Embracing and Letting Go

A perfect song from a perfect album...

It was me who re-introduced Sabina to the Refreshments. Their debut album, Fizzy Fuzzy, Big & Buzzy, was a staple in my stereo along with Peter Gabriel's Up, anything from Space Team Electra, Bad Brains, and my various African musics. One of our first dates was a Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers-the Refreshments current incarnation, just in case anyone fell asleep there-concert. When Lee caught Sabina kissing me-I tried to stop her, honest-he was very thrilled and no at all surprised. Then again, it played out no one really was.

Roger Clyne is Sabina's boyfriend. She'll ask if he missed her whenever a Refreshments or Peacemakers album is put on. Because of this luminous crush, for the last few years, on the muthafuckingSaturdaybeforeMemorialDay we find ourselves attending the Denver's Day of Rock along the grand bazaar of Sixteenth Street. By the end of the show, Sabina is all excited and giddy having seen her boyfriend, and me, having hung back as far as I could, but still surrounded by far too many people, is ready to kill everyone around me. Even the children.

Especially the children...

I remember my daughter asking me about missing the city. An acquaintance asked me about missing smoking when I mentioned wandering into a cigar and wine shoppe on Sixteenth. It's interesting how interwoven those past things are; the smell of really good tobacco, that palpable energy when walking amongst the monoliths of downtown. Time was I enjoyed both. Sometimes simultaneously. That time is not now, and I find I do not require exposure to either, even if, so many years later, I can still somewhat appreciate them.

***

There was rain and fog and mud. When the sun finally broke through the cobwebbed chains of cloud, it was as if it was in the full force of high mountain summer. I welcome the new season with the embrace reserved for those dear you've not seen in a bit.

The river and seeps roar with force of early runoff. Sabina told me just how far we could get up Grizzly Gulch before snowshoes would be required, and those water crossing might be tantamount to madness without a four by four. Along the road to the ruins of Waldorf, one can make it mile, so it may be weeks yet before those of us who steward the Santiago Mill can reach that ruin. I am edgy to see the outback of the tundra in its summer clothes.

***

I admit it, I've been neurotic about Chevy the last few days. When he doesn't drink as much or eat as fast I worry. Any time his arthritic back-end gives out, causing him to stumble, or worse, fall, I growl, finding I am not emotionally ready to deal with another dog collapsing. He and Whistler grew up together and I've seen Chevy sniffing those last few spots his brother was laying before I took him to the vet. When Chevy decided to wander down toward the mechanic's shop I was in borderline hysterics.

This too shall pass...

I did go up the Bull's Head like I said I would. Although it'd been a couple years since Whistler had accompanied me to the top of the rock formation from which the trail takes its name, that's where I set his collar. My mother never did that walkabout, but it never stopped me from leaving a string of prayer flags for her just before she died.

Because my phone's camera is not the best, you'll just have to give a wrinkle and squint and the benefit of a doubt about the prayer flag remnants...

I felt unburdened after the fact. The catharsis that comes with letting go. Being Tuesday, afternoon tea proceeds cocktail hour. I sat out with a book and some steaming jasmine. The hot sun caressing my face. When Whistler was happy, or, approved of something, he would give a chomp. Perhaps it was just my imagination running away with me, but as I sat back on the early summer afternoon after it was all said and done and over, I almost thought I heard a delighted chomp.

Cocktail hour a couple months back, Whistler obviously worn out. The cats are Mom Cat, Luna French Kitteh and her daughter, Eeeva Tiny-Voice...