Wings over 480

Commuters sail across the 8 lane highway spanning the Cuyahoga valley on a gray Wednesday, in pursuit of the daily bread.

I'll earn mine at Hillside School; it's Joshua's birthday so his Grandma commissioned a storyteller, moi, to celebrate the day. Maintaining speed, direction and safe distance from other drivers, I see a scattered pattern of black birds cruising the morning sky. Then, instantaneously, black wings blend with the massed clouds beyond them, turn black again, flying in a new direction. 'Oh,' says my brain, catching up to my eyes, 'as the birds turn, the angle of their bodies catches the light differently.' The grayscale spectacle captivates me until I break from west bound traffic on my route south.

Something similar happened at practice this week. I left out the last verse of Knight in Shining, going straight to the bridge instead. Wishbone and Walter did not miss a wing beat. Their synchronous rhythm turned with me, a seamless course alteration that is not so uncommon in the music world. But uncommon does not equal unremarkable. I felt a mixture of pride in my bandmates, sheepishness in my lapse and wonder in our common flight.

I've heard it said terrorist attacks in the U.S. changed us from a people of trust to a people of fear. Recently, in brief conversation with President Bush, a scientist said, 'this is killing us.' Foreign scientists who want to attend conferences and students who want to study in the U.S. face months of red tape waiting for visas, then go elsewhere. Their contribution is lost. The researcher is planning a conference in Vancouver because world scientists can plan on getting there.

I wish I could assure myself that our communal path is changing, or predict the inevitability of a course correction. The wings have been black so long now. Maybe there was a wee hopeful sign at Hillside School last Wednesday.

This often happens with an audience in league with live performance. That morning, the kids were a little antsy, chatty, preoccupied with the business of being 4 and learning to listen, take turns, delay gratification. I was a stranger but I had good puppets and an amazing story which drew them in, one by one. Or, truthfully, at some small tipping point, it drew them together and they changed course. Their imagination and curiosity aroused, it seemed they could not fidget or poke or comment impulsively. They absorbed the story and let out 'ahs' in unison. And something else happened which Joshua's grandma noticed. 'You can tell a good storyteller by the way her listeners move closer and closer to her as she tells.' Sure enough, the little bodies were nearly as close to the storyteller as their minds were to the story.

I don't understand the synchronicity that permeates our world. I look to the gray sky, keep my hands on the wheel, my mind on possibilities, my imagination on the uncanny ballet unfurling in the distance.