A Winterlude

The cadence of this song has been fitting of my mood as of late...

I survived the holiday season largely by ignoring it. No mean feat when one of the big happenstances in these parts is an outdoor Christmas market and people are constantly wishing you tidings of joy and peace and goodwill toward Man, when, in truth, they don't give two tugs of a dead dog's cock about you. The days came and went. We focused more on Sabina's birthday. It was grand.

I dealt with the fourth anniversary of my mother's death in much the same way, although there were the depressive moments. These, I think, are inescapable. On the day, as has become the custom, I played Sketches of Spain. That night, there was a gypsy folk show playing at the Large Town Hall, where we host community dances and the melodrama. It was cathartic. With my quirk of remembering dates, I noted with some bittersweetness that the tenth anniversary of my grandmother's passing is on the first Friday of next month. Perhaps there is symmetry in that, twisted in its precision. Maybe I am just seeking patterns in the chaos and there are no omens to be found.

It could be it doesn't really matter. They're both dead and have been for years. I rarely deal in absolutes, preferring the beauty of Grey, but dead is dead, and you rarely get the luxury of walking away from that.

Of course, as much as this high mountain place is my paradise; my Kashmir, my Africa, my Shambala, it's not been all sunshine and rainbows and gumdrops and fairies and unicorns. For one, we are still within the thrall of the long dark. Direct sunlight will not grace the House of Owls and Bats for another few weeks yet. Perhaps the long shadow cast by the ridgeline of Mount Pendleton makes us punchy.

Sabina's phone died during our hut excursion. Nothing horrific that could not be replaced upon the return to more civilized environs, but the transfer of information was incomplete; well over one-hundred pictures stay trapped on a device that will no longer turn on. I keep many metaphysical photographs within the walls of my skull. Memories to cherish. Sabina has suffered a form of technological amnesia from which she may never recover.

Despite my luminous field of rampant masculinity; which has been known to get women to spontaneously orgasm and strong men to weep and wet themselves, I do have limits. It's true. One of these is I am not mechanically inclined. Oh, I can cook and carry on one mean philosophical discussion, but I cannot hammer a nail straight on a bet and know next to nothing about automotive vehicles.

Well, I know how to put fuel in one end and point it where I need to go. Most often a trailhead. I know if a mechanic says I need blinker fluid he's trying to fuck me. Other than that, I concede my ignorance. Be that as it may, when our local mechanic told us Old Scratch had spun a bearing, I knew nothing good was going to come of this.

Fucking perfect. I need a new engine. In winter. Deep winter. Were this summertime, I'd just be riding my bicycle to obligations and adapting. Long ago, my mother questioned whether or not I was meant to have a vehicle. Such a postulation arouses murder thoughts. Meant means there is destiny and some unseen cosmic force is pulling my strings. The very concept makes me think of my favorite line from the Christian gospels in which Yeshua bin Joseph said;

"Yeh? Fucking eat me!"

I may have paraphrased that...

One of my volunteers has loaned me an extra vehicle in order to get to and from obligations. I owe her dinner at the very least. The wealth Sabina and I possess has never translated into folding pieces of paper; the only tangibility of the blood money from my father's mother all those years back being our getting our one-hundred thirty-four year old miner's cabin-turned-Victorian- cottage--a wise investment, I'm regularly told. Most of the time, this does not bother me.

We will get through this. It just won't be pretty nor cheap, like some dates I've had in the past. I know and accept this.

Occasionally, my reptile zen has been likened to blind optimism. Nothing could be further from the truth. The First Noble Truth is the realization of suffering; spotting onto the fact this is a universe filled with unremitting chaos, horror, death, disease, murder, bullets, blood, bombs, spies, cobwebs, gravedust, razorblades, and maggots. The good is something that should be savored, for it is so precious, like rubies and glass beads. To my mind, only a masochistic idiot continually dwells upon the negative. Pessimists get me to think of a line from the graphic novel of  The Crow, before Hollywood fucked it up-yes, yes, I realize mainstream 'Merica might not have been ready to see the anti-hero shoot morphine into his jugular, but T-Bird was the main villain and he was black!-because there were so many good lines from the story that weren't used in the film;

"Stick the knife in. Deeper. Twist it..."

Snow falls gently outside. It's cold, but not as cold as some places out east, and, when held in comparison to the equatorial regions of Europa, they're downright tropical. It is still beautiful here. A beauty, which hits me between the eyes daily, if not hourly. I live where others come to vacation. It's not always easy; cars break down and people break down and other things break down too. Still, this is mine; I get to hike, cook, and tell stories. I live with a lovely woman of whom we act as one another's balance points. I wouldn't trade this for godhood.



Not so much a song as a mantra...