The intertidal zone

Driving back to Dunedin on Sunday afternoon with music playing in one ear (the pup chewed the other ear’s phone, and the car’s radio speakers stopped working years ago) and my thoughts who-knows-where, I noticed a car running up behind me, with a red and a yellow light flashing on its front.  I looked for police markings or a top-light but there was neither. Who was this prankster trying to intimidate me?

I held my course as I realised what a clever ploy it was, to trick a woman on her own into pulling over on a wide and lonely stretch of road . . . a toy pistol, a threat, and she’d probably hand over her wallet in a flash. I looked at the oncoming traffic. Would any of it stop if I pulled over and jumped out, waving my arms?

At the same time as I finally heard the wee-woo, I saw the driver pointing at the verge. I pulled over and he did too.

For a moment I considered telling the handsome young police officer that I was on my way home from a funeral (true) — but I was feeling far from glum after a rich and happy time with whanau. I suppose I was mildly relieved to see him, too, even if he was telling me off for ignoring him and his siren for so long as I sailed along at 113 kph.

I told him off for creeping me out in his bright green, unmarked car.

I accepted the fine and 20 demerit points without a murmur.

My first-ever speeding ticket.

Clouds stream overhead from north-east to south-west, dissolving and morphing as they go.

Lilies in the tub outside the window have begun to brown and curl and drop their skirts.

The peasgood nonsuch apples cling to their branches and fatten, and silver bean-slivers emerge from fiery flower sheaths.

Clouds, lilies, beans and apples do what they do, no questions asked.

Only humans wonder whether what they’re doing makes any sense. Sometimes, when I’m feeling more than usually sense-less, I come back to what God is reputed in the book of Exodus to have said when Moses asked for his identity: ‘I am that I am’. Another rendering of ‘ehweh‘ is: ‘I shall become who I am becoming.’ And if it’s good enough for God . . .

Perhaps it doesn’t matter whether I choose this course of action or that. Is it possible that, in the way of apples, beans and clouds, the human organism goes inexorably on, growing and auto-correcting until it resembles a well formed . . . human being?

Settle down, puss.