Blue Blazes
Ever have that feeling: "what in blue blazes just happened?" Me, too.
The truth is, I avoid talking with strangers every chance I get. These days, even random conversation feels risky. I never know when I’ll get tangled in someone else’s intractable ideas.
But one winter day, that’s exactly what happened, and what a gift it was.
Give yourself five minutes to listen.
An Afterword
Just before the man peddled off, while we stood there looking at the field, he told me a story about a bike trip he’d taken to Crater Lake. He told me how he’d seen something like a blue flame deep in the water, and seeing it had melted something in him.
“You know that saying: what in blue blazes?” he asked. “Well, I think that’s what it means.”
I didn't realize that "There are more . . ." quote from Hamlet is the most quoted until I googled it. Poor Shakespearian scholar that I am, I thought you stretched credulity with this serendipitous moment. Now that I know it is so widely quoted, the story makes perfect sense. The rural West is a world of milagros that unfolds beyond our reason making the quote itself then, a metaphor for the lost memory of a mountain that existed in the mind the cyclist. Beautiful production of a quiet moment of fear turned into catharsis. The piano track totally caught me off guard, however. Like rum in your morning coffee, it added wonderfully to the tale.
I feel your sense of fear - the unexpected cyclist in the snow, his broken boot, the mud, and maybe the oatmeal on his collar. And then he asks, "Could I have had a vision?" His question and his blue/grey eyes so similar to yours ease your sense of fear. And then simultaneously quoting "There are more things in heaven and earth than you dream of in your philosophy," brings your common humanity home to nestle in. NICE! And the piano? Barb? Very nice.