. And onward he plodded, his heartbeat the drum line, the shuffling of his feet keeping rhythm in this fatal dance. 

A bird soared above him, stamping her shadow upon the ground a little brokenly, like frames in a moving picture. As he walked, two semicircles fogged up the lower half of his glasses, proof of the warmth of his ruddy cheeks. Broken glass, green and silver shards of last night, littered his path and he crunched over it, half hoping it would hold fast rather than give way to his undecided stride.

He reached the center of the bridge and stopped. The swooshing of drivers whizzing by was perfectly balanced here, a comfort he rarely found elsewhere in his life. A horn blared somewhere in the sea of painted metal below him, pop can sized cars with tiny angry drivers. A man in a crane with a highlighter yellow hat shaded his eyes against the sun as he shouted orders to those below him, words that couldn't swim above the city sounds.

He placed his hands on the railing and felt decision weighing in his gloved hands--cold, hard, and definite. He pulled one leg over the rail, then the other. In that moment between rock and air, he never felt so unsure of anything in his life. Irony laughed at him holding on so tight right before he had planned to let go. The wind pushed at his back and black words warning of icy bridges scolded him as he felt his feet slip on the cold metal. 

His heart was beating faster now, a dance with steps that he couldn't outrun. He saw a finger point up at him from a child on her way to school. Her mother's mouth turned into an "O," and he watched as she covered her daughter's eyes with her hand, a shield blocking his radiating pain. He turned his head to look behind him, but no hand was there to pull him back--only the sun caressing his face, the breeze whispering along his ear, and the stringent railing holding fast on the brink of life and death. 

He wondered if he had it in his heart and in his pride to climb the hardest path back to the other side. If he could live with himself knowing he had almost committed suicide. If could trust himself to live knowing he had chosen it. He saw his own shadow looming far below him, flickering over the hoods and roofs of cars that passed below. In that shadow he saw a coward too afraid to hang on and too afraid to let go.

He had gone that day to the bridge to find balance. To hear the wooshing of cars equal. To have the light behind him and his own shadow before him. Ask anyone who has walked such a tightrope, balance requires great strength. A constant shifting, a fight by the second. He released the grip his right hand held on the bridge. Determined, he swung himself around to face the light and to climb the most difficult four feet of his life. His life.