Nonverbal Communication

For my entire career until two months ago, I worked in an office where I knew everyone and there were never more people in the office than I could count on my fingers. It has been a long time since I spent any significant amount of time in proximity to a large group of people whom I do not know very well, but see on a very regular basis. I encounter strangers all the time in public, but those encounters are a constant stream of new faces whom I likely will never see again. I think the last time I spent a large amount of time amongst a fairly static group of virtual strangers was in college. I had forgotten what that is like.

I am amazed at how much information I can draw about my coworkers while knowing next to nothing about them. The way they carry themselves and their mugs of coffee and stacks of papers; the way they peel their yogurt lids at their desks and talk to clients on the phone and pick misfed sheets of paper out of the copier all communicate so much information about who they are. In these chance and brief encounters, I already know who I would like and not like, who could be a friend, and to whom I should give a wide berth.

I have heard that the vast majority of communication is nonverbal, and believe that to be true. Yet it is a lesson that keeps repeating itself afresh, as if a new revelation. The last time I remember noticing the depth of nonverbal communication was when my children were babies and our bonds- some of the strongest I have ever forged- formed wordlessly. This new environment has given me a similar reminder of how much we learn of each other from the simplest of actions.

I treasure the experience of perceiving people wholly in this way. Because it happens wordlessly, it bypasses my rational faculties and taps into a heart-level understanding. It reminds me of getting up in the middle of the night in a strange place and using my hands to find my way to the bathroom in the dark: I have all the faculties needed to do it, but find it strange not to use the sense I normally employ for the task. Just as my body, robbed of its sight, finds a new way to navigate in the dark and thus comes to know the space in a new way, so my soul, in the absence of words, navigates this new world devoid of the conversations that normally narrate each human encounter, and in so doing finds a new way of knowing people. It makes me feel more whole.

Map-making

I've spent well over 15 years living in the Buffalo area now. I moved into a little apartment in the city with my best friend when I was 20, and have since lived in two different suburbs. I used to work in Williamsville and now downtown. So the paths I trace in my daily commute have shifted around the area. And in my comings and goings to social events, races and work functions over this expanse of time, I've explored most sections of this area to some extent.

I've always found it interesting how, when you are familiar with an area, you still aren't sure how everything connects until you've seen all of the parts. There may be an entry ramp you've driven by thousands of times, but you never knew where all those people funneling into your partially shared commute were coming from until suddenly, a trip takes you out of your usual course one day and you find that you yourself are one of those people traveling that hitherto unknown path. There is a moment of delight upon realizing that you've made a new connection, that the map in your brain has put a name to one more road. And sometimes making a single small connection of that sort results in linking up two well-known areas in your mind and thereby seeming to double the size of the map. It is similar to what happens when we find the single piece of a jigsaw puzzle that links together two sections we had been working on as separate projects into a whole. That one small connection has a multiplying effect on our sense of mastery.

I am now in my late 30's and this seems to be a period in life where I have made enough small seemingly independent maps in my brain- mental representations, rubrics- that I have long labored over with the misconception that they were separate projects when in fact, they were different sections of a single geography. My small plodding work in separate endeavors are finding their linkages to one another in flashes of discovery which I find surprising and delightful. For instance, this blog has been a creative outlet, a side project, and the only thing I've felt I had enough time to work on in the way of creative writing. My running combines the need for a meditative state with the feeling of physical accomplishment. My job provides a whole host of satisfying experiences but mostly I enjoy the chance to put my writing to utilitarian ends and to be able to observe, from a wonderfully limited vantage point, the life stories of fascinating people from all over the world. All of this is fodder which provides me with creative material, and it is all coming together.

Goddamit, I need to write a novel. Shit.

Understory

Somewhere in the understory of our young forest, an animal recently found a secluded corner in which to breathe its last. The smell emanating from that quarter of the lot tells its own story; it reeks of death, of the earth's indifferent approach to reclaiming the elements that a spirit once borrowed from it. While we can pinpoint the area where the body is based on the stench, the growth there is impenetrably thick. And so this creature found a place in which it could walk through the mortal veil almost without a trace, leaving behind only the most ethereal substance: its scent.

I have always been fascinated by the animal habit of hiding when death is near. And I've felt its first stirrings in myself: once when I was choking, I walked away to a room where I could not be seen to have my near death experience in private. It was a counter-intuitive response. You really don't want to be alone in a room when you can't speak and seriously need help from another person. But there I found myself doing it, without thinking. It was instinctual.

There's something profound about the universal instinct to withdraw from this world quietly, to leave behind our mortal shell in a place where it cannot be found; to transform our bodies into no more than a scent on the wind and float away.

What Surprises

Another spring, and you are still a child.
This year I find myself walking behind
You in our circle round the pond,
Your hiking boots half covered by your night gown--

Finding dandelions gone to seed
And sucking in our breath on the count of three
To blow the perfect circle to the ground,
Then finding more around

Until we pause beneath a tree that's dropped its buds
And walk the circle finding where they fell,
The white half trodden petals getting crushed
Beneath our efforts to believe them well.

And when we come full circle I'm surprised
To hear myself urging you to go inside
While you are always asking for one more time
And though that's what my heart seeks, I deny it.

Wrestling

All of the possible pasts and futures
Wrestle for sway with the flesh
The way angels once wrestled with men,
Testing them not for the truth, which they can't see,
But for the heart's agility,
Living, as it does, with partial knowledge
Of what could have been,
What is infinitely possible,
And what coherent narrative demands.

The flesh that withstands this inquiry
Inevitably emerges with an injury--
As Jacob limped after the angel touched his hip
And yet rejoiced that he survived,
So we must strive to bear up properly
Under the weight of what we'll never fully see.

Thresholds of Vulnerability

For each of us, our final act in this life will be to step across a threshold into a world of which we know nothing. 

There are many moments during this life in which we give over a part of ourselves to preparing for that final act. Often we do so in moments of reflection, or by helping a loved one to make that journey, or simply noticing how much we have aged, how far we feel from our beginnings on this earth.

One way I find myself unexpectedly preparing for that last leap is in stepping into the unknown in this life, in leaving behind a comfortable but stagnant situation in order to take a risk in embracing a complete unknown.  

Every time we cross a threshold in this life into an uncertain future and embrace it with all of our vulnerability, we are readying our souls for the final journey in which we must do precisely that. 

To Have

We are currently in the process of negotiating a lease agreement with a company that plans to build a cell tower on the far corner of our land, near the highway. I hired a land use attorney to help negotiate fair terms and have stayed engaged in the dialogue between the attorney and the representative of the cell tower company. It has become clear, over the (months long) course of negotiations that what the cell tower companies present to landowners initially as a proffered lease is an incredibly stilted set of terms that will operate in favor of the company and subject the landowner to ridiculous liability in the event of any problems. But apparently a lot of landowners hear that they'll get a check every month from the company as soon as they start building the tower, and just sign on the dotted line without challenging any of the terms. (It *is* a pretty sweet deal; you get paid monthly for doing a whole lot of nothing).

I found it intriguing, too, how we were able to work out some more favorable terms. For certain (really stilted) clauses in the lease, the cell tower company actually had stock alternative clauses that were much more fair and which they were willing to substitute, no questions asked, as soon as we inquired. But we had to ask.

Seeing how these companies operate makes me feel so awful for people who don't know better than to just sign these leases without protecting themselves. And it also made me think about the way that business and legal transactions are often designed to punish those who are uneducated or lack the means to decipher and challenge the potential outcomes of what is being offered. Unless you know how to ask the right questions (or hire someone who does), you get the worst possible terms. Our system gives more to those who already have much and takes away from those who already lack.