The Price and the Prize

Here and now; What I see when I walk out my front door...

Oh, where did the trouble start? A question I sometimes ask myself at the outset of a long story. A riddle I inevitably solve.

It was probably three years back, this coming summer. That is when Sabina's parents, after telling me I was good for their daughter-something no parent had ever said unto me-told me they were going to pay for us to come and visit them at their place in Hawaii come that winter. I couldn't have been more reticent. See, I didn't lose anything on the Island. I was rocking the mountain love. Here, I was still exploring and there was not enough time in a single human lifetime too uncover all the secrets and treasures contained therein.

Fast forward to mid-January of two years back, and I ended up on the muthafuckingIsland, and, it was not even a fraction of how horrific as I imagined it to be. I found myself fascinated by the fact the landscape was still being made, as opposed to my wonderful mountains, which were being worn down ever so slowly. The flora and fauna were intriguing, as well as the aspect of pictographs, which were carved into lava rock so many thousands of years ago. Colorado, for as much as I still will say it has everything, does not have whales. I saw my first one my first day there, and that image in my mind's eye is as vivid as the second I beheld the sight.

There was also the fact Sabina's parents had purchased some quarter acre lots, not but a block from their place, and two from the mighty Pacific Ocean itself. Those were for Sabina and I, as well as her sister and brother-in-law. Free and clear. All we have to do is pay the property tax. Were I to believe in such a thing, I would call it an interesting twist of fate, but I am far to much a fan of chaos to be so suckered.

None of this was enough to make me want to pull up stakes and move. Unlike the the greater metroplex when we first came to the mountains, I was not done with the mountains. I was dug in. This place still gets me to fall in love daily, if not by the moment. However, the seeds of restlessness began to germinate, and, like stubborn weeds through concrete walks, made their presence know.

Fast forward again; Colorado has seen growth in terms of population and tourists. Sabina's father, at almost eighty-two, has been sentenced to a pacemaker. We used to speak of places we could go if the crush of humanity became too much. I have always said my compass pointed west, but I always figured it would just be somewhere deeper into the mountains. At the most extreme, around the Four Corners region.

But I know better than to plan anything. There is the notion of the story, and then there is the way the story goes. Back in my roaring twenties, I threw my lot to the winds of chaos, and, the night my mother died, eight years back now, I reaffirmed that.

I love this place. I always will. When we closed on the house, I told my mother if I got bored enough to die, to bury me out back. End of chat. This was home and I was not going to leave it.

Then the muthafuckingIsland went and happened. Sabina's parents have made it plain they want us to be their Island neighbors, if for no other reason than to help look after them as they grow older. We have land and the opportunity for a new phase in our adventures. I liken it to being handed a winning lottery ticket.

What would you do. Jump? Or would it be no thank you, I'm good?

Yeh, I though so...

And all I have to do is walk away from what I believed was Kashmir, and the price of admission is enough to bring me close to melancholy. All things for a price is but the very nature of the Deal. Only cheap things get purchased with pieces of green paper and jingling coins.

Yet, we will do this. By the time I'm fifty, at the latest. That gives us four years and change here and now. A goal to work toward.

But I cannot help but sense it will be sooner. It's nothing rational I can pinpoint. Just a feeling. Well, more than a feeling. Like when I hear that old song, babe.

I will continue to rock the mountain love as long as I am here. This landscape means too much to me to do otherwise. Another set of adventures looms upon the event horizon. As Sabina says to me in comforting tones when the melancholy of leaving the mountains seizes me, we are going to conquer an island chain. Despite the price of admission, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't the least bit excited about it.

Soon enough; the future site of the Owl and Bat Island Wellness Center...   

Grace

When I first met you, you were so much larger than life that the term rockstar would have been an insult. You were my hero and guru. Somewhere along the line, our roles got reversed and I was never sure of how to approach the subject.

Twenty-four years we knew one another. In that time you watched me grow into the person I am now. I saw you be diminished slowly, like sandstone whittled away by desert winds. Your death, whilst it elicited an emotional reaction from me, was, in the end, not shocking. Sadly, I saw it coming.

After I learned of your death and its cause, one question still remained; when did you lose your grace? I am not one to leave such a mystery unsolved. I began to dissect. It is my nature to do so. Were I to give it a date in clumsy timekeeping of Man it would be June twenty-first, two-thousand seven. That was the day you told me you were getting divorced.

She was your high school sweetheart. The one who got away. When you told me you found her again, that you were going to marry her, your smile threatened to swallow the rest of your head. When the end came to your love story, it broke you.

That is when you gave up...

First you lost the home your father left you. Once the divorce was done you were sentenced to a one-bedroom apartment with barely a couple coins to rub together. Somewhere in there, you decided to stop taking your insulin. To say your health suffered because of it is as blindingly obvious as the direction of the rising sun. Your body began to betray you, soon making it that you could not earn a livelihood.

There were the amputations. First, a finger. Then, a toe. Your foot. A leg. They were going to take the other leg when you had your septic stumble and all fall down. It was as if that deity you so zealously believed in, to the point of being born again-because the first time didn't work out so great?-was taking you a piece at a time.

I watched you move from one toxic situation to another. When you moved down to Arizona, I though you might get things turned around, but you fell into your pattern pretty quickly. Almost like habit. You once told me you saw yourself as a knight, owing to your time in law enforcement and security work. Did you really think you were going to save any of those cats you fell in with?

"The fact you have fallen is interesting. The time you remain down is important."

You said that to me once. I was going through my divorce, sitting in coffeehouses scribbling bad poetry to a backbeat of Nine Inch Nails. I was in pain, certainly, but I got up. That was when I decided nothing would break me. That is when I decided not to bare my jugular to anyone.

No matter how many times I said that to you, you never got up. You never even tried. I am not a saint or a superhero, but you showed you cannot save someone who had no desire to be saved. You lost your grace.

The last time I spoke to you was shortly after the leg amputation. Whilst you glibly said you were glad you did not have access to a firearm, you sounded relatively cheerful. That was the thing; no matter the drama or tale of woe, you knew there was no one to blame for it than yourself. You may have been beyond grace, but you knew how you got there.

You left rehab in anger, without medications of any kind. Without crutches. You stopped talking to everyone; your  sister, your favorite cousin, even me, supposedly one of your best friends. The mental image of you crawling on your hands and knees in a manure lagoon is seared into my mind's eye. I would rather remember that picture of you when you got your Harley, your smile threatening to swallow the rest of your head, or any other moment in the twenty-four years we knew one another, but that's what I keep seeing.

Your sister told me, like an animal, you chose to die alone. That you gave up. I know that. We just have different idea of when you gave up.

And, oh, how she raged. After the two of you buried your father, that was supposed to be it. She didn't want to be the last one. Part way through, she stopped herself and apologized to me for unloading.

"No, you need to do this. You may need do it a few more times before you truly work through this," I said, not out of empathy, but honesty.

Once, when relating a bit of trauma, you said your life should serve as a cautionary tale to others. You may have gotten your wish. There was this one last lesson for you to teach me; never lose your grace. Never, ever, give up. Once you do, although it might take years, it's lights out, and it will be lonely, and cold, and disgraceful. You must keep raging.

Keep raging...



You loved to quote this jam when we would speak;

"No one told you when to run
you missed the starting gun..."