The Mirror

The Mirror part 1: The Battle of Smallville & Beyond

There is no sound.
No shattering rotor-blades or crumpling metal fuselage as the helicopter crashes on the other side of the block
No crescendo of automatic rifle fire, blasting out, only to die a quickly diminishing death as the soldiers firing those guns are killed
The yellow flower remains silent.
Motionless
Unconcerned with the bee rooting its head deeper into the short yellow petals
Uninterested in the man contemplating his situation as he stares at the flower with his mind divided between two places:
Past and Future
For the present has been captured by yellow thoughts:
Insurmountable odds
Anxiety
Fear
All of it made dispiritingly worse by a rapid escalation in his run of bad-luck
An escalation miraculously halted as it reached death's precipice as the bright yellow flower waved at him
An attention grabbing wave produced by a bee stopping for a snack
Bright yellow motion signaling to him as he crouched-down to peek around the corner to see the battle raging on Main Street
Where
Instead of war, he saw the flower's waving motion
It was as if the bee was his third-base coach
A coach yelling at the runner to:
STOP!
And so I stopped
A mind full of snowballing despair suddenly draining-out upon first-sight of its bright yellow circle of stubby petals
Flower's face warmly lit by the sun over my shoulder
This close to the flower, the Dandelion shines in portrait focus, while the flower's background remains as an out-of-focus backdrop of old concrete stairs
A crumbling and pitted showcase highlighting the flower's ability to distract attention from the dandelion's secret weapon
The power of its root
Evolution enabling the plant to squeeze through the narrowest of gaps so it may find soil and water
For nature knows, opportunity does not always knock on a door which opens wide 
Sometimes opportunity is the tiniest of cracks
Whereas, other times, opportunity's door opening moment is balanced precariously, not on the narrowness of the opportunity but on fate's fickle fortunes
And today, opportunity's variables are squeezed tight by the narrow opening between two Smallville blocks separated by a three-way intersection
And
The fickle fortunes of war.  
So much so that now, thoughts of war and the narrow path I must travel beg me to rethink this opportunity's balance of risk versus reward
An assessment I tried to calculate a block further back
A moment when the opportunity to sneak a peek at the battle on Main Street became a near life experience
A second in time when ducking away way as a burst of stray bullets ricocheted down the alley and smacked into the dumpster I was hiding behind, highlighted embarrassingly slow reflexes
That it was luck who dodged those bullets should have been all I needed to experience to know it was time to turn around and run away
But having nothing to run away to, I ran along to try again
Running a parallel course to the battle happening on Main Street
From a distance an observer may have thought I was stalking the fight
Waiting for an opportunity to intervene
But the truth is:
I have always run on parallel time.
Life was always something that seemed to be happening a block away from where I was
Today though, my parallel path had finally proved itself to not be perfectly parallel
For today my life has reached its intersecting point
A decisive moment where I must break character
Today is finally the day where I must make the hard choice
Today is the day where I must fight for what I have
If only...
If only I had the courage to stand my ground and fight for... Anything... My life may have lead to a different moment
And so, it is as it always is, fighting is just one step I cannot will my to take
Fear of violence looks at the flower
And as I look at the flower I think of what I have that is worth fighting for
A search which enables me to feel the emptiness that has grown in my like a cancer
An emptiness which wants to just wait here for the war to go away
Spirit silently hoping this day spares my truck.
It wasn't supposed to be like this...
Today was supposed to be a good day
For, today, was supposed to go according to the plan
That I have embraced my bane, planning, means today's vexation is all my fault
Deep in the back of my mind an old refrain reminds me of where today went wrong...
Plans
They always seem like a good idea...
Plans
When you are thinking about your...
Plans
Like I was all week
Planning on today
A day starting with not only a plan, but good-luck
The good-luck of pulling up to Sears and finding an open parking space
For I had business with Sears
Yes, I also had business at the credit union
But my last stop was going to be at Sears
And since Sears was on Main Street, that meant lunch at Burger Mac's was only a few blocks away
It was a good-plan made well-planned by the need to use my truck's clutch as little as possible until the mechanic could fit my plan into his plan for Wednesday.
An orchestrated plan made perfectly-timed by beautiful weather:
Not only was it, not raining, it was not even as hot as a July Kansas day should be
Everything was lined-up:
Go to the credit union;
Receive approval for my consolidation loan;
Walk back to Sears to keep my account in good graces;
Grab a celebratory burger;
Maybe get a haircut;
Or, perhaps, check out the thrift store as an excuse for walking around town...
It was going to be the perfect day.
All of my dominoes were in order...
Until
The first domino, the domino at the bank, fell the wrong way.
Sitting at the loan officer's desk
Trying to think of a second argument for money
Finding only the memory of my Great-Uncle as he lectured me on how, in his church, today, Saturday, was the original Sabbath
A day Man was supposed rest
A day Man was supposed to count his blessings, not his money
Did not matter to him that pagans wanted to move today to Sunday so they could make two gods happy at the same time
He was old school
He was an immovable object held upright by an irresistible force.
Of course I thought I knew better
Having taken the time to read about other cultures' ideas about how right was done; my world knowledge lapped my Great-Uncle's several times over
And so
Sitting across from the bank's loan officer
I knew I had valid points to argue
Like how a guy, in a jam, should receive some leniency with both Karma and credit-scores
Especially when your financial state is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy
Like mine was
Formulation of my arguing plan failing to pass the smeared:
"REJECTED"
Stamped in red ink across the top on my application
That the loan officer didn't even care enough to stamp his disapproval with care meant adjusting his attitude about Karma wasn't going to be a key factor in today's play
Because clearly, what is at play, today, is my accumulating mountain of debt for which fate had come to collect.
Stunned by the turn of events
It took an alien space ship flying over the bank for me to look up from my rejection
The noise's odd pulsing vibration was just too weird to be a regular plane engine
And its passing speed was too fast to not be flying
The loan officer actually got up and looked out the window; maybe hoping I would take the hint and get out of his little space so he could discuss business with a profitable customer
But no one, did anything, until a guy, who was outside smoking and so got to watch it fly over, ran in with a clear understanding of how bad the day was going to get
A panic he spread to everyone in the bank as he yelled at his wife to stop gossiping with the teller
The other teller actually screamed as he finished his story by telling everyone that lunatic alien, General Zod, had just flown over
Everyone was freaked-out.
But me.
I already felt dead.
It wasn't until the grain elevator exploded that I started thinking about how I may lose my truck as well as my Sears installment planned washer and dyer, along with my clutch repair money
A feeling of dread that got my head back in the game.
Sure...
I had options
I could:
Run-away then cross my fingers that a truck with only liability insurance would still be there when the war stopped
Or
I could get back to my truck so I could drive away and make it to another day
How to get to the start of my Plan-A was really my only consideration
Speed was my first choice
But not being a long-distance runner, and wearing a pair of work boots, killed the idea of running within a block
A slow jog was seemed good enough until planes came in and shot-up Main Street as if it was full of Russian tanks
That the Air Force was busy shooting up the far end of Main Street was the day's only good news
But it was news that got worse as I got closer to Main Street
Bad news was a moving battle that pushed me into taking a longer diagonal line
Zig-ing and Zag-ing down the square blocks that is Smallville's attempt to conform to small town standards 
From there, the Air Force versus alien brawl turned into a scattered fight that seemed to occur in many places simultaneously
The lull lulling me into having hope
A hope helicopters dashed as they came in low
Landed on the other side of Main Street
Then took off
No doubt disembarking soldiers
I was close.
But being a block East of where the action seemed about to occur, I couldn't tell if I was too close until the helicopters circled back
Running a parallel line to Main Street
Then stopping to open fire with their mini-guns
It was like putting your ear to a chainsaw.
The noise overrode everything
The battle of Smallville had reached a fever pitch
And all I could do was take a knee
Letting the buildings lining Main Street absorb the gunfire and what seemed to be a few swinging wrecking balls 
That the deli's large window was papered over to hide its vacancy was no comfort
But
With no way forward
And no intention on running away
I stopped as the bee landed.
Laughing silently as the little bee showed me how, not giving a fuck, was done.
With my race feeling lost so close to the finish line, I could feel the moment's weight begin to build
It was as if I had arrived at a game deciding decision
A responsibility I had felt before
A feeling letting me know exactly what this situation was:
This wasn't war
This was baseball
And I was a base-runner stuck on third-base
The player in scoring position who needed to score this run to put the game into extra innings, but with two outs and two strikes at the bottom of the ninth, I also knew there would be no undoing this out
To make matters worse
Being stuck on third meant scoring a run was contingent on what the other players were going to do
I was in a good position
But
Powerless
So I stared at the flower...
Finding my thoughts derailed by its warm yellow glow
Thoughts which have stumbled on a question on how it can be both bright and beautiful, but had somehow remained invisible, until now...
Rambling mind asks it out loud:
'Flower, when you did it get here?'
I realize I have no idea, because I cannot remember the last time I passed this location
Once, Joe-Beth's Delicatessen was my favorite stop in Smallville
And these old concrete steps lead to a threshold I crossed as many times as my wallet would allow
The cold-cut sandwich was stacked so high Dagwood Bumstead would have been jealous
A sandwich served up by beautiful newlyweds betting their livelihood on the belief that best, was the best course
They were wrong
Of course
Smallville was just too small to support anything other than mediocre.
Farmers, mentally trained by droughts and winters to save money, brought their lunches from home, or ate at old places serving cheap food because that is where the other old people ate 
Young people, having a world of desires to spend their paltry service economy salaries on, spent their money on fast things
Like fast food
Yeah, I was young, but I was also broke.
Having gone fast since I was nine, led me to be exhausted from: Going fast too early
In the race of life, I was the rabbit
Now at twenty-seven, I could finally see the value of a turtle's slow and steady
It was enough of a realization for make the simple plan of hanging on, became my plan
A plan I hoped would allow me to catch a break
Recoup some losses.
Barbershop rumor was the deli-owning couple couldn't make a profit so they moved to try their plan in Metropolis
Now
Hiding in the shadow of their closed business location, I want to believe the couple was just ahead of the curve
In the know
Had the foresight to see Smallville's best days were behind it; and so they simply decided to put Smallville behind them
It is a realization that allows me to see the flower differently than the bee sees it
For the bee sees it as nourishment
But I see the Dandelion as a memorial to Smallville
And maybe to me...