Feeling Gravity's Pull

are we supposed to take all this
greed and fear and hatred seriously?
it’s like watching dust settle
it never changes
it’s too consistent

mercy is not consistent
it’s like the wind
it goes where it will.
mercy is comic, and its the only thing
worth taking seriously
T BONE BURNETT, “THE WILD TRUTH”

Aug. 11, 2000
9:30 a.m. My little brother gets married tomorrow. I navigate Atlanta’s rush hour for an early morning, tri-monthly hair cut.

10:15 a.m. I leave the “hair designer.” My plane leaves at 11:40. Plenty of time. Might as well save a few bucks and take the train.

10:40 a.m. The parking deck is full. I’ll just park in the mall. True, I’ve recently had my car towed for leaving it overnight at another mall, but I’m late and others are doing it.

10:45 a.m. On my way up the escalator, I see the partially empty deck on the other side of the station. Oh, well. I’ll call John (the grad student staying at my house) and ask him to retrieve the car. “Want to wait while I look for the spare key?” “No, if you can’t find it, I’ll just take my chances.”

11:40 a.m. I step off of the train and into the airport terminal. Unfortunately, my plane left on time. I call my parents to let them know I’ll be late for the rehearsal dinner.

Aug. 15, 2000
10:00 p.m. A lay-over in Memphis. I call John to make sure my car is at home. I shouldn’t have taken my chances.

11:15 p.m. I board MARTA and take it to its endpoint at the mall.

Aug. 16, 2000
12:30 a.m. I’m at the mall. No car. ARGH!!! Why didn’t he call me to tell me he couldn’t find the keys? Why didn’t I call? Why did I leave my car here in the first place? Idiots, both of us. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

It’ll be 2 a.m. before I get home. I’ve got to find the material for the training I’m conducting in the morning, not to mention review it. And between those classes and my evening M.B.A. classes, I’ll have to impose on someone to rush me over to who-knows-where to pick up my car, where I’ll fork over spare cash I don’t have. I haven’t even bought my brother’s wedding gift yet. You have a year, right?

Oh, and apparently John broke his arm or hand or some other part(s). That’s why he couldn’t just give me a ride. Now I’ll have to go out of my way to be nice or helpful. And I really just wanted to engage in some passive aggression. He probably planned it this way, the manipulative SOB.

1:45 a.m. After a change of trains at 5 Points, I arrive in Decatur. The buses have stopped running; there are no taxis in sight.

I suddenly see one driving away but only wave half-heartedly. I’ll just walk the two miles home. I’m not going to bother friends; I don’t want to call and wait on a taxi. I want to walk. I want to stew, foment, vent to myself. And maybe cool down. Besides, it’ll make a better story to tell and will pack more wallop into the guilt trip I’ll eventually lay on John.

2:15 a.m. Out of the square. Across the tracks. Past Agnes Scott College. It’s funny how much more pronounced these hills and curves seem when you’re walking home at 2:00 in the morning, carrying luggage. Every step takes me closer to my ’hood, where even my best friends are uncomfortable leaving their cars parked on the street. It’s never bothered me much, but I’m more conscious of the neighborhoods I’m passing through now.

2:30 a.m. My backpack and duffel bag are brimming with stuff. Heavy stuff. I’m dangling the backpack off one arm, carrying the duffel in the other and rotating burdens from arm to arm every few feet.

2:45 a.m. I am dog-tired, sticky from the sweat and crabby if not embittered. I should have just called a cab. Why can’t one just happen by and pick me up? I’m tempted to pray for such, but I’m too pervicacious to allow that. I’m wallowing. And then there’s the ambivalent turmoil—my tendency to discount most theories of divine action in the physical world, and my reluctance to fully hold to that.

I think of Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies. I want one of those. A little grace, a minor miracle. Someone to pull over out of sheer kindness, out of a little inner nudge, and offer a ride. I’ve read those stories; I heard them growing up. But I don’t experience them. Deep down, I don’t believe in them. For all my humanistic Christianity, I see the world as a cold, isolated place where people—at least the ones around me—don’t feel nudges. We might respond to sledgehammers and Flannery-style shouts. But for the most part, we seem caught in the impersonal forces of progress; we’re driftwood in the currents.

I guess it’s not so much a matter of belief as of experience. I simply don’t experience them. Or if I do, I don’t recognize them. Maybe I’m too safe; too isolated. Maybe I’m sending out only half-intended non-verbal signals to give me space—a grace-dampening vacuum. Maybe we all think we’re respecting each other’s wishes. Maybe I don’t experience and believe because I’m just not open to them.

I look up from my ruminations to see the taillights of a car cresting the hill in front of me. The car I heard on the periphery of consciousness moments before. An in-service taxi.

At that, I drop my bags and laugh. There went grace, passing me by. I wasn’t looking for it and didn’t see it coming. I was too self-absorbed to notice it when it was here. And when it was still in sight, on its way out, I was too proud and self-conscious to flag it down—to admit my need and go all out to get help.

My subsequent steps are much lighter. Especially when I remember after a few steps that my backpack has wheels. I pull out the handle, place my duffel bag on the backpack and proceed up the hill. Maybe this is all the grace I need for tonight.