So Close to Home

http://polaroid41.com/so-close-to-home/

Monday, December 21st, 2020 - 9:09pm.

I’ve started this ‘Polaroid’ several times over the last couple of months, but have had a hard time pulling it together. Pieces of it have appeared in posts that I published in October and November, but I’ve been dancing around this one, afraid or unable to look it right in the eye. But here I am, trying again, moving toward the discomfort.

Here goes:

As I wrote in my post titled ‘Eyes Wide Open,’ the goal of publishing every week has moved me to become extra aware, to notice little moments, write them down and see if maybe they’ll turn into a ‘Polaroid.’ Marc, the co-creator of this project, and I call these little buds of ideas ‘scoubidous.’ This is not a reference to that mystery solving cartoon dog of our childhoods, but rather the French name of the braided friendship bracelets made with four strands of plastic string. The image is borrowed from Alexandre Vialatte, who published nearly 900 weekly articles over a period of 20 years for ‘La Montagne’ newspaper. The good man must have become very good at keeping his eyes and ears open for a story. Vialatte reportedly called these buds of ideas ‘scoubidous,’ referencing the bracelet and the way that once you get the four strands and the first few knots in place, the rest will follow. So, ‘scoubidous.’ I am officially on the lookout for ‘scoubidous,’ the little moments that stop me in my tracks and make me feel something, that make me think.

For a few weeks in October we had a friend’s dog come to stay with us and one rainy evening around 8pm I took him down for a walk after dinner. When I opened the front door of our building I was met with bright blue lights reflecting off glistening pavement. Immediately, alarm bells went off in my mind. Ambulances, four of them, but they weren’t hurrying, they weren’t going anywhere. One ambulance not going anywhere might be a good sign, it might mean that in fact the emergency wasn’t such an emergency after all. But four ambulances not going anywhere means the emergency was too great, that it’s too late in fact to rush off and save the day. I stood there at a distance willing the ambulances to roar to life, urging them silently, ‘Go! Hurry! Rush off and save them!’ The longer I stood there in the blue blinking lights and the longer those ambulances stayed put, the further my heart sank.

I saw them pull a sheet over the stretcher and solemnly load the vehicle. I turned away not wanting to invade the privacy of the moment, praying that I’d misread the scene, that the sheet didn’t mean what I knew it meant.

Later that night I couldn’t shake the sadness and worry lodged in my chest. I googled up the name of our street plus the word ‘accident’ and searched for links less than 24 hours old. Sure enough, I found information on a fatal accident between a cyclist and a motorcycle. Someone lost their life on their way home. I thought of the phone calls being made, I thought of the cyclist’s mother and how this was probably the worst night of her life. I tried to offer up some comfort into the universe, some healing to their hearts, even if I didn’t know their names or anything about them.

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Polaroid photo and full text available at: http://polaroid41.com/so-close-to-home/