Looking at the Moon

It's been ten years. Technically, your recorded death date is four days from now. That's when your family pulled you from the machinery. However, I was there that night after your rollover, looking upon you battered and bloodied frame. Your body spasmodically working to push out your unborn son who would die in your mother's arms. My experience in transplant helped me recognize the obviousness of your situation; the lights might have been on, but you were not home. You were not so much my friend as family. Oh, how you could piss me off to the point of wanting to spit coffin nails. To throttle you and never speak to you again. Yet when things came down, if I needed you, you were there with a fury and without hesitation. When my mother was diagnosed terminal, when, a year and change later, she died, you were one of the few to call. An online comment, a text, would have been too impersonal, you said. When I announced I was done with city life and heading to the mountains with that woman I'd been running around with, you were one of the few who thought I hadn't totally lost my mind. Although I know it is vanity to second-guess the dead, I like to think you'd be behind me on this zany scheme we've concocted involving a tropical island. Your dying inspired a mantra I still use when things go pear-shaped; it's not okay. It's not going to be okay. It just going to be, and what will be is not what any of us expected. Perhaps that was your last lesson to teach me... It's been ten years. You were far more family than my friend. Like family I have lost, you do occasionally show up in my dreams. Like them, you are missed more than all the words in all the languages could ever describe.

A little over twenty-nine years back, but not quite thirty, I was helping a buddy with his photography final. It involved me standing by his Scout as he took double exposure photographs, my hair and duster blowing in the wind. It was phantasmal, and artsy, oh so rock and/or roll.

Things got to taking longer than expected and I phoned home to give an update. I got my little brother. So I gave him the scoop and went about my business.

At the photo studio, we got the news; Operation Desert Shield had morphed into Operation Desert Storm. War was upon us. Via conversations and hanging out, as eighteen year old immortals are wont to do, it was again later. So I called home again, this time getting my mother.

"Where the fuck have been?!?" She demanded. Such a sweet and compassionate soul, my mother. One who had such a sense of lyrical language that I often wondered why she didn't follow in her parents' political footsteps.

Well, she did ask me a question and I did tell her. The fact my brother fucked up and neglected to deliver my initial message was irrelevant. This was somehow all my fault.

"You didn't check in and dinner's almost ready!" She said. "And there's a war on, you know?"

It was my turn to ask what the fuck...

I don't know that there's a point to this tale another than it has been rattling around in my skull all day...

I have written the first draft of my father's requiem. There is symmetry, twisted, in its countenance, that his death was within ten years and change of my mother's. In late summer, we scatter his ashes under the bristle cone where we left my mother ten years back.

So it goes...

A Father's Day Tale

It was many years ago, I was perhaps ten or eleven, that we all sat down for a Sunday dinner. There was roast, potatoes, broccoli, and salad. My mother, at the start of the meal, mentioned she was going on a diet and not to be served too much. My father, the compassionate soul he is, was more than happy to oblige. After all, he deeply loved my mother.

He cut the thinnest sliver of roast. A single wedge of potato. The very smallest floret of broccoli. Then he paused to look upon his beloved.

"Would you care for salad, dear?"

By this time my mother was not much caring about the presence of her three young children as her middle fingers flew fast and liberally...

Years later, but a few years back from today, I recounted this tale to a couple of pals. At the end, one looked up at me and said;

"So you're telling me it's genetic."

To this day I have no idea what she meant...

Winter Hymn

There comes a point in September, when the streets of our towns and backroads are chocked with all manner of vehicle, and slack-jawed rubes the wide-world over want to know where the best place to see aspens are-they're fucking leaves, people!-that I catch myself all but preying for and upon the first of October. See, by then, the only leaves left are defiant scraps of rust and faded saffron. The last of the summer tourists  have scuttled back to their homeplaces and lives they seek to escape from by means of vacation, gone until either the snows of winter and spinning lifts or when it is green and warm here once more.

October is when it supposed to slow down up here, but that is not really true. This is when the hunters come; camo drag and money spent out of guilt for family left back home. There are still tourists too; Europeans and cats who know some things might be closed or are getting ready to close for the coming winter, but it is not as crowded. Some of us travel during October.

Well, how about November? Around here, not so much. We host the Sheep Festival, honoring one of the biggest herds of bighorn in the state. The non-profit, which runs my professional obligations, hosts a volunteer party of some to-do that a good portion of the community shows up for at least a cocktail or two. And, of course, Thanksgiving, when we must once more reunite with further-flung family with gluttony and professional sports to properly kick off the drinking season.

December? Ha! I say. The first two weekends of that month up here are the Christmas Market. There is the attendant brain-damage of the holidays, and December houses some fourteen or fifteen of them, aside from Christmas. For someone of a more solitary nature, it can be a bit of a psychic maelstrom.

Then it is full on winter. January and February. Oh, fuck yes.

It is dark. It is cold. At professional obligations, time is suspended in agonizing amber. If one goes out, it is in layers-no bad weather, just the wrong clothes.

However , it is quiet...

This is when I wander the snow and ice sculptured landscape in meditative contemplation, recharging from the rigors of summer and autumn. I watch the winter stars with small smiles. The music I listen to has a more introspective countenance. As January ends, I watch the slow creep of direct sunlight back upon my house, telling me the Long Dark is over and it is now mid-winter.

Here and now, the dawning of direct sunlight is about two weeks away. I anxiously watch the far valley wall, as I do this time of year. At my professional obligations, Senpai complains about the state of things, but, if he didn't, I'd be digging a hole, or, at least contacting the paramedics. I wander, listening to the rhythms and rhymes of the cosmos. It is winter. Here and now, I rejuvenate.

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...   

Decades

My father turned seventy a week back. The year before, there was question whether he'd make it past sixty-nine. It was good to call him and wish him a happy birthday.

When we spoke, he mused how each new decade is a new adventure. A new lesson to be learned. My father was glad to be out of his sixties finally. His sixties were about sickness; my mother's and his own. About loss and learning to live with it. About death; my mother's and his own, although, his was a brief and he got back to this side of the grave with some quick medical intervention. My mother was not so lucky.

This got me thinking. Well, I'm always thinking, the penance of a mind that never quiets. I caught myself meditating upon the decades of my adult life, and the lessons contained therein.

My roaring twenties, as I so poetically call them, was where I learned, as if there was any doubt, that I was not like the other boys. The idea of a suburban house, a lobotomized wife, two-point-five kids, a dog and a career was not success, but perdition. Team sports were phallocentric soap operas for morons and the social construct of reality was for squares. I needed to find my own way.

I knew my end-all be-all was not to be a parent, any more than whatever it was I was doing for money at the time. I do love my daughter beyond measure and believe I have done things for her, but I did not put my existence on hold for her. She was just a new factor in the equation of me finding my own way, and, most likely, that way of thinking was a contributing factor in my divorce from her mother.

That's not to say I don't have regrets. Everyone regrets. I like to believe my daughter understands, or at least, accepts, what came to pass, but I don't pry. We have our relationship in which we get along and have our moments. Sometimes I wish for more, sometimes it's just enough.

So it goes...

Here and now, I theorize my thirties were about a sense of place. I rocked living near downtown in the big bad city in that little historical district. There were the other places I wandered through the greater metroplex, like uptown, Little Asia, Capital Hill, and the Highlands. Downtown itself, where I would go to monkeywatch, was neon magic and mystery and koo-koo-kachu.

Then the mountains happened...

Oh, the mountains. Kashmir. I am now five years and change away from anywhere in my thirties and this landscape sings to me upon esoteric tongues. I live in the mountains of Colorado! I live where other people come to vacation! 

To get here, I was relentless. I all but created a myth around it, if  you believe the words of others. Here, I put down roots and found my Homeplace. Here, forever and a day later, this place does not fail to fascinate. To resonate. I fall in love daily, if not moment by moment in ways language cannot articulate.

Five years and change into my forties, perhaps I am learning about community. About being involved in something rather than passively being a part or observing with that cold reptilian detachment. I am on the board of a historical society, a museum committee, a stewardship group for a historical structure out in the Backcountry, two land-use commissions, and I've counted ballots in a few elections along with the other random bits of volunteerisum.

Me. Yeh, the not a joiner for fear of lynch-mob mentality. Me. Yeh, the solitary one. How the world has turned and isn't it funny how it's all played out? And, no, I do not bring up my involvements to whip it out on the table and have the live studio audience marvel at the magnificence of my genitalia. That's rude.

By fifty, there is something I have intended to accomplish, although, the price is admission is something, which pains me grievously. However, when I look that now four years and change ahead, I wonder what lesson, what adventure awaits me at the half-century decade. As intriguing a mystery as that is, I am not in too big a hurry. After all, I still have the rest of my forties to play out, and, that lesson, that adventure is far from over. 

Sixty-Six

You would've been sixty-six today. Seven years to the day, we gathered at that one bristle cone between the ruins of Waldorf and the bones of the Santiago Mill to scatter your ashes. Me, the heretic, reading the requiem I composed for you, playing preacher-man because of that zaniness with the Universal Life Church, but that's another story.

Nine months and nine days before that, your youngest, my brother, and I stood over your cooling body. The stench of the disease that devoured you was still heavy in the air. My brother did not understand why I asked for two coins to cover your half-lidded eyes, and, in the moment, I was not in the mood to deliver a mythology lesson.

It was that night I truly cast my lot to the winds of chaos and let's just roll them bones...

Seven years, nine months, and nine days later, I often dream of you. You're never sick then. There was a hoodoo-voodoo article about visitation dreams I came across recently, and, you know me; I get curious, I dissect well past the marrow, watching the worms beneath squirm with savage amusement. So, of course I read it, and none of those dime-store diagnostics fit.

Brass tacks and bedposts, mother, I miss you. Terribly.

Holiday Meditation

Get to know me well enough, and you realize I don't get into holidays much. At some point, I began thinking of them as a sham. Why should one day have greater importance than another?

This time of year, especially, has had a tendency to fill me with a special kind of vitriol. The hypocrisy of goodwill and thinly veiled cruelties. Blatant materialism. On a personal level, I've gone through bad break ups, deaths, and drama, both with blood relatives and social acquaintances, this time of the year that have left a fair amount of psychic scarring.

For those just tuning in, the day after Thanksgiving, for twenty seconds and four chest compressions, I was an orphan, My father, with pneumonia and septic shock was sentenced to the sickhouse. Now, that would plumb rattle some folks. Me? I kept my reptile zen, because someone had to. My sister has her moments of melodrama and my brother has his moments of jerking his knees, which can make you go blind, because when you knee-jerk, you do not see reason. Someone had to talk to doctors and nurses and sign forms and make grotesque decisions. That someone ended up being me. I have been lauded for it, but I'd rather never go through it again.

Three, getting close to four, weeks later, my father is home. He is on the mend. Trained medical professionals are dazzled by his recovery and drive to walk in the lands of the living. One of my southern relatives says her prayers were answered. My father will say it wasn't his time, but god taught him a lesson. I call it luck. In a cases of twisted symmetry, three doors down in the MICU was the loco drunk I called EMS on six days prior. Both men left the unit on the same day, the difference was my father went to MedSurg. The loco drunk was in a box.

Christmas is in three days. For the first time in so-long-I-can-no-longer-remember, I am looking forward to the holiday, We mean to gather at my sister's house. She's got the biggest place and it is the most centrally located. We shall eat, drink, and antagonize one another, because that's what we do when we get together.

At one point, I shall contemplate whiskey with my father, because that's what we do when we get together. Perhaps we shall toast, or maybe we'll talk about music and a thousand memories from forty-four years of acquaintance. It doesn't really matter. When it gets down to brass tacks and bedposts, it will be a good day.

    

Two Minutes

Jibril looked the age he would be now. His hair was long than he kept it around the time he died, but shorter than when we first met. Being two years my senior, the sandy blond had faded to a dusty Grey. His savagely intelligent eyes were framed by lines that read like esoteric charts to forgotten lands. His suit was not as tattered as the one I remember him wearing in his last days.

We were at some evening gathering where Tich Nhat Hanh was supposed to speak, but he did have that stroke, and, instead was on side-show display. His spasmed movements spoke of severed and damaged brain wires. There was no serenity to be offered by this. Outside, the world was starting to burn down.

"As you can see, I'm still alive," Jibril said as we attempted to look away from the spectacle before us. "But they're coming for me tonight, and then it will be the End of Days."

"You know I don't believe in that shit," I said with a bit of a snort. In the years since my mother's and the bruja's  respective deaths, my ability to take anything on anything other than analysis and inquiry had dropped drastically.

"The Universe doesn't care what you believe," Jibril said coldly. A mantra I've heard on both the science and religious sides of the aisle.

Two minutes left and the world is gonna end...

Notes from Camp 1 II; Meditations

Because who doesn't have Mozart as their jam when being all contemplative like?

Mauna Loa. There are holes where I live, and, some of them belch steam in the winter. Difference being this wasn't dug by Cornish miners looking for silver and we don't tend to get lava flows up here...



What for my heresy, my initial reaction to the spirit that pervaded the island. There's a story in it...

Some local wildlife...

The vibe here is different. That much is unmistakable. Me being me, someone who dissects, looking for answers, tries to discern the difference.

I live in a paradise. A place where people come to vacation. So, I wonder if it's a simple matter of traveler versus local. Or perhaps tropical island verses mountains. I am never completely sure.

Like where I live, this place something of the poor relations of the posher resorts. Both places are a little behind the population in terms of infrastructure. Sabina's brother in law-does that make him my second brother in law or great brother in law twice removed?- sometimes says Hawaii the way I'll say mountains.

There's a little more of the woo-woo love and light new ageness than I even pretend to tolerate as a steady diet. Everywhere are signs speaking of the spirit of aloha or drive with aloha. It didn't take long for me to get a little caustic about it. Must have been the jet lag.

"The fuck?" I snarled. "The spirit of 'hello'?"

"It's a little more than that, you know," Sabina said.

"Well, it also means 'goodbye'. Goodbye, hello, hello, goodbye," I said. "John and Paul had something to say about that, and I don't mean the biblical prophets."

"So why didn't they call that song Aloha?" Sabina's nephew, who was with us at the time, inquired.

I might have been taking a huge gulp of water from my bottle when he said that. That water may have almost come up through my nose and any other openings upon my head, given my reaction. I might have deserved that, but I do not believe in the concept of deserve.

***

Almost immediately, I fell out of time. Attuned myself to the rising and the setting of the sun. Like legendary zen masters, sleeping when tired, eating when hungry, and getting up upon waking, instead of just laying there.

There is the notion of the story and there is the way the story goes. One would think I know that fact like the direction the sun rises and sets; the preconceived versus the actuality. Yet, I have sometimes found myself suckered by the baited trap.

In my skull, half the trip had been written out. The gypsy once told me characters do not always do what you want them to. It was one of the first lessons I found myself relearning on the island. I once more learned to let go.

I meditated upon Africa. From the tropical jungles and rugged savannas of my childhood zoological curiosities, to the Moroccan mountains and deserts of adult wonderings. I used to say the stories all began in Africa. From the standpoint of the human animal, I am fairly correct.

I meditated upon Tibet. A place made more mystical by ancient travelogues, despite the fact of its rocky loneliness. Once I threatened to move there and grow a beard. Many years later, after reading some of those travelogues and their accompanying deconstructions I found myself feeling like a poseur suckered by a passing fad.

The mountains happened at an interesting time in our lives. There we were in a budding relationship sloughing the tattered skins of previous social dynamics and searching for something of a cosmic reset, perhaps. Kashmir happens, I can imagine the gypsy saying. It makes me wonder if we'd gone to the Arizonan desert or to the island instead of to the Colorado High Country that one day in late May what might have crystallized within our skulls.

There I go; Kashmir, deconstructed. Me dissecting, cracking open a shell and poking at what lies beneath to watch it squirm and acquire my answers. I can remember Pagan acquaintances being driven nuts by that...quirk...of mine. Then again, they were more into that love and light, and I appreciate chaos and the unyielding forces of nature too much to swallow that.

Contrary to what you might think, such analysis does not demystify a concept for me. Far from it, actually. In some ways, it just deepens the mystery. Making it so much more profound.

***

Days into our trip, Sabina's father asked me what I thought of the island. I wondered if he knew of my misgivings when the trip was first suggested. How I was a little reluctant to go. If he had caught me fresh off the plane, he may have heard a diatribe of  displeasure sponsored by the letter fuck, but it was days later and I'd had time to decompress. I offered him a wry smile.

"I am intrigued."

It is funky-gotta have that funk!-and interesting enough to invite further exploration. By the end of the first day, I knew I'd be back. There were things I would not see. Experiences I've yet to have.

Like the mountains, I felt drawn in. Not to the point of dismantling years of living in a place and full time moving, as I did on that fateful mountain afternoon, but something that definitely piqued my curiosity. It is as though there is something on the island for us, sort of like up in the mountains. Like the mountains, it may take years to truly find the shape of it.

Sabina asked if I could even envision being a part time islander. More likely. Here and now, I am not sure I could cope without distinct seasons, and I'd miss snowshoeing. My answer was during March and April; the height of mud. That time when the snow is too crappy for snowshoeing, but too deep for hiking, the resorts are closing down for the winter and not ready for summer and people are snarly because of seasonal burnout. There would still be whales and trade winds on the island then.

Like the initial trip, I know we'd be fools to pass up the opportunity. The full demonic details just need to be worked out. This is something I do not worry about. There is time and my patience is formidable. We figured out the mountains, we'll figure out this. As has happened a bit throughout the course of my life. The last time I saw my sister, as we discussed one of the happenstances in my life she said it must have happened organically, which I took as a tarted-up way of me saying it just kinda happened.

I may not be love and light, and I might dissect things past the marrow because I do not believe in fate, but I do know that...

Somewhere I shall further explore...

From Beyond

I'm chatting with the owner of our local watering hole and she's asking me to speak to some new neighbors. Something about getting a feel for them, though I am not inclined to cop a feel from complete strangers, let alone, ones with parts missing. Still, I have somehow become the metaphoric go-to guy.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see you. Your gait is purposeful. You mean to speak with me. I have several problems with this, with seeing you walking toward me with that purposeful gait. Quickly, I turn away.

"Gotta go," I tell the owner of our local watering hole. She goes on to talk with you as I make my escape.

I'm walking down the street in the lengthening shadows of the deepest blue of evening. Summer is long gone and the first snows have fallen. It gets dark so quickly now. I pull my layers close against the growing chill.

Turning the corner, there you are, walking with a purpose. You mean to speak with me. I know why you shouldn't. Why you can't. Quickly, I duck down a secret way I know, avoiding you once more.

Normally, I'm not out so late, but here I am. The gypsy and I are having cha'i and talking about books. It'd been a bit. Then her phone rings. A phone call, not texts. She talks for a few before handing her phone to me with that one look she'd get, which I used to call that foreign girl look.

"You need to take this," she says.

"Hello?" My voice echoes into an abyss.

"Don't go moving to the south," you tell me. "It'll look like you're running away."

"Bah!" I snort. "Have you fucking met me? I don't run. I'm dug in here. If I were to move, west is the closest direction to forward for me."

Of course, I'm remembering back to when things went down between the jewel-eyed girl and I, and you were amongst the school that implored me to move. For my safety. I refused, because I wouldn't run. I would not be broken, because there is not a force in the universe that can break me. I dug in. You must recognize I'm musing this by my silence.

"You still there?" You ask.

"Ummm...you do realize you've been dead almost five years, mon amie," I say finally, my voice is small and lost. "Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhttttttttttt?????"

And you're silent for only a second, but it seems like far longer than the almost five years...

"I know," your voice is distant and disembodied. Phantasmal. "I've known for a long time." You pause to stifle a sob. "I miss my son."

"He died the day after the accident," I say with reptilian honesty. "Two days before your family pulled you off those machines."

"Never pull your punches, do you, you bastard?" You're fighting tears.

"You'd despise me if I did," I reply.

"I told you you'd find enlightenment," you say. "Sometimes, you'd doubt me."

"I'm not that pretentious," I say. "Besides, you said that over the tarots. I met others of your ilk who could read their mark and use the cards to tell them what they wanted to hear. I'm a skeptical bastard, I admit it. If nothing else, between my mother and you dying taught me that."

"I meant what I said," you say with that sense of confidence I admired. "No matter what you think. Remember that."

***

The clock says four o'nine. I am wide awake, and my mind, which never shuts down completely-sucks for meditation at times-is running at full bore. There goes the rest of my sleep. What just happened was so vivid and spit-shiny real I can smell and taste it.

But I begin to think. Burden and a boon. I begin to dissect. Such is my way. These days, when being poetic, I might say part of my mysticism is inquiry and analysis.

"You're such a Virgo!" Another Pagan of my acquaintance once told me when I was being curious and questioning.

"And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?" I asked her. She never answered, but instead shot me stupefied look that I'd even inquire.

Pieces of reality begin to slide across the phantasm of the dreaming. Everyone may have known and loved you, as I often joked, but you didn't know the owner of my local watering hole. The street I walked down was far more urban/urbane than anything I've regularly walked in years. It's been almost as many years as you've been in the ground since I've shared any liquid with the gypsy.

I was dreaming...

Of course, I start asking why?, after all, it's me. You know that. The gypsy sent me all those old pictures, that one of me and you from a thousand years back, which I think of as the description of our acquaintance. Of course, like pond silt when you step into the water, memories will come flooding back. It's been nearly five years-thirteen days away-since your rollover. My mother, dead ten months before you, still shows up with vivid ferocity in my dreams.

The answer. Mystery solved. Logic.

Yeh, logic and answers do not change one simple fact; you're dead and gone almost five years, and, my dear, dear, sweet friend, I miss you...terribly...

Autumn

Kicking it old school; a pair of waffle-stompers I picked up at a thrift store for less than twenty. I can theoretically ice-climb wearing these...

Last night was a truly righteous thunderstorm. It rattled the house and illuminated the sky. I found myself wondering if it would be the last of the season. If there would be a dusting of snow now upon the high peaks. A traveler spoke of flurries atop Mount Evans a couple days back and Sabina told me of hikers speaking of flurries up Silver Dollar lake yesterday afternoon.

After a rather hot and dry September, October has announced itself with a more autumnal countenance. The aspens have peaked, and, looking out back at Eagle Rock, last night's storm has stripped them of some of their leaves. Part of me is relieved by this. Perhaps the leaf-peepers will go elsewhere and I will finally be able to breathe at obligations.

Yes, I have still been busy. Whether obligations or any of the other myriad things I do, which Senpai would refer to as free jobs-e.g. boards, committees, and/or commissions. I have five of those, I counted. As an example, the last few of my sacred Tuesdays, I've been doing trail maintenance with the retired forester of my acquaintance for Open Space. This is not as horrific as it may sound. I've been finding myself in parts of the county that were either on the metaphoric list of someday or I'd never considered going. It's always good to expand one's horizons. And I find my time spent with the retired forester rather educational.

My daughter is living on her own in student housing down in Boulder. Her major is microbiology and her minor is molecular biology. I'm rather proud. She's not driving right now, which is fine. I have come to view my visits with her in a similar light as when I was still commuting to the greater metroplex for money the first year I lived up here; something I can tolerate, even if I get back as quickly as I can.

A free day and Sabina and I mean to go walking. There is a mine arrastra up Mill Creek and the Rutherford Trail. Open Space and HDPLC lands. Places we've not been. I may actually have the coming Tuesday free to finally go up Grizzly. The air is cooler and the world is painted in rust. Perhaps now I'll have the chance to slow down and truly enjoy it.



With the lines "What are you afraid of? Show me what you're made of" in context of some of the land-use stuff I've been doing, this has been my jam...

On the Other Side of Summer

The other day, after coming back from laundry and errands up over, I gazed out at the west Loveland Pass in early evening light. Aside from a scouting and subsequent camping trip to Pass Lake, I'd not done any trekking up there this year. It made me sad.

"Where has the fucking time gone?" I lamented.

At obligations, once a year, my schedule gets thrown into upheaval. I survive, obviously, finding some sense of equilibrium. Still, this summer has seemed particularly busy, and I don't feel I've gotten nearly as much accomplished as I'd have liked. Here it is, on the cusp of High Country autumn, and, to be trite, I feel like summer's past me by.

It's not that I haven't gotten out. We did camp. Grizzly and Cherokee Gulch are two places I still need to get to, and hopefully before the snow flies. Every time I go over Loveland Pass, I look at the places I need to explore and/or reacquaint myself with.

I did go up Brown's Gulch, though not as far as I wanted. We stopped a little ways before treeline and snacked in the cool shade near rushing water. My companions, being my daughter and her boyfriend, wussed out. I harassed my daughter about this, given she was supposed to be climbing Quandary Peak that weekend.

"There I have the expectation of going straight uphill," she argued. Later, she would tell me when she summited that fourteener, there were some people having a fondue party and sharing with other climbers.

"Mountains," I said with a shrug. "Were it anywhere else, that might've been strange."

My daughter simply nodded in agreement. After all, she's been with me when hitchhikers busk to entertain frustrated drivers caught in Sunday afternoon tourist traffic on the back roads. She's heard me mention the Easter Gorilla. When I say mountains, it pretty well explains everything. If you don't get it, you're not going to.

From the tourist standpoint, things are winding down. The kids are back in school. I don't run quite as much at obligations. For the first time in months, I had a week without overtime. Some of the aspens show the beginnings of color change. The leaf peepers are just a few weeks away.

My birthday is on the other side of the sunrise. Not a big one, I suppose. Not a decade or even half decade. Although, the magistrate always makes a big deals of his birthdays and he's thirty years my senior. Still, as this orbit comes full circle, I catch myself having a few revelations. Whether or not they're grand is conjecture;

Mountain. It's like that. Apparently, it ain't boring.

I never wanted a career. There, I said it. I just wanted to have adventures and be my own person. The myriad of things I've done for money have been just that; a means to an end. A way to bankroll said adventures. Not being locked into a career has, upon reflection, made a great many of my leaps easier than they would've been otherwise. I've said many times being defined by what you do for money is boring, it's just taken me twenty years to fully realize why.

Recently, I've taken to writing in a notebook again. Not daily, but when the mood strikes. It comes and goes and I don't know how long I'll keep it up. What has struck me is how my style has changed. It's not as fantastical. Sabina referred to it as more matter-of-fact. The mutual postulation is environmental; living somewhere magical all on its own, there's little reason to tart it up.

I've never liked the concept of a reputation. Piss and wind. Get to know a cat and form your own opinion instead of what the hype is. Yet, it seems here, in a rural mountain county, peppered with small tourist towns, you can live or die by a reputation. The case in point I've seen it most recently is when someone goes to apply for work or to rent a place and the questions are asked have you heard of such-and-such? and the stories of good or ill are whispered. Good or ill, that's how it seems to work. Apparently, my constantly wanting to play outside and knowing a little bit about the trails is part of my reputation.

So, there it is. We stand at the other side of summer. I am hoping for a long warm autumn to get to all the walkabouts in on my list. Since I have no intention of growing too much older, let alone dying, if I miss it this season, there's always the next. Tomorrow, we will climb Mount Trelease to help mark the start of another orbit and something to do. A new adventure in a lifetime of adventures to mark off.

In the Blood

Some attempts at creativity; a rustic sitting spot, behind the willow out back, and a trail marker up by the ruins of the Illinois Mine...

Perhaps my grandmother's favorite song was Little Boxes. She would mention it when passing through suburban wastes as we headed into the badlands of eastern Colorado to visit my parents. It was said if she felt the population density to open lands ratio was not right, she would lean over to the person closest to her and start to sing.

"Little boxes
little boxes,
And they were all
made out of ticky-tacky,
And they all looked
just the same..."

The last person I ever heard relate that tale said there was a hiss upon her otherwise always civil voice. I knew that hiss well. The intonation that you were doing something incorrect and needed to straighten up and fly right or she would make your life exceedingly difficult. You did not fuck with my grandmother. Very few people have ever intimidated me. My grandmother is one of them.

My grandmother hated two things; sprawl and liberals. I find I share her hatred of sprawl. It was one of the the things that drove my push into the mountains after the city had served its purpose.

***

I think it was the beginning of the year that Senpai first mentioned there were openings on the county Open Space Commission as well as HDPLC. This was taken with a grain of metaphoric salt. I felt I was busy enough.

Still, because of the retired forester of my acquaintance, who is a vice-chair on Open Space, and, come to think of it, involved in everything I've found myself involved in, save the town's museum committee, I made some inquires. The forester's companion, a globe-trotting widower who volunteers for me, was one of the people I made mention of my curiosity to. When I said I could be selfish about my free time, she shot me a look and a wry smile.

"I think you can take some time out of your precious hiking schedule to hike around for the county."

So, I went to a meeting after expressing my interest to the right people and receiving an invitation. There was another cat there with similar interests, older than me. He'd lived in the county ten years longer and dropped names. I mentioned who I was and inferred some of my family were involved in Open Space in other places, but, things like the fact there's a park named after my grandfather were not mentioned. In a place where there's a lot of historical preservation going on, there's also a lot of ancestor worship. Love and respect my family as I do, I try to stand or fall on my own merits.

I gave my song and dance and then closed my mouth. Part of it is my inherent shyness, part of it was to watch-I like to watch-the proceedings and get an understanding of how things worked. The other guy felt it was okay to interrupt. When speaking with some of my acquaintances after the fact, a great many seemed to think I took the better course of action.

"Some people do things because they have an agenda they're trying to advance," Senpai said when we discussed the subject. "You don't. You do things you do out of genuine love for it. That's why I suggested it to you. I wouldn't have done it if it wasn't something that fit you and who you are."

That was April. Things moved at the speed of bureaucracy. Don't call us, we'll call you. In the interim, the magistrate sent an unsolicited recommendation to the county commissioners and I acquiesced to being on HDPLC-I'll say it was to shut Senpai up. The commission sent me a questionnaire on being involved with Open Space and the way I answered apparently got their attention.

A few weeks back, I got the recommendation from the commission. This meant an interview with the county commissioners. More bureaucracy. Playing dress-up.

Fuck...

It is disgusting, but for all of my anti's, the long hair, tattoos, and trinkets, I can clean up and play johnny-conformity in such a nauseating fashion I catch myself scrubbing manically in the shower for hours afterward. I got it from my grandparents, both of whom were county commissioners of some note. From my father, who was a traveling business man for money when I was little, and, to this day, can convince a drowning man to have a drink of water. From my mother, my grandparents daughter. It's in the blood.

The interview went well. I spoke of community involvement in order to sustain said community. Of how I felt our Sahel is a magical place of many varied landscapes. Of knowing that sometimes the best way to protect a thing is to share it.

Officially, word would come two weeks later. Unofficially, the forester found me the day of the interview and congratulated me on my appointment. Over the last few weeks it's how he's reintroduced me to cats in the circles of which we travel. Yes, I knew I had this muthafucker. I knew back in April. However, a throwback superstition, I waited for word from on high, lest the whole thing be jinxed.

Word came from on high. My daughter, her boyfriend, and I went out for Mexican to celebrate. There's champagne in the fridge for when Sabina gets done at obligations.

This whole bit of madcap skulduggery has once more gotten some people I know to ask when I'll run for mayor, or, county commissioner. I growl, remind them my grandparents were the politicians. That the things I do, aside from not advancing a personal agenda-who really has time for that bullshit? Not me-is to avoid running for an elected position.

"It's in your blood," Job said one of the last times we spoke. Something I've heard more than once from more than one cat.

"So is hemoglobin and platelets," I shoot back. "That means nothing."

"It's your destiny," Sabina said once.

"Fucking what? You're Palpatine now?!? 'Come to the dark side, we have cookies' and all that?" I snarled. "Besides, you know I don't believe in destiny."

She just shot me a sly smile. The one that entreats me to growl deeper. Dig in more.

"I'd rather bear my jugular or call myself a romantic first," I said. "And since the universe shall fall to entropy before that happens..."    

The Number of Seasons

A recent acquisition; a moose skull. It hangs upon the back door now...

Rain has been falling, but that is nothing new. Thus far, it's been a wet summer. Although, the last three days have been cooler and not as humid, getting Sabina to fatalistically ask who stole her summer. She can be the type to see the grey cloud behind the silver lining, whereas I tend to be a little more positive. It balances us out.

Here it is, just a few days into July, and I've yet to get up on the tundra or poke about in gulches I wish to explore. We've yet to go camping. I know there's still time, but that time is but a few short weeks and there's all the demonic details in between, which also must be dealt with. Blink and you'll miss it and the snow will be flying.

Sabina's parents have a place in Hawaii-times is hard-of which they want us, her sister and bother-in-law, nephew and new wife to visit in January. Around the time of their fifty-sixth anniversary. Everything paid. You'd be excused for thinking I'd already have my frame pack stuffed to the gills for tropical adventure.

I didn't lose anything in Hawaii. The islands I want to see are Madagascar, Borneo, and/or the Galapagos. The idea of being stuffed into an airplane, thirty-thousand feet above the surface of the world's oceans for almost ten hours holds little appeal. Flying machines are not made for people with my measurements.

Endeavoring to be positive, I try to look at the adventure aspect, because adventures can suck when you're having them. I know this firsthand. Sabina's parents seem to like me well enough, and the only thing I'm spending is time. From the naturalistic standpoint, I've never been to the tropics and only seen the ocean two to three times in the nearly forty-three years I've been alive. Even then, I've only seen the Atlantic. This could be an opportunity to see whales. There's an observatory at fourteen-thousand that could be neat to check out. I could get a story out of it.

Sabina has similar thoughts to mine. So we try to look at from angle of what appeals to us. Her parents speak of not knowing how much longer they'll be in Hawaii. Her father is nearly eighty, and, whilst active, not as active as some of the seniors of my acquaintance I've summited thirteen-thousand peaks with just for want of something to do.

This got Sabina to ask me how many more summers we have. How long before our idea of summer fun is a walk around town and stopping to watch the river amble by, for our trekking days are behind us. Personally, I'll want to be shot in the face-twice-if that day ever comes, for I have no time to belly-up and quit. Remember, I am the one who aches for the lifespan of a star.

There's several billion seasons left. Well, at least until the sun goes red giant and consumes the planet. There'll be no more seasons. Period. Hopefully, by then, our species, or whatever its evolved into, if its not wiped itself out-see? I can be negative too-will have expanded out into the cosmos.

Perhaps I think on too grand a scale, which is why the demonic details sometimes get missed. Here and now, time may be short, but there's enough of it for those gulch treks and at least one camping trip. We're scheduled to go up to Santiago-alpine!-in five days. Suddenly, it looks like I may have an opportunity for something tropical in the cold of deep winter. Part of me is not thrilled by the location or how I have to get there, but I know better than to totally poo-poo it. After all, it's an adventure, and how can I really say no to that?

A Backbeat for Nada

Runoff has started to abate. I no longer hear the Leviathan, grinding river rocks to bowling ball smooth. Some of my lower demarcation rocks begin to peep above the swells, and my oh fuck! rock has become completely dry. Other places in town, I see evidence of drying out. It will be safe to traverse the water crossings of Grizzly Gulch soon enough.

Out back, by the willow, there is still ankle deep standing water. So it goes. Old beaver bog. Runoff always gets the Talking Heads song Swamp playing in my skull. Because we like to anthropomorphize and imagine the universe has a sense of humor-and the giraffe and platypus certainly make a strong argument for this-it's vaguely funny how the monsoons come on the coattails of runoff. During some deluges, William Elliot Whitmore's Lee County Flood seems so fitting.

Then again, I have a constant backbeat within the walls of my skull. The stereo is always on in the house. My daughter once said she thought I'd be overjoyed becoming deaf, because I'd not have to listen to people. Truth is, I'd be depressed, because I'd not be able to hear music, be it that made by humans, or by impassive universe around me.

I hath smote my first mosquitoes of the summer. An omen the ticks have most likely gone. One blood-sucker for another. I am not amused.

The strangest happenstance has come to pass over the last week or so; I've not been so much in the mood for tea. There, I said it. Water, cool, clear water-water-has been my go-to. The other night, winding down for bed, but trying to finish up a conversation with Sabina, I'd decided I was done with libations, and my wine glass became a water glass.

Queer. I wonder if this means I'm pregnant. If so, then who's the daddy? Sabina, for having never wanted or had children, is perhaps one of the biggest mothers I've ever met. Do you find it strange that one of the last times I told her this she entreated me to fuck off? I know I did.

Last week I saw Senpai all but dancing the jig a few times over the state of society. Even and especially over the events of this past Friday, he has quite the right to be happy. There was irony that a trade agreement was pushed through with the help of a political party whose agenda has been to block the sitting president at every turn. Although, for every leap we make as a society, there comes that moment of catching the evangelicals getting into a truck with Missouri plates, one wearing a t-shirt that reads; Fear god, love thy neighbor.

And Social Distortion's Don't Drag Me Down starts in my skull...

If you haven't figured it out by now, I am one of those cats who finds existence a constant state of becoming. Evolving. Owning up. You adapt or you die, this is the imperative and gospel of biology. The dynamic of change is just a given. One of those songs that I hear even when I'm not playing it on the stereo with varying degrees of frequency is Memphis Minnie's I Got to Make a Change Blues. That jam's been playing a lot recently. Part of me, feeling slightly silly-superstitious, wonders if it is an omen of bigger changes upon the event horizon, and, if so, I curiously wonder what those changes will be. 

Twisted Arrow

"You've been reading
some old letters,
You smile and think
how much you've changed,
All the money in the world
couldn't buy back those days..."-The The

Long ago now, when my siblings and I helped my father put his mother in the ground, we ended up at the wake. It was a grand southern affair with casseroles and libations. Having lived at higher elevations for so long, we felt we were drinking alcohol-flavored water whilst the southern relatives got hammered and mourned. One remarked out of all of my part of the family, I was the one who'd changed the most.

To be fair, some of these cats hadn't seen me since I was fourteen or fifteen. I'd not started growing my hair long, and certainly was unable to sprout facial hair yet. It was before the braces fixed that overbite I had through childhood and the idea of a tattoo had not entered into the mathematics of my thoughts.

That summer was when Sabina and I decided we must move to the mountains. I have mentioned more than once how that shocked my city friends. Even Jezebel was a little gobsmacked. Recently, as I mentioned hating crowds and flat places, she reminded me of how I once wanted to be so urban. I thanked her for the call-out, but reminded her of where we were living when we first became pals; the badlands of eastern Colorado. Flat and khaki with fuck all to do.

See, I knew I'd one day leave the greater metroplex. It just seemed to be the way of it. However, as I told another acquaintance who, when I first spoke of Kashmir, I had no intention of going back to the badlands, or even North Carolina. Fuck that noise.

Never back. Forward. Ever forward.

In a sense, I've only gone back twice in my life. The first was when my family moved back to Colorado. My seventeen year old delusion was it'd be back to the very first farmstead on the very western edge of the metroplex, just a few miles east of the hogbacks and Front Range foothills-I like to call them wuss hills these days-by Morrison, when that was still the countryside. My friends, some of whom were my friends only when in that one neighborhood, would pick up where we left off three and a half years before.

What a fool I used to be...

The new farmstead was seven miles east of Parker, on the county line. The very edge of the badlands. Over the years my parents would move even further into those flat wastes. It was a new landscape, new people, new rules. Three and a half years is forever and a day when you're in junior high and high school. Those friends had moved on, despite efforts I made to stay in touch. Their memory effigies have since faded into obscure places within the walls of my skull I only inspect on the rarest of occasions.

The old cliché holds true; you can never go home again...

The second time was moving back in with my parents, to that first new Colorado farmstead, right after my divorce. That was a tense and depressive eighteen months. My father and I were ready to go after one another with knives. My adolescent urge to escape the badlands was trumped my adult one. When Jezebel said she needed a roommate, I was gone so quick, my pants had to catch the next bus out.

Once upon a time, my way of thinking and being was built upon the foundations of The Art of War, The Book of Five Rings, The Analects of Confucius, The Tao te Ching, and pretty well any Buddhist sutra. A friend once remarked I was the smartest cat he'd ever met, because anyone can read Sun Tzu and Confucius and regurgitate quotes to sound cool in conversation, but it takes real intellect to apply that knowledge and live it. I have not spoken to him in years. Sometimes, it makes me sad.

These days the foundations have a another layer of which is more of a go-to; Desert Solitaire, A Sand County Almanac, The Omnivore's Dilemma, Lonely Planets; The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life, and pretty well anything from John Muir. Instead of mala beads and Thai prayer stones to occupy my hands, I carry fossils and smoothed river stones. No one I hang around these days would be surprised by this, given I speak of being outside as holy sacrament.

Five years back, Lee came to stay with us to pull his head together whilst he contemplated leaving the Sons of Silence. I chided him on being a joiner, a fucking lemming. Back then, I had a subscription to National Geographic, making me a society member by default, and that was almost too much fucking effort.

A year later, I found myself on the board of our historical society. To this day, I say I did it to shut a couple of people up. From there, I've found myself getting involved with a few other things within my community. Senpai will remark how established I am. How I have become the Man, to which I mention, like Old Blue Eyes, I did it my way.

The occasions I have had to speak from someone from the distant past of high school, or, nowadays, even the city, they seem blown away by who I am now versus their rose-tinted recollections. I am saddened by their apparent stagnation and descent into a reality, which is a blur of Republicans and meat. We are far-flung aliens to one another and that probably explains why bonds are never reestablished.

Never back. Forward. Ever forward.

I too get amazed and twists and turns my life has gone along. The adventures, the mentalities, the landscapes. Even some of the things I've done for money, though, I think it is banal to measure the sum and substance of your existence against what you do to pay the bills. Cats like that should be peeled, salted, driven around on spiked planks by near-catatonic mental patients, used as a jizz-catcher for rabid baboons in heat, and left to hang in the town square for necrophile boys to play with. At best.

Although, any time I get too impressed with my own intelligence and how much personal evolution I've accomplished, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Inevitably, I am wearing a t-shirt and an unbuttoned, untucked flannel. An image of me through the ages. It's then I catch myself wondering what really has changed, if anything at all.     

Rambles

A day of rest. Over the last few weeks, I'd maybe gotten one or two of these. Not really my fault. See, Sempai had been off California dreaming, putting his stepfather in the ground, and, at its simplest, who else was there? My efforts have been noticed, lauded, and rewarded, for which I am grateful. Besides, the blood drama he had to deal with in a family of conservatives, crazies, and religious zealots makes my trip down south to help my father put his mother in the ground all those years and lifetimes ago almost a simple game of ketchup.

Despite all that noise, it doesn't seem there's been much going on. Oh sure, a couple walkabouts, trips to the local watering hole, Sabina and I even slummed the biggest town in the county, in what is basically the foothills, to get Cajun and play some pinball. Almost a date. Still, it's been almost like downtime, although, I am never one to complain about life being quiet. Whilst I enjoy my adventures, the dramatic side, which can sometimes rear its ugly head despite my best efforts, is something that can make me rather difficult to get along with.

It has been soggy. A lot of nice mornings and then rain in the afternoon. Sometimes rain all day. Snow above ten-thousand. Although, it has fallen a bit lower a few times. The snowpack for our river drainage is back above average, and there's flooding in flat places. Sabina's most recent radio show had a water theme to it in observance of it all. Part of me feels the burnout; wanting shorts and sandals after seeing hummingbirds and blooms. Another aspect grimly accepts this weather pattern knowing I cannot do anything about it other than make the best of it.

No bad weather, just the wrong gear...

Recently, I did draw something of a line in the sand, if only in my own mind. My sister had invited me down for my nephew's birthday. Because of obligations, I really couldn't, but I found myself feeling a little irate. It's been five years since either of my siblings have been to my house. Back when we scattered my mother's ashes up outside of the ruins of Waldorf. It's been two for my father. For some of my friends and acquaintances down below, of whom I wouldn't mind having over, it's been longer. Like since I left the fucking city.

Sometimes I get asked to come down. I him and haw. There's the fuel and my growing hatred of crowds. The fact it's becoming increasingly hard to see at night whilst driving and I don't stay up until the small hours anymore. Rationalizations, perhaps. However, and, what caused the above mentioned ire, was remembering how my father will say the road goes both ways and I find myself sick to death with those both ways being me going down and coming back up.

Point? Final statement on the matter? It's y'all's fucking turn. You want to see me? You come up the hill.

Last night, I was going through some older stuff, and came across this;

"I have this urge to pack up my belongs and move to Africa, or, maybe Tibet, disappear into the wilds, and grow a beard..."

That was right after my grandmother died. I could Conformationally Biasly say it was where the trouble started, or an aspect of it. That wanting to ramble, but we all know better. Although, it got me to think, and thinking is good.

There was a comment from the bruja, which gave me a chuckle. I should have stopped there, but it was late at night, when the demons come for tea, and I was having a whiskey to note I had no obligations for the next two days. I found the last correspondence between us; me offering sympathy and an ear right before her grandmother died. It was the day before the rollover that would take my beautiful friend's life, some ten months after I'd lost my mother.

The gypsy recently told me she believed the bruja was wearing her seatbelt when she was ejected from the vehicle, but the force of impact was enough to do what it did. Such a postulation can help assuage five years worth of slow-burning anger over the circumstance, but it doesn't change facts; dead is dead, and you do not always get to walk away from that. My friend certainly didn't, of which I am so vividly aware. I stared at the correspondence for a long time.

So it goes...

It is a day of rest. I mean to wander the Notch down-valley. Maybe take myself out for a salmon burger. Just because. Walk back up the canyon along the train tracks. Shrimp curry for supper. Tomorrow I do a museum committee thing of being at reception for the train workers, but that's more of cookout than any kind of obligation. I feel myself recharging as these words flow from my fingers. Summer's almost here and the snow on the high peaks is striking as always. I itch to get further into the Backcountry and up upon the alpine, but I know that's bit off. Sooner than I think, but later than I hope.

So it goes...

Basecamp

Just as I spent a portion of my life wishing I could be someone else, there was a large part of my life spent wanting to be elsewhere. Perhaps it started innocently enough; the coffee table books about Africa in my great-grandmother's house that sits on one of my shelves to this very day, or her artifacts from China. I've always been a sucker for documentaries, even and especially about nature, so the far-flung locals that were featured captivated me. There was also the steady diet of sci-fi, fantasy, and comic books growing up, feeding an active-overactive?-imagination.

The bullying made somewhere, anywhere, a better option. Of course, one cannot outrun their monsters, and anyone who would try to tell you different is either daft or trying to sell something. Still, being an aberration, I've often felt like a bit of an outsider, which can be more bothersome than you might imagine. So, the idea of finding an elsewhere that it didn't matter how curious I was held its sway.

Whilst never possessed of the gypsy mojo of some of the cats I've known, that subconscious search was constant. It's perhaps the reason some teenage boy's ranting to a Led Zeppelin song when I was seventeen made such a lasting impression. The myth and magic of Kashmir. I had something to find.

You would think, having that feeling of outsiderishness, it would have been grand that I fell in with vampires for a bit. Not so much. As with any social caste, there is the strata, and with castes like the vampires or punks or artist-types or pagans or metalheads, there are the degrees of how alienated you've been to close ranks with whatever group. Whether you're just a tourist carousing in someone else's skin for a weekend and a thrill or the one who is so strange that you're alienated amongst the alienated. And, of course, there is the subtext of who keeps it the most real, those who try to give lessons on being the most outsiderie.

Fuck that noise...

***

I wasn't actively looking for Kashmir when we stumbled upon it. Ain't that always the way? Of course, I was thinking of elsewhere at the time. Sabina and I had extricated ourselves from the vampire caste and were exploring new avenues of things to do and reconnecting with either accidental or intentionally buried aspects of ourselves. The recent life changes made me restless.

To be trite, it was like falling in love; something I knew head, heart, and gut, and no one could tell me otherwise. Suddenly the somewhere else to be had a tangible location. Myth and magic made manifest. We had a goal, and we achieved it.

***

It's coming up on the anniversary of our taking possession of the House of Owls and Bats. Of coming home. I'd be stating the obvious to say this place still sings to me in esoteric tongues. A human lifetime is not enough to throughly explore the totality of it, which is part of the magic.

A human lifetime...too short. It is why I ache for the lifespan of a star; all the things I want to do might only be accomplished on a cosmic timespan. This is why I have decided not to die. I'm busy.

I no longer desire to be somewhere, anywhere else. Whilst being an aberration, I can still feel like a bit of an outsider, but I'm somewhere populated by other exiles and drop-outs. If there are those who would preen and posture over being more outsiderie than anyone else, and there probably are, I've either not met them, or dismissed them out of hand.

There is still the desire to travel. I still want to see Africa and Tibet. Alaska and Patagonia. Spain and Greece and Australia. Cambodia and Peru. To see whales and perhaps go into orbit, if not step off world to somewhere really alien. The thing is, now I have a basecamp to come back to and be contented to be back home.