I didn’t need the iteration.
Didn’t need to spend another entire effing day crunched at the computer slogging through endless business emails to realize that changing my job didn’t change anything — I’m still working too many hours for too little pay.
Didn’t need to catch sight of the unchopped wood under the deck, the dry-rotted stairs, the weather-worn railing, the too-bright floodlights in the driveway, the screaming-for-a-fresh-coat-of-paint walls, the shoddy futons, the lightless fridge, the duck-taped screens, or the black mold speckling the bathroom caulking to see how far behind I am in taking care of the house.
Didn’t need to go through the motions of giving myself permission to walk away from the mountains of work undone — the should’ve-finished-it-a-year-ago editing, the blank employment application (for a supplemental teaching post that holds as little promise of creative satisfaction as the post I hold now), the pending correspondence, the overdue updates for my website, my decaying-due-to-neglect novel — didn’t need to walk away from it all just to waste another night indulging in the hollow pleasure of viewing a film I’ve already seen.
Didn’t need the clock pointing out I’d once again let today slip into tomorrow without honoring my daily resolutions to eat better, exercise more and spend a few minutes in meditation.
Didn’t need visions of my old work-place haunting my sleep — didn’t need to see the theatre refurbished, remodeled, revamped, showing itself off to tour groups; didn’t need to watch my erstwhile production manager passing through the austere, mammoth lobby; didn’t need to hear my erstwhile cohort remark, “Yeah, he’s back.” Didn’t need a lousy dream to recognize this real-world dead-end.
I’d got the message the first time. This morning, walking the dog. Just across the street from the house, I found blue jay feathers — pristine, perfect — scattered in the ivy and on the asphalt along with pale tufts of feathery-down and a few chunks of lichen-mottled oak. An incensed adult jay, a parent, maybe, was screeching fury overhead. Screeching and shooting straight and low over the trees like a fighter plane, honing in on another jay, chasing it off.
Death is an omen of rebirth. Sometimes. Not today. Today the omens spoke to me of potential unrealized. Of beauty marred. Of a soul’s song unsung. But it wasn’t the feathers that hit home, that touched the heart of me. It was the portents waiting for me up the hill and around the bend. What I’d failed to read into a young jay’s death I couldn’t miss in the green acorns fallen forever fruitless on the hard, gray road.