I am more solitary by nature, so being away from my fellow hominids is not terrible. Towns are for social experience, trails are for reflection, meditation, and reverence. Out there is what some may call holy or profane. Perhaps. What I know is it does not play favorites.

However, Homo sapiens are social animals. With the exception of Orangutans, all of the Great Apes are. Not that I'd call humans great. Somewhere between okay and fair to middling, perhaps. From a zoological, anthropological, and sociological standpoint, I am very interested to see how this pestilence changes the way we, as a species, interact. The coming months are going to be very telling of how we adapt.

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.

Stand

So, let's talk about rock and/or roll...

Okay, maybe not. How about instead we talk about a sense of place? About that, which is intangible? About the price of admission? About lines in the sand?

It was not too long ago I spoke down from the mount about being presented with a grand opportunity. One, which would be outright folly to pass by. We opted to make it work. Word has gotten around. Here in the mountains, in these small places, secrets are a very hard thing to keep, and I am adept at keeping secrets. Like being both a masked vigilante and an esoteric porn star.

Oh! Did I just say too much?

The thing is the price of admission. Everything has a price. That is the very nature of the Deal. Only cheap things are purchased with bits of folding paper and jingling coins.

I have found myself afflicted with a crippling sense of grief. Look out my front door, I see a twelve-thousand two-hundred eighty-seven foot peak with no distinct trail that I have summited three times. Go out back, I spy, with my too-big-for-the-rest-of-my-face eyes, a twelve-thousand two-hundred-seventy-five foot peak that catches the first light of day, and, in its bosom, cradles the bones of an aerial tramway that operated in the early years of the twentieth century, which I have yet to get to. I live where others come to vacation.

When I first came here, I felt, head, heart, and gut I had found my place in the world. Though I am not given to the nuance of such things as romance, I find I can only describing it was when one first falls in love; you know what has happened, but trying to make logical sense of it, or, put it into coherent words, is another animal. Sometimes, I wonder if it is a similar sensation my sister-in-law gets when she steps into her megachurch and is delivered scripture.

A few days back, a preservationist of my acquaintance and admiration asked me when I was leaving. This was a practicality, in a sense, given my involvements in my community, one such thing is a land use commission with her. With a bit of flippancy, I told her I was sorry to disappoint, but it may be a bit. Sabina would say it's because we're in the throes of summer, and it's the sweet time when it's almost perfect here, but it's more than that.

As we spoke, the preservationist of my acquaintance and admiration mentioned she can go somewhere for months-of course because of who she is-and immerse herself in a place, but there is an intangible that draws her back and keeps her here. I totally get it. The intangibility has been the source of my bouts of melancholy.

I remember my youthful wish of wanting to live in either a nature reserve or a museum. Making the intangible tangible, I got that. A friend of mine once said Heaven grants all its gifts with a righteous fury. I do not believe in Heaven, unless I say that is what I have. Nor do I believe in righteous fury, because if you are right, there is no need for fury, and, if you are wrong, you cannot afford it. However, brass tacks and bedposts, I got that wish I made so many years and lifetimes ago. I know that down into my marrow.

How can I sacrifice this for that? I have meditated and agonized over it. In the end, I find I am unwilling to contemplate the option of all or nothing.

Will the opportunity be taken? Certainly. However, it will be on my terms and no one else's. Not the whims or pressures of friends, family, acquaintances, or even the Department of Transportation trying to manipulate travel routes to get more tourists to the resorts. Should you try, muster all the armies of the heavens, earth, and the hellscapes, but, make sure to pack your white flag of surrender lest I march through all of you, but not before taking out my ire upon three generations of all of your families, for I am possessed of glacial patience and a fertile imagination.

Be careful...

I figured out living in the middle of a city. I figured out the love and affection of a quirky blond x-goth/metal girl. I have figured out the mountains as they continue to surprise and amaze me. I will figure out this opportunity, but not at the sacrifice of somewhere I intangibly see as my place in the world.

This is my line in the sand. Here is where I will make my stand. 
   

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.

The Spurning

Yuki-Onna, the Snow Queen, the Goddess of Winter raged. Oh, how she raged. Snow fell heavily, snapping the branches of trees, freezing rivers and lakes, and burying bare ground. The cold cut through to the marrow and visibility was greatly reduced to a study in monochrome. As she raged, and the snow loaded, the roar of avalanches echoed her mutterings and musings.

"How can you even consider leaving me?!?" She roared.

I stood calmly, hands clasped tightly behind my back, something, which may have resembled a smirk played across my lips. When I first came here, I was chasing unfinished tales, but I then became a student. Of landscapes of weather. Of the sky and stars and clouds. Of ice and free-flowing water. Of the harshness and softness of a place that truly show indifference to its inhabitants.

Certainly, the Snow Queen had a strong influence here, but she was not my patron. I have never been one to prey, unless in the context of the food chain. What I would sometimes whisper to her on the cold night winds would hardly be considered a prayer, but perhaps a provocation. Then again, I never made any effort to hide my sense of heresy.

Yuki-Onna, Snow Queen and Goddess of Winter, hear me, and be without distraction; I fucked your mother last night. Well and repeatedly...

"I never bent my knee in worship to you," I said plainly. "That is submission, and submission is for dogs."

"I know how much this place fascinates you, and you live to be continually fascinated," she said. "Where do think you can go?"

"I intend to go where the world is sculpted by fire and water," I replied. "Where the world is still growing, by degrees, instead of being worn down."

Her cold eyes narrowed and gale of ice-barbed air struck me. I held my ground. Never once, no matter how much her cold countenance hurt me, had I backed down. It frustrated her, but it also won her grudging respect.

"Are you insane?!?" She exclaimed. "Do you really think you can thrive there?"

"Of course,"I said. "You adapt or die, that is the imperative and gospel of biology. Besides, it snows there too, so I can antagonize one of your incarnations, or perhaps cousins."

"Just like that, you're finished.? You've grown bored of here?"

"This place sings to me in ways that can fill me with endless longing. When the time comes, I know I'll miss it here, and the only other place I miss is where I spend my childhood, but that's another story."

Yuki-Onna, the Snow Queen, the Goddess of Winter, reached out to me. Her chilled fingers brushing my cheek. For the slightest of moments, she was almost tender. Almost seductive.

"Then why not stay? Stay with me?"

My gaze hardened and a low growl rebounded in the back of my throat. That, which lurks behind my eyes like some kind of ambush predator in a nameless African river, came a little closer to the surface. Quickly, she withdrew her hand, for fear of losing fingers, if not her whole hand.

"Because it is where my fascinations lead me," I replied, it was my turn to be cold and unforgiving. "It is an opportunity and a gift  of which would be folly to turn aside. There is nothing that can convince me otherwise, not even the adversarial acquaintance of a mercurial snow deity."

 Yuki-Onna, the Snow Queen, the Goddess of Winter turned away. Ours had never been an easy relationship. I heard her sigh heavily and noticed the snow lightening ever so slightly.

"You are one of the most relentless creatures I have ever met," she whispered. "Perhaps there was something to the guru telling you the only time you don't get what you want is when you decide you no longer want it."

"If you wish to give into such superstition," I said, not hiding my heresy.

"When will you go?"

"I don't know. It could be a season, it could be in a few years. Do you ever tell me exactly when you're coming or leaving?"

"Fair enough. I think I might miss you once you're gone."

"Doubtful, given I start my conversations with you by mentioning what I do to your mother."

Yuki-Onna, the Snow Queen, the Goddess of Winter chuckled. Oh, how she chuckled. A laugh of bitter sweetness and frost-covered mornings. And just like that, she disappeared into the snow. And just like that, with a sigh, I looked up at the breaking storm clouds to behold the setting of the sun and the rising of the moon.

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...

Devotional

I have mentioned having encounters from cats from all across the planet. This sort of thing happens when you live where others come to vacation. Every so often I have someone ask me for a space in which show devotion because it's prayer time. I do not prey unless it is in context of the food chain, but I accommodate, finding a them a quiet place and pointing which direction is east. They're always polite, and, sometimes, frightened to ask, which is sad, but not unexpected given the sociopolitcal climate of the day. A year back, it was a couple of skiing students with a Call to Prayer app on their phone. Fantastic. Today, it was a couple.

I had a class to set up, and left them to their devotional with a fellow proletariat making sure they were not disturbed. Upon my return, I was given notations of the exact longitude and latitude of Mecca for the Qibla direction and many thanks. They had wanted to thank me in person, but so it goes.

It got me to smile...

Epilogue; Back to the World, or, Beyond its End

On a recent walkabout through the town cemetery, we witnessed a miracle of wind-loaded snow. We laughed ourselves sick...





Come down music...

It was the twentieth of January when we arrived home around five in the afternoon. How I maintained consciousness for another four hours still baffles me. The feeling of sleeping in my own bed was akin to the warm embrace of a long-lost lover.

Yes, I did ask my pillow the next day if it was good for it too, what of it?

Six days later, on my first real walkabout since returning from the island, I noted direct sunlight had returned to the house. I had a glass of wine out in the first soft daylight of two months in celebration. As far as I'm concerned, when the Long Dark ends, winter is halfway over. Then again, in my timekeeping, winter starts when the sun no longer rises above the ridge, and that's mid-November. Perhaps I function best in places where time is something of a dodgey concept.

Of course, I was back to a place I did have to keep better track of hours and minutes, rather than just whether or not it was night or day, what with professional obligations and all. Life slid back into familiar rhythms fairly quickly.

There were obligations and errands. Meals and walkabouts on the free days. We came across fresh cat tracks in fresh snow. It was glorious, but I am unsure if it was a mountain lion or bobcat. See, the fresh blood in the snow helped to talk us out of further investigation, despite the coolness of the National Geographic moment. Besides, it would have been a dick move to disturb the cat during its dinner, not to mention potentially fatally dangerous.

Seeing those tracks served as perspective. On the island, upon land, the most vicious predator was a species of primate that had figured out how to manipulate fire. All the scary beasties were out in the ocean. Here in the mountains, things with tooth and claw walk the same same trails we do.

Because I live in a smaller community, people I didn't even tell, but were acquainted with, would ask me how my trip was. With a fair amount of glibness, I would say it was okay, which was meant with a chuckle at me being a card. Many of these cats are used to me saying the mountains are okay if you're into sweeping views and juxtaposed geography.

Every so often, I catch myself missing the backbeat of the tropics; the chatter of the local wildlife at night and the surf against the lava rocks. Other than alpine breezes, it can be rather silent in the mountains at night. It was a jarring lesson I had to relearn.

I do dream of the island. I dream of whales, which is kind of fantastic. Part of me would love to have the skull of one. Then I catch myself wondering where I'd hang such a thing.

The superstitious sort might see my whale dreams as portents. Lifetimes ago, I might have, but these days, I know a little better. A Pagan's spell may not work. A prayer to a deity may go unanswered. An omen can be misconstrued.

So it goes...

I started to meditate on how the trip has changed me, and immediately realized how absurd that was. Sure, how oh so romantic to say x place changed you, but I haven't got a romantic bone in my body. The reality is you're changed the moment you walk out your door, even if it's just to run down to the store for ice cream. On some level every walkabout has left me changed.

There is a term for those who are not changed by experiences; dead...

I am happy to be home, make no mistake. There are the peaks and being in my own house. It's nice to see the familiars again and not to be tripping over six other people to refill one of my water bottles. When I look out a landscape, I remember that sleep-deprived catharsis of the first night back. This is Kashmir. My place in the world. A preservationist of my acquaintance has a similar experience when she comes back from traveling, and she wanders the globe for want of something to do. I think of her as something of a mentor, so the fact she shares that experience is something I find infinitely comforting.     

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...

Notes from Camp 1 I; Experiences

Two aspects of the same location...

The place we slept; Moana I'Kena Huina. If the House of Owls and Bats is basecamp, then this place was Camp 1...

Ocean;

The last time I saw the ocean I was a teenager. What I saw was bluer with higher tides than my adolescent memories of the Atlantic. At one point, storms in the Pacific Northwest would be the cause of big waves that would batter the coastline. It was fascinating to watch. On a few occasions, I saw flying fish, but never what caused them to come above the water. Sea turtles would ride the waves. Surfers of the most ancient of orders, surviving from a time of dragons and titans.

We went to the water a lot. Sabina would speak about the fascination with it. Something primal being felt in watching the ocean. In the mountains, I watch the river, sometimes with monkish concentration, and the high lakes carry a certain sense of zen. For me, I think going to watch the water-aside from wanting to catch glimpses of the life contained therein-was the sheer scale of it. Like looking up at the night sky into the totality of the cosmos, the enormity is right there, but it is difficult to comprehend that you are staring into yet unseen depths.

Perhaps my favorite vantage point...

The coast, like everything else on the island, was borne of lava. I really liked the ruggedness of where we were staying. No resortie-sand beaches with hula-girls for us. I lost track of how many times and routes I took bouldering the rocks, occasionally getting spritzed with sea spray.

It was along this section of rocky coastline I would see my first whale. I was coming down to the water on what would become perhaps my favorite vantage point for the first time, when, for the briefest of instants, I caught the fleeting glimpse of a pectoral fin coming out of the water. Much like the only time I've ever seem a wild mountain lion, had I been a second earlier or later or blinked, I would have missed it. I all but teleported to the edge of the rocks for a further look, but it was gone. This did not prevent me from returning to the house with the most wicked grin of joy on my face. 

"I saw a whale! Guess this means I can go back to Colorado now."

The other time I would see whales was back on the way to the Kona airport. It was witnessed from a distance, but the countenance was unmistakable.  Looking out the window toward the ocean, I counted between six and eight spouts, which I postulated were mothers and calves, and two breaches. That was the total National Geographic moment. Yes, I clapped my hands together excitedly and may or may not have yipped like an excited puppy.

Certainly, I'd love to say seeing whales, even and especially that first glance and/or the breaches, was magic and mystery that filled me with a deep sense of cosmic oneness for all other living creatures upon the Earth, but I'd be lying. I'd like to say witness not one breach, but two, was like having a prayer answered by mythological anthropomorphic deity, but the only time I prey is in the context of the food chain, and I'd not insult the Divine by tarting it up in anthropomorphic drag. It comes down to this; that seeing whales was nothing like I figured, but it was no less really fucking cool.

***

Towns;

Hilo was a dirty, stinky places hemmed in by stripmalls. Its downtown reminded my of a strange sort of amalgamation of Denver's Asian quarter with my years-old memories of East Colfax thrown in for a spice. The difference here was more people of European descent in aloha-wear looking for a thrill. The oddest thing I found there was it was another of our number, not me, who got city/crowd-stabbie first. We departed directly after that.

Pahoa, on the other hand, was a funky little 'berg, and you gotta have the funk. It was a strange crossover of a tropical Morrison, maybe some of Pearl Street in Boulder, a Pagan sabbat, and some aspects of the towns in our Sahel. I know a few mountain acquaintances who would probably feel right at home. I realized I could potentially get in a little trouble there and have a fun time doing it. The woman who ended up doing my latest tattoo reminded me very much of the bruja.

Said tattoo...

Unlike the mountains, upon initial inspection, there does not seem to be a lot of archeology here. The tropical climate and the still-active lava devours it. Even though a town like Pahoa is a sugercane station almost as old as my town, it sometimes seemed hard to grasp. Up in the mountains, even being on the edge of wilderness, one did not have to walk far to find the passage of Man, be it a rusty miner's nail or a beer can from the 1970s, preserved in the alpine air. Where we were, one had to hack into jungle in hopes of finding remains not made from less-permanent material. I heard tell of ancient petroglyphs, but never got a chance to see them.

This has gotten put on a list for next time...

***

Other Places;

A couple sea turtles at the Black Sand Beach...

Observatories up top of Mauna Kea. To someone who sees playing outside as holy sacrament, these are the equivalent of monasteries of esoteric orders...

A lotus pond...

We traveled to two different beaches in the same day. Both had different color of volcanic sand, one green, the other black. Oddly enough, the ground and the water at the black sand beach was cooler. I couldn't help but wonder if it was the time of day.

During most of our stay, the only water we encountered was salt. Fresh water came out of a tap. Some squatters further in the jungle used rain-catchment to get water. I began to wonder if there were any rivers on the island. On the last day, we were taken to a waterfall, plunging four-hundred twenty feet into the jungle. It was striking. Sabina and I agreed the sound of the river it fed reminded us of home.

The way Mauna Kea rose up reminded me of every picture I've ever seen of Kilimanjaro. Well, sans the snow, which I found queer. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I kept hold of the calendar dates, and I knew it was still winter, even if it felt like July. Sabina remarked the mountain's visitor center, being at ninety-two hundred was almost like being home. I countered only if it were late September or early October.

We beheld the sunset at thirteen-thousand seven-hundred seventy-nine foot summit, watching the observatories open up like night blossoms composed of tech. I was fascinated by those and the tropical sun setting from the summit of what is truly the tallest mountain in the world. I was also fascinated by the lack of snow. Being a thirteen-thousand back home would have involved snowshoes and down and checking the slopes for the possibility of avalanches.

***

I realized during the trip I would make a lot of comparisons. North Carolina for the humidity and greenery, Kilimanjaro for a thirteener, places in Colorado for some of the towns we ended up in. Under  normal circumstances, I would be vexed by this, the comparisons detracting from the uniqueness of the actual experience happening right in front of your eyes. However, I think what I was doing was something of a human thing; drawing on personal experiences and stories-in context all the National Geographic and nature documentaries I've seen-to make sense of where I found myself. Perhaps I'm wrong and that was a rationalization. I've yet to find a satisfactory answer.         

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.     

Signs of the Sweet Time

The falls up Mosquito Gulch, all defrosted now. A lovely spot to stand under after a hot walkabout...

A friend of mine, of whom I warn people not to fuck with, for she is short, spunky, and southern, told me she knew it was summer when she saw me wearing shorts. I knew it was summer by the scent in the air and the way everything popped green in what seemed an overnight. Let the sweet time begin.

The river, noted, if not lauded, for its clarity, is brown with silt and sings in the tones of runoff. Some of my sitting rocks, or, ones I use for marking the waterline, are submerged. I've yet to hear the leviathan, but I know it's just a matter of days, if not hours.

Sabina and I scheme to go camping. Back behind the Bull's Head is the most accessible now. Grizzly Gulch sometime after runoff abates. It's be later in the summer when we pitch the tent up above Pass Lake. I itch for the alpine, having not been up there since Sabina's birthday. That's almost six months. Half a year.

This will not do...

Walking around town, neighbors hold court on porches. Mowing instead of shoveling snow. The scent of grilling and bonfires as opposed to the scent of fire to heat a house.

I have learned to deal with and appreciate winter. Autumn's colors are always striking. Spring brings its promise of renewal. However, summer is truly the sweet time. In terms of economics, it's our busiest, richest time. In terms of life, it's the sweetest time because it's so fucking short. Lessons in cycles and impermanence.

Summer has come. A time of hummingbirds and wildflowers. Shorts and sandals. Walkabouts into the Backcountry to those places snow never melts. Of grilling and nights under a big starry sky with an open fire and not as many layers. The shortest, sweetest time of all.

Some Vignettes

This past Tuesday, after hiking the canyon down, I took myself out for enchiladas. The girl behind the bar recognized me and asked of my adventures. This got a stranger, a couple seats over, to start asking me about trails. The sort of questions I am often asked at obligations, because there is this ugly suspicion I am in the know about such things.

Often I have stated that work is the eight hours of inconvenience you put up with in order to do the things you truly enjoy. Then this shabby crap happens. Of course, I live in what is termed a resort area, and find myself dealing with tourists constantly, and not just in context of what I do for money.

It would certainly seem I live my fucking job...

***

Later that day, I went for a walk around my funky tiny town with a ginger beer in hand. I'd not had afternoon tea yet, so it wasn't near cocktail hour. One of my neighbors, who goes to Antarctica for rescue services and kicks, playing fetch with his dog, nearly brained me with a tennis ball.

How awkward. He apologized. To make up for the near catastrophic turn of events, he took some of my ginger beer-an apparent good mixer-and some Icelandic vodka to make me a Moscow mule.

What a town! What a time to be alive! I fucking love this place!

***

As a DJ for the community radio station, Sabina sometimes get sent free stuff. The latest CD was all the way from New York-New Your City?!? Git a rope!-and took us both back. Dark gothic tunes that echoed to past lives down below. We listened to the compilation as we daytripped it to Breckenridge, the irony of what we'd think of as city music being played being played up in the high mountains not being lost on either of us.

It doesn't seem goth has changed that much since I stopped hanging around the vampire caste. Those jams could've been the same from ten, twenty, even thirty years ago. At first I found this sensation of stagnation disheartening.

However, to be fair, listen to Americana, bluegrass, punk, or the blues, and there's not much change over the years. A genre gets a sound and sticks to it-if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Maybe there's nothing wrong with that. Perhaps someone with a more sensitive ear than I could tell me I'm full of shit.

***

Further debate and discussion on being mountain...

Sabina's friend, Pippin, got me a bumper sticker for Old Scratch that reads Jesus would slap the shit out of you. This is a sticker of wild popularity and uproarious laughter. Random strangers have taken pictures of my vehicle just for that sticker.

I told Job it was my jab at the Elmer Gantries of the world. The charlatan Christians who preach the word, but have no conception of the spirit. My thought is if said bumper sticker offends you, you need to look in the mirror. Job tells me he used that line in church.

As we walked out of whichever establishment in the environs of Breckenridge, we had someone asking if we were the ones who had Old Scratch. Said bumper sticker had given a good jolly laugh, for which we were thanked. I shook my head after the encounter.

"Do we fucking look like that was our car?" I asked rhetorically. Sabina shot me a look and a wry smile.

"Face it, you reek of mountain," she said.

I resented that. After all, I do bathe. Occasionally.

***

Announcing its presence with a authority, snow has returned to my mountains. A couple of heavy, wet, feet of spring snow fell. I sing my praises of thanksgiving to the shift in the jetstream.

Road closures were aplenty. I would've drank my treasured last infusion of Nepali black tea and snowshoed, but I had obligations to attend to. If I believed in it, I would say fate is not without a sense of irony.

A free day awaits with the rising of the sun. There is to be a dusting overnight, maybe even during the day ahead, and we mean to get out with the shoes for what may be the last time this season, although, obviously, you never know. This is Colorado. This is the mountains.

There are further chances of precipitation in the coming week. Nothing as powerful as this last storm, but something that'll help our snow pack. This past Tuesday, I wore a t-shirt whilst on walkabout and sandals after I got home. The last three days I've worn snowboots and wool socks. That's fine. We can use the water, and, I can do with at least one more snowshoe. Sandals can wait. After all, my patience is formidable.

More Springtime Dispatches

Trail booty! I've been hunting for one of these for years... 

I show my amore for Sabina by collecting her interesting rocks whilst on walkabout. She does so for me by finding me bits of skeleton. Other couples might tarry about with jewels and cards and candies and all that other romantic yotz. We trade bones; the bones of Gaia, the bones of other species. That's true love.

***

The historical society has been holding the Cabin Fever Dance for six years now. Many of the attendees have known me for longer. Yet, everymuthafuckingyear the question of why I don't dance is raised.

"Well, you see, I have this horrific genetic condition," I reply. "And I don't mean my connective-tissue disorder."

"Oh? What's that?" It is asked.

"Caucasian," I say.

Dancing at a vampire den is not rocket science; just move with the music and relax in the knowledge you probably can't look half as ridiculous as some of the other tossers out on the floor. In fact, if you want to see something funny, watch a group of vampires dance. Better yet, film it and play it back at slightly faster speed, seeing as that caste likes to do everything on a dance floor in slow motion.

Dancing all punk-rock like-e.g. moshing-is basically a street fight you don't have to worry about getting thrown in jail for. Just know when to duck and hope you don't get too banged up. So I've heard.

The concept of town-dance dancing is neither my cup of tea nor glass of water. Better luck asking me to write a sonnet and mean it. Ergo, my remarking of genetic issues and watching from dark corners with my wine.

This, however, did not stop the matron from dragging me out on the dance floor. Something about loosening me up. I get any looser, I might whistle when I walk. Although I hugged her after the fact, I still called her cantankerous.

"Hey, it's me," she said completely unapologetically.

***

I broke out a pair of sandals for the first time in months. We had a chiminea that night. Everything seems a month ahead in terms of seasonal changes and temperatures. One meteorological prophet suggested that perhaps the state's snow pack has already peaked. I told a traveler the other day I've not snowshoed since the beginning of the month what for the quality of snow. When we've wandered, it's been south faces with gaiters. We check for ticks.

A few inches of snow fell overnight, mostly melted away by noon. I was wandering the Bull's Head, searching for a particular artifact. It is either still buried under the snow on the backside of the rock formation or it has been moved. If moved, I have a pretty good idea of where and just might come calling.

There was a breeze and bright sun. More snow is foretold for overnight, but a repeat of last night's in terms of accumulation. Then warm again for many days. A musician of my acquaintance greeted me with happy sprung! the other night. Thus is the cycle.

Out in the bush is where I hear the rhythms and rhymes of the cosmos, and, if I could, might dance to it. Coming out from the backside of the Bull's Head by the Diamond Mine, I looked at a slice of rock I like to scrabble. Most of its ice and snow has melted from it and I felt the itch to climb. This got me to smile.

"Soon enough," I whispered.

Dynamic, A Hymn

An iced-over waterfall up what we call Mosquito Gulch, two days back. The ice is far too rotten to be climbed, and I lack the equipment and knowledge to do so. For now...

Something moved in overnight, which brought a cloak of heavy gray to the first light of morning. I am a sucker for the shades of Grey. The mist gave a damp chill, an illusion to how cold it really was. I grabbed extra layers in case. Best to be prepared.

It was not even early morning when the sun first tore through the murk. By ten, I was seeing blue above. The clouds slithered and danced along the mountainsides in the countenance of Chinese dragons. I marveled as they faded away like dreamtime phantasms in golden light. By noon, one had to wrinkle and squint and give a benefit of a doubt to find even the faintest suggestion of a cloud across the turquoise sky. The air was warm.

When describing the aspects of Byzantium that are the tiny towns, which dot our Sahel, Sempai will wax Norman Rockwell. I find this funny, given his big city-Atlanta-sensitivities and very open homosexuality. Some of the volunteers say things don't change much 'round here. I find myself thinking yes, but no.

Within the borders of the municipalities, one can find a certain sense of stasis. This is a given in small towns, be it rural North Carolina or a ranching station out on the far-flung badlands of eastern Colorado. Rural is rural in that regard.

And yet, this place is ever-changing. I watch-I like to watch-the sculpting of freeze of thaw. Of wind and snow. The changes wrought by rain and rockfall. Nothing is stays exactly the same.

I own up that I am not as well-traveled as I'd like. There are cats of whom I'm acquainted that have lived in far more places than me. Be that as it may, I believe I have found my place in the world, and, of all the places I have lived, this environment is, by far, the most dynamic.

Scenes From a Tuesday Morning

Shot of the altar. Much more reflective of our views these days...

I pad about the house with an infusion of jasmine tea. Mozart is my jam. Outside is overcast with light flurries. Meteorological prophecy portents of snow later in the day and into this evening, but I remain hopefully cynical about the amounts, seeing as it hasn't dumped much more than six inches on us over the last few storms. However, the statewide snow pack is closer to ninety percent of average than it had been, and, our particular river drainage is over one-hundred percent, thus, the reason behind me being hopeful.

Incense perfumes the house, as always. The levels of profundity of my burning incense has waxed and waned throughout the years. I can admit, in some contexts, it can be as automatic as turning a light switch. Other times, I watch the mysteries of the cosmos unfurl within the tendrils of scented smoke. Sabina once told me one of her favorite mental images of me is lighting a stick, watching the smoke, and placing it in the burner upon the altar. Some such silliness about the look of contemplation and reverence.

Both of us get complimented on the way we smell. Being glib, I mention the marvel of bathing. It elicits a chuckle, and then incense is brought up. We burn it constantly, to the point that unless a stick is burning, like a smoker with a lit cigarette, we hardly notice the underlying scent that hangs about us like an aura. I have had someone reach over and breathe deep. I've had someone reach out and touch my hair because there is so much of it. Depending on how misanthropic I feel dictates how deeply I growl or don't.

You'd think someone who is nearly six and a half feet tall, lithe-a nice way of say emaciated-pierced, tattooed, and bedecked in one or two trinkets would be used to such things. It'd probably elicit a chuckle or an of course with some baseless reference to paradoxical nature I've supposedly nurtured if I said I don't like to draw a lot of attention to myself. Oh sure, I don't really want to be another brick in the metaphoric wall, but I've met those cats who go out of their way to make sure they're noticed, and, observed insecurities aside, it seems like a lot of fucking effort. Even and especially when you're just going to a corner store for a soda and a candy bar.

Such are some of my muses and meditations on a Tuesday morning with Mozart as my jam...

I try to decide how to spend my day. There are no professional obligations. I have books to return to the library and the trash should be dealt with. A new coffeehouse is opening in space of the one that shut down back in late January, and a cha'i could potentially be in order. After all, it is across the street from the library. If Miguel Loco's about I could pick his brain from information about a trek I'd like to do through Herman's Gulch, up around to Dry Gulch come summer. The world is my metaphoric oyster, or some other savory mollusk.

Tomorrow, I convinced Sabina to snowshoe Dry Gulch with me. During the winter, part of the trailhead is snowed in, and one must walk from the foot of Loveland Pass; dirty, crusty snow and scent of diesel fumes for about a quarter mile. Understandably not enjoyable, but once you round that curve and pass the Boneyard to first look into the gulch itself, it's like a kiss from the Divine. With tongue.

This is the time of year when the snow starts to shift its countenance. There's still a bit of shoeing to be had, some even in just a t-shirt. I am looking forward to our trek, partially because I've not been up Dry Gulch since early autumn. We'll be roasting a chicken for supper, and, when we return home from walkabout, there'll be relaxing with a cocktail or three, because that's how we roll.

A scene from a recent cocktail hour at the House of Owls and Bats. My glass had lemonade in it. Seriously. You believe me riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight?

A Hymn for Snow

Although the meteorological prophet over at CAIC called the storm that rolled in Sunday, lasting through Monday, a return to winter, I felt the snow had more of the wet-paste spring snow countenance. Certainly, Tuesday was brisk as the wind blew Tibetan from the Roof of the World, whipping snowdevils this way and that, but the last two days have been a return to milder temperatures, which have characterized the last few weeks. There are patches of bare ground appearing around the house. Out snowshoeing in the Hollow, the snow varied from crust to dust to powder depending on how shaded the area was by virtue of trees and being on a north face.

Perhaps it is because of the angle of the sun climbing higher on its march to kiss the celestial equator-with tongue-for the equinox, or having that scent of mud in the air more and more in my nostrils, but I stand by my supposition of an early spring. Prophecy speaks of snow again, and a decent one, but I am skeptical. I am skeptical by nature. The jetstream has been such the big storms have been missing Colorado. Our statewide snowpack now stands at seventy-seven percent. Grotesque. However, we have it better than other locations in 'Merican Maghreb. Even if it does pan out to be a decent storm, I think it'll be more like a snow we'd see in March or April, which means heavy and wet and a lot of it will melt away once the storm passes and it warms up again.

Truthfully, I am hoping my skepticism is misplaced. Mostly for the snowpack, although, I'd like some nice fresh snow on which to shoe through. I do not prey unless it is in context of the food chain, but I am thinking of finding a chicken to sacrifice under the auspice of getting a little more moisture. A bit of sympathetic magic, and a chicken is more likely than finding a virgin.

V

Five years back, my mother was in the midpoint of her final seventeen days. That bardo in the sickhouse before my brother and I would stand over her emptied shell. Cooling meat that stank of disease. Neither my brother or I had coins to place over her half-lidded eyes.

I started this by trying to explain the concept of everyone having their place in the world. Kashmir being the buzzword. Although, I had been purging my words into the spider's web of cyber for six years already, I wanted to do something new. Something I felt was more reflective of the me who had been living in the mountains for a few years.

New mythology? New narrative? Choose your buzzword, I reckon.

Five years on, I've told some stories and shared a few walkabouts. I still believe in Kashmir, head, heart, and gut. If the concept of worship did not involve submission-dogs submit, I bare my jugular to no one and nothing-I would say I all but worship the mountains. Perhaps totalmuthafuckingrevere would be the better adjective. 

Something that is most important, at least to me, is I am still interested enough to leave my words here. Whether or not anyone else reads them. It does seem the concept of the blog is getting a bit trite. TLDR, is a term I've seen and heard of. Look to social media for quick quips and kitty pictures. However, you want a story or a missive about living where others come to vacation? Come and talk to me.

The Fast

"Rather three days without food, than a day without tea..."-Chinese proverb

Jazz plays on the morning radio and there's a fire. Otherwise there's a curious silence about the house. I sip water, the only thing I am allowed to have for the next three and a half hours.

For the first time in five years I am going to see a doctor. Just an annual checkup, Sabina's idea. That whole thing of we've been paying for insurance and should reap the benefit of a free checkup. Nevermind the rare as hen's teeth occurrence of me taking ill.

Practically speaking, it can't hurt. My father would growl that my mother did not get herself checked out regularly. When she finally did go to the doctor after noticing something was amiss, the cancer that would eventually eat her alive was in its second stage. Granted, it was cervical, and, unless we are speaking in vertebral tongues, it is anatomically unlikely I could get the same strain.

So, I would say this is no biggie, but it is. See, we must fast for up to twelve hours. Nothing but water. I don't mind water at all. However, I cannot have tea.

I tried to lament this circumstance to Sabina. Don't eat? Okay, I probably need to watch my slim and girlish figure, after all, at nearly six foot six I have gotten up to one-hundred and sixty pounds. I might get a gut. No coffee? I can take it or leave it. No wine or beer? An indulgence.

But no tea? Madness! This is catastrophic.

"Oh, just pretend your the Dalai Lama and drink hot water instead of tea," Sabina said when I tried to explain my devastation.

"And shall I shave my head and wear yellow and saffron robes as well?" I asked, and she had the outright audacity to shoot me a look as though I was being melodramatic.

"It's just blood work," she said.

No sympathy at all. Clearly, she doesn't understand. Fucking woman.