My Bulletin Board

  It's six feet by six feet and has hung over my desk for forty plus years.  Four hundred and eighty some months later,  give or take a few  I seem to have lost somewhere, I haven't taken down anything at all. Layers. Like from a dig. You can follow the evolution of the thumb tack on my bulletin board. A lock from my son's first haircut. My daughter's baby teeth. Even a bumper sticker from Gore Vidal's campaign for senator. An old dog tag. Snap shots. A neighbor's key to her front door. Words that intrigue me: "Force is not justice; Power is not law." Cartoons that tickle me: A seriously spaced  guy sitting in an armchair truly blissed out, a benign but knowing hint of smile. Sheer beatitude. The  caption: "Zerotasking". I think I identified with that one. What else? A goose call. Wild turkey feathers. A campaign button for Senator McCarthy (Clean Gene. Remember?) A United States Marine at eighteen. My first Father's Day card. My Bar Mitzvah napkin. A trinket from a Russian folk dancer. The small American flag my daughter held at her citizenship ceremony. A bird's nest. Three of them. Chotchkies from all over the world, and we haven't even started on my desk and shelves. An Apache tomahawk, for example. Whale's teeth. Gold ore. Enough for now.

So, long about 3 a.m. one morning, I had my feet up on my desk looking at my bulletin board.  Roaming, really. Everybody was asleep. I have no idea why I asked Alexa for choral music, but there it was  softly playing. I like all those voices. So, I'm looking and thinking. How much of this did I really plan out? How much just happened? How much what didn't happen helped what did? How much what you wanted to happen really did happen, except, when it happened, you wished it hadn't. Why? Huh? I really did that? I really was there? Didn't we used to be good friends? 

I dislike the word "journey" because it has a guru twinge to it, but that's what I was looking at: my journey. Except none of it seemed to make any sense. It was all here and there. No pattern. A hodgepodge. A stew of left-overs or a cassoulet? Just a bunch of stuff. Did I say I have a Masai sword and a spirit figure from Siberia? Odds and ends. Driftwood. Pebbles.

It's not really a jigsaw puzzle because none of the pieces fit together, too many stories splattered across that cork universe, always expanding, too many to make sense.Throw it up there and see what sticks. Everything sticks! It's life atomized. My life atomized. I still don't know how I got from then to now, but I can say with absolute certainty: it's been a helluva ride. Too bad I didn't always know it at the time. God, what I must have missed!

                       *************************

The Buddha was sitting under his tree when a horseman came racing by.

        "Where are you going?" asked the Buddha.

        "Ask my horse," answered the rider.

                      **************************