Hello?

Wednesday afternoon I was felled, without warning, by the Head Cold from Hell. Thursday was a total loss: sleep proved elusive, due to massive quantities of snot and the power sanding of our front porch; I wound up spending most of the afternoon holed up in the bathroom with the vaporizer on & earplugs in, with a thermos of virgin hot toddies and Lucifer's Hammer to keep me company.

When Josie had this cold, she was in bed for a solid week, poor thing -- so I was quite surprised to wake up Friday feeling considerably better. Not well, exactly -- still droopy and stuffy -- but my throbbing headache had subsided, along with the nihilistic conviction that doom is at hand and all our efforts to ward it off are essentially futile. It even seemed possible that a new thought might arise, an interesting connection might be made, a door might open in my head -- if I could just get out of the house.

So I chose a sunny moment, bundled up, and headed out.

I wound up back at Juneau Street Park, thinking the wind might have cleared the spider webs off the path, and I'd be able to explore deeper into the woods. It had, and I did. It didn't take too long to scope out the shape of the hill back there -- just the right hike for a person in my state of semi-recovery.

On the way out I noticed that the heap of artifacts unearthed by the ivy-removal crew had grown since my last visit -- a rusty oil can had been added to the pile, and a few more beer bottles. And a dirt-encrusted blue telephone that I found immensely cheering for some reason.

I guess part of it was casting back to the days when "dialing" the phone actually meant something, remembering the feel of the finger-holes as you pushed the little wheel forward, and the raspy sound it made as it slid back home. Flashing back to the hours I spent fingering that curly rubber cord, the way its spiral could be unwound, reversed, and then restored. The way it tethered you to the wall -- unless your parents were willing to invest in a cord long enough to reach your room. I didn't even care that this whole reverie clearly made me a geezer: Kids today are so spoiled! Why, when I was your age, we had to get up off the couch and walk across the room just to change the channel!

I also wondered where this particular phone had come from, of course, and how long it had lain beneath the ivy and blackberry brambles. Who wrapped that green sparkly pipe cleaner around the cord? Was it always such a delicate sky-blue, or had the sun and rain faded it over time? Did someone toss it into the bushes here because it was busted, or obsolete, or the property of a hostile ex? If we cleaned it up and plugged it in, would it still work?

But I think mostly I just loved the whole notion of this clunky blue phone sitting here in the middle of the woods, waiting for someone to pick it up and make a call.

And as I walked away, I couldn't shake the feeling that it was about to ring.