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.

The Student, The Master, The Changes of Roles, and The Degrees of Cool

Thanksgiving, 1994; I had been twenty-two for two months and change. My daughter had been alive for a week. I only had one piercing, no tattoos, and had yet to sprout a gray hair...

For those just tuning in, I was not always the hoopy frood you know now. Very far from it. I was a rather awkward youth. Part of it was being an aberration; being too tall, too skinny, with eyes too big for the rest of my face. Another aspect was the bullying, which nurtured my solitary nature.

There were times I wanted to be someone-anyone-else so badly it physically hurt. Perhaps that is why I despise the concept of a persona so much now is during those ugly, painful, awkward years, I more than once tried to be something I wasn't. More than once, the results were disastrous. I have the metaphysical scars to prove it.

Once, when speaking of someone I admired to the point of idolization with my x-wife, I mentioned hoping to one day achieve their level of cool. My x-wife, the rebelling good Catholic girl who ended up with me to piss off her parents-to this day, I'd speculate-suggested instead of trying to aspire to someone else's level of coolness, perhaps I should aspire to my own. It was a backfist of perspective, which helped me ditch the idea of trying to be something I wasn't. Years later, I knew a cat who would speak of the importance of living one's own myth. Sometimes I wonder if his advice and my x-wife's are interconnected in queer way I've yet to fully understand.

When I first met Job, I thought he was so cool you could store cuts of meat inside him for a month. He was the master, and I, the eager student. We'd hang out at coffee and I'd devour his insights. His advice when I had a problem was invaluable. He was my guru. Me saying I was going to talk to Job was like the monks of old going to speak to the head of the order.

I think it was perhaps six months back I first noticed my conversations with Job had changed, and that was beyond the fact of his becoming born again. Certainly, we had, and still do, stimulating dialogues, but suddenly, I wasn't the one seeking advice. I was not the one thanking my friend for the insights.

We've known each other for twenty-one years and change now. He might be eleven years my senior, but I am no longer so wet behind the ears. Even back in the day, he appreciated what I had to say. Nowadays, it seems he treasures it even more.

I find myself queerly shocked...

During one of our conversations, he told me how he always looked forward to hanging out for my perspectives, because apparently not everyone sees things as I do. This is a good thing in my mind, because the world would be a really fucking boring place if that were the case. From his perspective, my passion was something he saw as a fire that burned hotter than a star, and like Hendrix, he wanted to stand next to it. He told me some of his acquaintances now think I'm his imaginary friend, because a cat like me shouldn't/couldn't exist. That many of those times I was going to his for insight and advice, he was taking from my perspective ways to, as he likes to put it, build a better mousetrap.

"I've always wanted to be Robbie Grey when I grew up," Job told me recently. I told him he gives me far too much credit.

I find myself wrestling with this. When did the student become the master? How did I ever get so cool as to win the borderline idolization of one of the coolest cats I've ever known? To me, this is shocking.

The man doesn't even drink, for fuck's sake, so I can't dismiss it so easily...

At one point, in recent years, I realized I truly do have back in the day stories. I know I've gotten where I have along this Tao of Chaos through a sense tenacity and perhaps a little-a lot?-of strange luck. Yet, when I talk to Job, I go into the conversation feeling like that wide-eyed whelp from years back. Nowadays, he talks to me as his guru and I don't know how to approach the subject.

Perhaps someone might say I've come into my own. It seems, were you to ask Job, I did that a very long time ago. Me, trying to work out this change in our metaphoric roles, thinks it's just a step along the way. Which one of us is right is purely conjecture.

January twenty-seventh, 2015. I've been forty-two for almost five months and my daughter is twenty. I have more piercings and tattoos. My hair's as thick and wavy as ever, although, there's a rather interesting blaze of gray along the right side. Just a few of the things that have changed...

Thoughts on a Potentially Early Spring Day

I got out of bed to a brief blast of snow. Nary a dusting. I brewed lapsang souchong for the occasion, and, as the sun has come out to melt the fluff, I questioned if it was a waste of time. Stepping outdoors, it's cooler than it's been the last few days, but it doesn't feel like winter, instead early spring. That sense, the smell of mud, has been around for since the sun came back.

Is winter's back broken already?

Perhaps I should not be surprised. Autumn came early this year, so, it follows spring might too. It still snows in spring up here. Fuck, I've seen snow in summer. Remember; mountains. I don't mind the mild air, despite my layers to be out in pretty well anything. As long as we have a decent snowpack, I'll deal. There can be the deep snow for shoeing up higher-although, hopefully not cement and mashed potatoes-and snow not so deep I post-hole here closer to home. I could dig that.

Last week, it snowed six inches of heavy wet warm snow on what would've been a free day for me. Sabina went snowshoeing with one of her pals whilst I covered for Sempai at obligations whilst he engaged in a preservation conference. Professional capital, I rationalized. Besides, I got to have the Matron volunteer with me, which doesn't happen as much as it used to, and that's a treat. At times, she seems less able to suffer fools than I during a roadway closure.

After six days of straight professional obligations and nearly a fortnight from being out on walkabout, after sleeping until I got up, we hit the trail. Like an acquaintance of mine, we started out one destination in mind, but ended up bushwhacking to another.

Sabina was intentionally artistic whilst I was unintentionally rockstar...

We had been to the Snowdrift Mine about five years back. A couple of the buildings and the boiler are still in fairly decent shape. There was graffiti indicating that someone had been there a year ago, and a mark from a neighbor from 1997, which we intend to show him the photograph of the next time we see him. It was a lovely warm day for bushwhacking and scrabbling. When we finally got back down, we noted the local watering hole was open. I ran Milarepa home and we went for a shot and beer and loco camaraderie.

Recently, we had a city acquaintance asking for an afternoon hangout-on a Sunday!-and we had to decline. The practical reasons were twofold; my daughter's visiting, which is first and foremost, but also, during either ski or summer tourist season, driving east on a Sunday is an exercise in road rage and formidable patience. Besides, and I seriously think perhaps only Sabina and my daughter understand this, I left the city, and have worked very hard to insure the only reason I need to go down there is for familial obligations, which, ten times out of nine, I still try to get out of.  

Caustic of me? Oh, perhaps. Remember; misanthrope.

However, there are those I want to see the funk-because you gotta have the funk!-of our Sahel. To go on a walkabout or have a cocktail over at our little cantina, which, sometimes is only open because the proprietors decided they themselves wanted to have a drink, but, then, again, what better reason? Perhaps have a meal and listen to some music or sit outside to watch the sunset and the unfolding of the stars away from the light pollution of the greater metroplex.

Such are the thoughts that ricochet through my skull on what is potentially an early spring day. I finish my tea and start my breakfast before walkabout. My daughter will be up in a few days and I cannot wait to see her. I know it will snow again, but I question whether or not even a vicious blizzard would carry winter's harsh bite. Perhaps it doesn't matter, just as long as the snowpack is such we don't have to worry about wildfires come summer.

June-Uary

Some shots of the river. The blue ice is always captivating...

Although there have been some cold days and some snowy days, by and large, the month has been rather warm. A meteorological prophet whose gospels I read has dubbed it June-Uary. As the direct sunlight has returned, chasing away the long dark, the temperature has warmed. The last two days have had highs in the very early sixties. Last evening, as I arrived home from obligations, I caught the scent of mud. Of thawing.

It's not unheard of to have a January thaw. Although, I cannot recall smelling mud so early. Catching that scent in early February is shocking. I have been recording the weather-highs, lows, and conditions-for about four years now. Yesterday, I noted my first smelling of mud this year. The reason being, people's memories, even and especially when it comes to weather, is short. I want to be able to document when the first omens of thaw appear. Geekery aside, it is part of the human affliction-both as a merit and a flaw-to seek out patterns.

With the day's high being sixty-two at ninety-one sixty, I did not bother with a jacket of fleece vest whilst on walkabout. All those layers were in my pack. The trail I wandered featured mud and mushy snow. Like my layers, I carried microspikes and snowshoes, but neither were needed. The sun was hot upon my face. Part of me rather enjoyed it.

  
Mount Pendleton as seen from across the valley. From behind my house, of course, it is far bigger...

Some rock I may find myself scrabbling once the snow melts...

There is a rumor of snow, scant, though it may be, in the next day or so. Nothing major. None of my meteorological oracles speak to a big change in the pattern in the next ten days. Of course, foretelling the weather involves aspect of chaos mathematics, which makes predictions dubious beyond just a few days. Still, as I breathe in the scent of mud, I catch myself wondering if the prophets with be calling the next month July-Ruary.   

Afterglow

It's shaping up to be quite the week. Queerly exhausting in some way that probably only makes sense to me. The madness began Sunday when a bluesman of my admiration was broken beneath the blade of the leukemia that devoured him. I was the one who broke the news to our bookkeeper, who was actually friends with the man. She's one tough bitch with a scathing New Zealand accent-the way kiwis pronounce bastard is just fucking cool-and watching her reaction to the news was just painful.

Then the knowledge of two coffeehouses I dig-dug?!?-closing down. Some of it was a shock. A bit was melancholy. I think it got me nostalgic.

The last bit involves a man I've not spoken to in thirteen years and change lost his war with cancer. The other friend, the one who told me the news of the one cat's illness a year ago, apologized for not telling me sooner. In the whirlwind I'd been forgotten. That didn't bother me. It'd been so long and we'd drifted into that space where old friendships go to die.

 I do confess to being bothered by the fact it was a cancer death. Something I had an eighteen month front row seat to watching. There are those in this world I do not like, and I'd not wish the disease, or, watching what it does to someone close on them for money or godhood.

I find myself feeling tired and emotional and all too willing to stab something, or, someone, thirty-seven times in the chest-I might miss at thirty-six and thirty-eight seems just a little excessive. Coming home from obligations involved the Thursday chores of watering my plants and trimming my beard. I lit some incense to that cat I once knew, to the wreckage that's been the last four days, and poured some whiskey. Despite the distance in orbits, I caught myself muttering words from another departed friend of mine as I toasted youthful memories;

"Goodbye, my friend..."

Having purged words from my skull, letting fly across the spider's web of cyber into the either, ether, and or, I find myself standing in the afterglow. Perhaps I will take note of a catharsis after eating something and collapsing into sleep. Maybe it doesn't really matter. The last four days offered a queer sequencing of events, which would have the more superstitious wondering about the omens and portends contained therein. I weathered it, for I maintain I've yet to encounter the force in the universe that can break me, and, perhaps that's simply enough.



Yeh, over the years we drifted apart. However, due to bone, blood, muscle, sinew, and skin, it is anatomically impossible to have a shadow cross my heart. Just saying...    

Remembering Paris

Something of a musical mantra for me. Contextually, it seemed to fit...

"What goes best with a cup of coffee? Another cup."-Henry Rollins

I heard news from the gypsy today, no joy, a coffeehouse I used to frequent has closed its doors after nearly thirty years of operation. It was enough to pin me in my seat, like hearing an old friend you'd not spoken to in a few years suddenly died. Certainly, said old friend and I hadn't been that close in recent times, I think it's been established I can be bad at that, but during our time the closeness couldn't be severed with a laser.

Back before I was tea fiend, I was a java junkie. There was a button to that effect on my pack, and, if it's on a button, then it must be true. The first time I stepped into the place was early in my roaring twenties, with a few cats I graduated high school with that insisted on playing Sir Mix A Lot's Baby's Got Back just one more time in the tapedeck. I wanted to murder the lot of them.

We stepped in the door to Ministry's Psalm 69 playing at ear-splitting levels. The air was so thick with smoke if you wanted a non-smoking section, you'd need to lay on the floor and hold your breath. There was a used bookstore and the cat running it was engaged in two games of chess at once.

"Oh, fuck yes," I whispered to myself with the most wicked grin of joy upon my face. I was in love.

It's hard to recall my favorite memory of the place. The best story. There were so many. Times by myself, scribbling away in a notebook with black India ink or reading tomes of forgotten lore. Games of rummy with Jezebel until the small hours between late night and early morning of spirited debates with philosophically minded friends of the time. Games of chess with my daughter. There was the time Jezebel told me if I really wanted to see if a girl was my type, I needed to take her our for coffee.

"What you need to do, is bring her here, order a pot, and write," she said. "You know how you get! Sit her down, ignore her for a couple hours as you bury your nose in your notebook and see how she reacts when, after those couple hours, you try to read to her what you wrote. If she doesn't tell you to 'fuck off', she might be worth keeping."

Then came the time, many years later, when Sabina, after she said she wanted to run her fingers through my hair, but before we got together was subjected to me purging words out of my skull over a cup of coffee. It could be arrogance or the Confirmation Bias made manifest, but she listened intently to every word I read back. The expression on her face was what I would come to know as her I love you smile.

One of my friends stopped being just an acquaintance at that coffeehouse. Job advised me on how to deal with violence wrought by the jewel eyed girl over a cup. A year later, over another cup, I would be consoling him about his impending divorce.

That would be the last time I set foot in there. Perhaps it's for the best. The summer my grandmother died, the bookstore was closed down in favor of a wine bar. I likes me my wines, but it did something to the place. A spark was extinguished that could never be reignited. Stories I'd here after I moved away from the greater metroplex spoke to place becoming even more gentrified, and that's just boring.

I went on walkabout to digest the news I had been told, getting entranced by the snow and trees and rocks. It's been well over twenty years since I first set foot in that coffeehouse, first met that old friend that has now passed on. Nothing lasts forever.

After my walk, I had to go get wine. On my way home, I stopped by one of the local coffeehouses, which is in the process of shutting down, the owners unable to live at altitude. The place has a used bookstore in it. This twisted bit of symmetry is not lost on me.

I got myself a cha'i and picked up a few books. At first, when I walked in the door, I tried to tell myself I have more than enough books, but I realized that was as absurd as one of my audiophile friends looking at a rack of vinyl and saying they have more than enough music. Bidding the proprietor a good day, I stepped out to warm mountain afternoon. I thought about that coffeehouse down below now gone and the one I'd just left that would be closing in three more days. With my cha'i in hand, I toasted the surrounding peaks. The peaks are now and the coffeehouse was the past. Then and now. So it goes.



Words to live by...

Mystery in the Hollow

One of the-many-things I love about where I live is there are still treasures and adventures to be found not far from the doorstep. That, after all our years of living here, there are still things to discover. Things, which can sometimes confound old-timers and historians. It is part of the mysticism of our Sahel.

The wooded area between Wide-Awake and Daisy Gulch is an area I call the Hollow. I will maintain that I never choose a moniker for a someone or something, but that it chooses whatever, and it is up to whatever to figure out what that means. A neighbor/professional acquaintance had told me of ruins up Daisy Gulch shortly before my birthday. Mentioning ruins to Sabina is akin to mentioning heroin to a junkie. She all but salivates, which is vaguely amusing given my archaeological interests.

Upon our initial exploration of the area, we found a few fairly well-defined roads, but the ruins we were told of were closer to tree-line, which we didn't get to. There were still some things we found, and being back in those woods during leaf season was striking. We resolved to go snowshoeing there come winter.

The was not without its challenges what with CDOT liking to plow just about everyone else under with snow in the name of keeping the roadways open-thanks, government!-making places to pull off a bit of dubious proposition. It was by luck and a whim we found one such spot the other day. Although, there were snowmobile tracks marking out most of the roads in the Hollow, Sabina did note one trail we had wanted to explore that was pristine. I broke through the deep snow to quite the bit of fascination.

Ice crystals over an open mine tunnel...

Formations inside the tunnel, standing like phantom sentinels...

Anyone who has been playing along at home knows Tuesday is my usual walkabout day. Aside from the fact that routines are for squares, Sabina and I were both savagely curious about our find. I decided to do something other than walking.

The upper part of the valley is part of a National Historic Landmark District, which is sort of like a national park, and, thus, in some dysfunctional way, fulfilling a childhood wish of mine to live in either a museum or a nature preserve. It goes without saying there are a lot of Historically-minded cats up here and we know a few. That was how I ended up in the basement of the courthouse talking to the county archivist.

Page one of the documentation of the Blue Bell Mine of which our find is based to be a part of...

Back in my roaring twenties, if I said I was curious about something, Jezebel would warn me about getting into trouble, and, sometimes, my dear friend was right. However, there have been times when my curiosity has led to high adventure. I never worry about it either way. See, although curiosity can kill a cat, said cat has more than one life, ergo, making a single death a mere trifle instead of anything of consequence.

A Balmy Day in Deep Winter

That was a pretty impressive windstorm the day before. One meteorological oracle mentioned gusts being recorded between thirty-five and eighty miles per hour. Despite their viciousness, there was a taste of chinook to their countenance. I would record the day's high at fifty degrees. By night, the winds had abated.

With the morning came the assessment and clean up of damage; some property funk-because you gotta have the funk!-had been knocked about. It wasn't much effort to fix this. Surprising, given how the house groaned and shook in those gales, but I don't complain. If re-hanging a couple strings of Tibetan prayer flags is the worst thing that happens to me in a day, then I am doing all right.

It was with excitement as I did these quick chores I realized the next two days would be spent in adventure clothes; this time of year meaning shell-pants-not as heavy as snowpants-and my snow boots. Whilst I am generally not the type to divide my wardrobe into work/play/party/walkabout clothes-that's entirely too much time and effort-I also can clean up nice enough for the magistrate and matron's holiday party that does not include me looking like I just came down off of Bierstadt in a blizzard.

There are girls and some-for the most part gay-men I know who have shoes for every occasion. Most of my shoes have to do with walking, from the snow boots to the as-long-as-it's-a-dry-trail-but-better-for-town-shoes. One girl had a pair she called her-and I am not making this up-walk-like-a-slut-shoes. I tried to emulate her gait in those things once and got laughed at. Uproariously. I took this in stride, for I am awkwardly and otherwise aberrantly put together, and if you don't believe me, come with me some time to Miguel Loco's when I try on a jacket or a long-sleeve mid-layer. It is both high comedy and utter frustration.

For the last two Tuesdays I'd promised Milarepa a walkabout, but other obligations got in the way. Time came to make good on a marker. It was one of those clear deep winter days I do enjoy; light breeze and warm sun. The type where a thermal and t-shirt almost seems excessive and your mid layer and shell stay inside your pack the whole time. I wore a cap instead of a beanie for the first time about a month.

The Maine Mine. Ours were the only tracks...

Although, I strap them to my pack-better to be over-prepared than under-I have never used my snowshoes on the 730. We encountered one person using a set on the way up, and he told me it was an exercise in futility. When we arrived at the ruins of the Maine, halfway to the mine for which the trail is named, the snow, whilst deep in places, wouldn't have warranted shoes. Even if we did both post-hole a few times wandering about the ruins.

I might be anthropomorphizing, but that looks like one happy hound...

Lately, when Milarepa and I have done the 730, we don't go much further than the Maine. I joked the ruins are our little clubhouse. Soon enough, we'll do that push all the way up the monument to see Clifford. This summer, I want to do some off-trail exploring of Brown's Gulch. Tales of other ruins, some not so picked over, ring in my ears.

Brown's Gulch, like Kearny, is pretty steep. Sabina once trekked some of Brown's with me and did not enjoy it. Milarepa is pretty intrepid, and, like Whistler would do, cries if I climb up something she cannot. It really doesn't bother me to have some trails I explore be ones I only take a hound. Sometimes, four-legged companionship is better than two.

Five Orbits On

Miles Davis's Sketches of Spain, The Beatles Let it Be, The Rolling Stones Let it Bleed on the stereo, and a tumbler of whiskey. It is snowing. Puttanesca cooks upon the stove. There is catharsis.

Five years later, I still miss you, mother...terribly...