It began almost imperceptibly. I heard once how mountains make their own weather. Down below, it's been hot and dry. I've lost track of the number of small wildfires that've been reported. It'd been another hot day, but, by late afternoon, the sky had turned the color of slate, and the air felt heavy. Well, heavy for the thin arid air of the Colorado's High Country. Three and a half unfortunate teenage years in the rural south taught me the true meaning of humid.
Out on the porch with the hounds and a whiskey, I feel something cold and wet hit my leg. I growl, thinking; fucking hummingbirds!, but soon realize my delusion with a certain rat-a-tat-tat! that stirs up the dirt of the drive. My nostrils fill with a scent, which, like that of old books, can never be properly described with the clumsiness of language, but only experienced.
And what I experienced lasted barely a sip from my tumbler. Clouds broke to shards of turquoise and cotton candy cobwebs across the early evening sky. It was just enough to fill the air with that scent and stir up the road dust and mosquitoes. I wanted to stay out longer and drink it all in, but words formed in my skull and I had to purge them out to stave off madness. So it goes.
It is spitting distance from July. Colorado's monsoon. Up here, it will be the days of just-like-clockwork two o'clock thunderstorms. I have a hardshell and look forward to the rain.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a whiskey to finish amongst the mosquitoes and a scent that language would insult in trying to describe...
28 June 2013
25 June 2013
A Visit From the In-Laws
Sabina's folks are in town. It's been the long-standing joke; her family doesn't drink much, one's even born-again-apparently the first time didn't work-they're the in-laws. Then, there's my family; drink, some drugs, my little brother has a record, bootleggers, klansmen, politicians, and a midget wrestler-lawyers, guns, and money!-making them the outlaws.
Of course they are...
It's a chance to play ketchup and for me to show off a recipe or two I'm proud of. I enjoy visiting with them. However, their visits are when I get see Sabina's control-freakishness in all its...something. The daddy-do projects. This year it's retiling the floor in the loo and a proper screen door up front. Not trivialities, but, not being mechanically inclined-growing up on a farm, I know enough to bluff through the simplicities before disappearing for a walkabout across the pastures-I know to stay out of the way.
"If you need a place to hide out, I have booze," a neighbor told me.
"I spent two hours down-valley getting used books for a reason," I said with a wink.
As Sabina hammers and curses away, I get ready to start making dinner; Cuban chicken a la chorrera. Hopefully, it'll come out well. Hopefully, they'll not be too exhausted to enjoy it.
Of course they are...
It's a chance to play ketchup and for me to show off a recipe or two I'm proud of. I enjoy visiting with them. However, their visits are when I get see Sabina's control-freakishness in all its...something. The daddy-do projects. This year it's retiling the floor in the loo and a proper screen door up front. Not trivialities, but, not being mechanically inclined-growing up on a farm, I know enough to bluff through the simplicities before disappearing for a walkabout across the pastures-I know to stay out of the way.
"If you need a place to hide out, I have booze," a neighbor told me.
"I spent two hours down-valley getting used books for a reason," I said with a wink.
As Sabina hammers and curses away, I get ready to start making dinner; Cuban chicken a la chorrera. Hopefully, it'll come out well. Hopefully, they'll not be too exhausted to enjoy it.
22 June 2013
Summer
The bakery, having changed hands, has reopened, a slowly blossoming flower, into the form of a bistro of sorts. I find this fantastic. The vibe was that of a coffeehouse with a wine bar back in the historical district, where I lived in the greater metroplex, that my daughter and I would go to play chess and Sabina and I had our first few dates-'member when? They had milk stout beer and bourbon made over in Breckenridge. And it was funky, because you gotta have the funk.
I checked out the place in the name of research and curiosity, of course. One of the proprietors toasted me with gin upon making my acquaintance. When I mentioned the Irish whiskeys I'm found of, she promised to acquire them. Oh, fuck yes. My new best friend.
"You keep stocked up in dark beer and fine Irish, and you will see me again," I told her. "Regularly."
Hey, it's been two looooooooooooooong years since there's been a cantina in town...
To mark the calendar demarcation of summer, we took in a bonfire party. Stories and shots of vodka straight from the bottle, because that's just what you do. You'd think, in a funky mountain township of two-hundred bipeds-on a good day-I'd see all my neighbors on regular basis, and yet, being misanthropic, I pull it off that it's been a bit since I've seen some cats-as in at least a year, maybe I suck. It was nice to play ketchup. The stories. The silliness. The oh-that's-why-I-avoid-you-like-leprosy-and Anthrax-even-if-they-had-a-few-good-songs. Matters of balance, and I might be about chaos, but, paradoxically, I strive for balance.
It doesn't get get dark until nine at night and it's been hot! up here. With obligations, to be cliché, I've been busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. And, for some reason, I thought it'd be a good idea to take an online archeology course. So it goes. These are what a good friend of mine calls the days of milk and honey.
Two days in, by a calendar's timekeeping, and summer's been awesome. I cannot convey my excitement for the rest of it. The whisper in my ghost speaks of wonderful time...it just might be a good season.
Tally-ho, muthafucka!
I checked out the place in the name of research and curiosity, of course. One of the proprietors toasted me with gin upon making my acquaintance. When I mentioned the Irish whiskeys I'm found of, she promised to acquire them. Oh, fuck yes. My new best friend.
"You keep stocked up in dark beer and fine Irish, and you will see me again," I told her. "Regularly."
Hey, it's been two looooooooooooooong years since there's been a cantina in town...
To mark the calendar demarcation of summer, we took in a bonfire party. Stories and shots of vodka straight from the bottle, because that's just what you do. You'd think, in a funky mountain township of two-hundred bipeds-on a good day-I'd see all my neighbors on regular basis, and yet, being misanthropic, I pull it off that it's been a bit since I've seen some cats-as in at least a year, maybe I suck. It was nice to play ketchup. The stories. The silliness. The oh-that's-why-I-avoid-you-like-leprosy-and Anthrax-even-if-they-had-a-few-good-songs. Matters of balance, and I might be about chaos, but, paradoxically, I strive for balance.
It doesn't get get dark until nine at night and it's been hot! up here. With obligations, to be cliché, I've been busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. And, for some reason, I thought it'd be a good idea to take an online archeology course. So it goes. These are what a good friend of mine calls the days of milk and honey.
Two days in, by a calendar's timekeeping, and summer's been awesome. I cannot convey my excitement for the rest of it. The whisper in my ghost speaks of wonderful time...it just might be a good season.
Tally-ho, muthafucka!
19 June 2013
Not a Dress Rehearsal
It started out simply enough; a pilgrimage down below to Lee's shoppe. My daughter and Sabina were going to get their noses pierced and I have a design for a tattoo, the first in nine years; since my Eyes of the Buddha, whereupon I learned, no matter how good of friends you are with a tattoo artist, do not mention that you fucked his mother the night before.
But that's another story...
We don't make plans. After all, if you want to make the mythological concept of deity laugh, then have a plan. The Tao of Chaos. This is why it wasn't so offensive that my daughter had to cut out before we even left for the shoppe and the possibility of clients with appointments kept me from getting inked. Mei fei tsu. Sabina still got pierced, and my daughter and I have a date in the near future with an ink-slinger of my acquaintance. Body modification and reconnecting with an old, old friend; what could be better?
After a few errands in a place that was hot and noisy and crowded and smelly we ran for the hills. Our route took us through one of the canyons. On a lark, Sabina sent a message to one of our adventuring buddies that we were in the area. After a quick repast of trail mix, venison jerky, and bison summer sausage, we were off for a quick walkabout to a memorizing waterfall before a proper supper.
So what Sabina and I had only our sandals on and no proper trekking gear with us? It was something to do. Life gets a little boring if you don't occasionally go what the fuck?
A mantra of Sabina's is taken from the gospel of Calvin and Hobbs; The Days are just Packed! Our day certainly was. As I sit back in the afterglow of those spontaneous adventures, I think to a toast our neighbor has given over whiskey or rum and sometimes vodka, occasionally all in the same night of storytelling;
"This is life, not practice..."
Amen and women to that...
But that's another story...
We don't make plans. After all, if you want to make the mythological concept of deity laugh, then have a plan. The Tao of Chaos. This is why it wasn't so offensive that my daughter had to cut out before we even left for the shoppe and the possibility of clients with appointments kept me from getting inked. Mei fei tsu. Sabina still got pierced, and my daughter and I have a date in the near future with an ink-slinger of my acquaintance. Body modification and reconnecting with an old, old friend; what could be better?
After a few errands in a place that was hot and noisy and crowded and smelly we ran for the hills. Our route took us through one of the canyons. On a lark, Sabina sent a message to one of our adventuring buddies that we were in the area. After a quick repast of trail mix, venison jerky, and bison summer sausage, we were off for a quick walkabout to a memorizing waterfall before a proper supper.
So what Sabina and I had only our sandals on and no proper trekking gear with us? It was something to do. Life gets a little boring if you don't occasionally go what the fuck?
A mantra of Sabina's is taken from the gospel of Calvin and Hobbs; The Days are just Packed! Our day certainly was. As I sit back in the afterglow of those spontaneous adventures, I think to a toast our neighbor has given over whiskey or rum and sometimes vodka, occasionally all in the same night of storytelling;
"This is life, not practice..."
Amen and women to that...
12 June 2013
Hot Weather
It's been getting into the early eighties. Y'know, punk rock, new wave, Madonna. Okay, not really, but it is showing those numbers on the fahrenheit scale.
Around these parts, that's hot! In the past, I've told my daughter of us having hot weather and mentioned the ambient air temperature, and you can see her restraining from starting her next sentence with fuck you, Dad. Only a sadistic man would find amusement in this, and I am not a sadistic man.
The river is peaking with its rushing runoff. In the next week I should be able to cross the waters of Brown's and Grizzly Gulch. The up top snow slowly shrinks from view. Summer in our Sahel.
Father's Day is coming and I think I'm going to make myself a particular spicy shrimp recipe that is recommend to consume on a hot summer's day, preferably with a bottle of white. I've never been a fan of Mother's or Father's Day, but, with the hot weather, I think I'm just going to suck it up, and take that spicy bullet, for the team.
You're welcome...
Around these parts, that's hot! In the past, I've told my daughter of us having hot weather and mentioned the ambient air temperature, and you can see her restraining from starting her next sentence with fuck you, Dad. Only a sadistic man would find amusement in this, and I am not a sadistic man.
The river is peaking with its rushing runoff. In the next week I should be able to cross the waters of Brown's and Grizzly Gulch. The up top snow slowly shrinks from view. Summer in our Sahel.
Father's Day is coming and I think I'm going to make myself a particular spicy shrimp recipe that is recommend to consume on a hot summer's day, preferably with a bottle of white. I've never been a fan of Mother's or Father's Day, but, with the hot weather, I think I'm just going to suck it up, and take that spicy bullet, for the team.
You're welcome...
08 June 2013
Leviathan's Teeth
It's the time of year when the river races by in the countenance of doctored coffee, milk chocolate, and cream. In some places, the rapids roar which such ferocity a rafter would want to make peace with whatever deity they worshiped or ignored before facing a fate in a meat grinder of white water.
The House of Owls and Bats sits across the street from the river. There is a drain pipe in our drive, which slants down. This time of year, it is underwater. By virtue of that, we get a symphony not regularly heard. There is the grinding of river rocks, shaped by the force of runoff from jagged to smooth. Thousands of millions of years of geology played out for our listening pleasure as the leviathan grinds its teeth.
The House of Owls and Bats sits across the street from the river. There is a drain pipe in our drive, which slants down. This time of year, it is underwater. By virtue of that, we get a symphony not regularly heard. There is the grinding of river rocks, shaped by the force of runoff from jagged to smooth. Thousands of millions of years of geology played out for our listening pleasure as the leviathan grinds its teeth.
31 May 2013
Neverlands
“This is the most beautiful place on earth.
There are many such places. Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place, the one true home, known or unknown, actual or visionary. A houseboat in Kashmir, a view down Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, a gray gothic farmhouse two stories high at the end of a red dog road in the Allegheny Mountains, a cabin on the shore of a blue lake in spruce and fir country, a greasy alley near the Hoboken waterfront, or even, possibly, for those of a less demanding sensibility, the world seen from a comfortable apartment high in the tender, velvety smog of Manhattan, Chicago, Paris, Tokyo, Rio or Rome-there’s no limit to the human capacity for the homing sentiment. Theologians, sky pilots, astronauts have even felt the appeal of home calling them from up above, in the cold back outback of interstellar space.”-Edward Abbey
***
“I think everybody has a landscape they’re designed for, and if you’re lucky, you find it…”-Bill McKibben
***
"What drew you up here?" A traveler asked me once. The sun was setting. Anyone playing along at home knows I'm a sucker for sunsets, although I might just suck.
"A juxtaposition of geography and Tibetan prayer flags," I said finally, and with a soft sort of reverence in my tone that one might think was more fitting for whatever deity one chooses to worship or ignore, and, from someone like me, might be missed if my tone wasn't listened to close enough. It wasn't a lie.
"Do you ever get tired of it?" I was asked. You'd think he'd just confessed to raping ten year olds, with a cactus, for the look I gave him. But, at least, I didn't...accidentally...eviscerate him. That might have been awkward to explain.
...Well, Constable, it's a funny story, really; see, he asked me an addle-brained question, and I had my knife opened, and, well, it would seem his entrails suddenly just fell out. It wasn't my fault. Really. You believe me, riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight?...
"No," I said with an accent of a feral growl. "Never. I'd want to be shot in the face, twice, if I even considered it."
It wasn't too long ago it was the anniversary of when we came up here on a lark. Ain't that always the way? The day I decided this was where I needed to be and Sabina decided we needed to figure a way up. This time of year, as summer rears its warm and gentle head, I catch myself thinking about that day, and that summer, when we ran for the hills at every opportunity, working up the escape velocity to get home.
I was seventeen and omnipotent when Cap'in Toke told us about the road to Kashmir. Perhaps it's a funny twist of fate-if there really is such a thing-that I took his stoned rant so dear to heart. There was that girl in the mask who spoke of us all having our own Africas. A similar concept. That one place in the whole of existence where you feel you belong. The one place, which is truly home.
Over the years and lifetimes, in the course of telling stories, I have invented more than one place. Some more fantastical than others. Growing up, I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy, hearing the siren's song of places that never were or would never be. An escape, perhaps; the world of bullies and mundanities not being for me.
These days, I don't read a lot of fictions. I've caught myself being sucker by travel writers, what for the tales of their treks. Maybe it's because I've been close to more than one gypsy soul. There's been but one fiction that's been keeping my attention as of late, but I perhaps it's because I perceive it as a spider's web to unravel.
The demonic inference probably helps too...
I found myself wondering if when you live somewhere that's fucking magic that the need for the escape to other realms becomes irrelevant. All the magic you'll ever need happens before your eyes every heartbeat. That the mythical concept of a heaven ceases to be a goal to be achieved, because you're already there. It's where you live and love and work and play. Hell is all the places your Kashmir isn't. For me, it's where the land ain't all pointed-like.
Perhaps I am being melodramatic. My own confirmation bias. Or, perhaps, as absurd as it seems, this stretch of geography pulls at the soul I don't even know for sure I have in ways language fails to explain.
Summer is coming to my mountains. Leaves have finally popped, nay, exploded, upon the deciduous trees. Shorts, sandals, grilling, bonfires, and camping under a big sky with cool scent of warm-awakened evergreen as the incense. I sport the most wicked grin of joy as I think of the mantra of our neighbor, a former county dog-catcher-"animal-control officer, get it fucking right!"-in that gruff misanthropic Brooklyn Jewish accent of his;
"I'm livin' the dream!"
The man's my one of my latest heroes...
There are many such places. Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place, the one true home, known or unknown, actual or visionary. A houseboat in Kashmir, a view down Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, a gray gothic farmhouse two stories high at the end of a red dog road in the Allegheny Mountains, a cabin on the shore of a blue lake in spruce and fir country, a greasy alley near the Hoboken waterfront, or even, possibly, for those of a less demanding sensibility, the world seen from a comfortable apartment high in the tender, velvety smog of Manhattan, Chicago, Paris, Tokyo, Rio or Rome-there’s no limit to the human capacity for the homing sentiment. Theologians, sky pilots, astronauts have even felt the appeal of home calling them from up above, in the cold back outback of interstellar space.”-Edward Abbey
***
“I think everybody has a landscape they’re designed for, and if you’re lucky, you find it…”-Bill McKibben
***
"What drew you up here?" A traveler asked me once. The sun was setting. Anyone playing along at home knows I'm a sucker for sunsets, although I might just suck.
"A juxtaposition of geography and Tibetan prayer flags," I said finally, and with a soft sort of reverence in my tone that one might think was more fitting for whatever deity one chooses to worship or ignore, and, from someone like me, might be missed if my tone wasn't listened to close enough. It wasn't a lie.
"Do you ever get tired of it?" I was asked. You'd think he'd just confessed to raping ten year olds, with a cactus, for the look I gave him. But, at least, I didn't...accidentally...eviscerate him. That might have been awkward to explain.
...Well, Constable, it's a funny story, really; see, he asked me an addle-brained question, and I had my knife opened, and, well, it would seem his entrails suddenly just fell out. It wasn't my fault. Really. You believe me, riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight?...
"No," I said with an accent of a feral growl. "Never. I'd want to be shot in the face, twice, if I even considered it."
It wasn't too long ago it was the anniversary of when we came up here on a lark. Ain't that always the way? The day I decided this was where I needed to be and Sabina decided we needed to figure a way up. This time of year, as summer rears its warm and gentle head, I catch myself thinking about that day, and that summer, when we ran for the hills at every opportunity, working up the escape velocity to get home.
I was seventeen and omnipotent when Cap'in Toke told us about the road to Kashmir. Perhaps it's a funny twist of fate-if there really is such a thing-that I took his stoned rant so dear to heart. There was that girl in the mask who spoke of us all having our own Africas. A similar concept. That one place in the whole of existence where you feel you belong. The one place, which is truly home.
Over the years and lifetimes, in the course of telling stories, I have invented more than one place. Some more fantastical than others. Growing up, I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy, hearing the siren's song of places that never were or would never be. An escape, perhaps; the world of bullies and mundanities not being for me.
These days, I don't read a lot of fictions. I've caught myself being sucker by travel writers, what for the tales of their treks. Maybe it's because I've been close to more than one gypsy soul. There's been but one fiction that's been keeping my attention as of late, but I perhaps it's because I perceive it as a spider's web to unravel.
The demonic inference probably helps too...
I found myself wondering if when you live somewhere that's fucking magic that the need for the escape to other realms becomes irrelevant. All the magic you'll ever need happens before your eyes every heartbeat. That the mythical concept of a heaven ceases to be a goal to be achieved, because you're already there. It's where you live and love and work and play. Hell is all the places your Kashmir isn't. For me, it's where the land ain't all pointed-like.
Perhaps I am being melodramatic. My own confirmation bias. Or, perhaps, as absurd as it seems, this stretch of geography pulls at the soul I don't even know for sure I have in ways language fails to explain.
Summer is coming to my mountains. Leaves have finally popped, nay, exploded, upon the deciduous trees. Shorts, sandals, grilling, bonfires, and camping under a big sky with cool scent of warm-awakened evergreen as the incense. I sport the most wicked grin of joy as I think of the mantra of our neighbor, a former county dog-catcher-"animal-control officer, get it fucking right!"-in that gruff misanthropic Brooklyn Jewish accent of his;
"I'm livin' the dream!"
The man's my one of my latest heroes...
26 May 2013
Fences
I think I'd already written him off when I drafted that letter. A story told within the walls of my skull before it actually coalesced. I would go to the show with my daughter, Sabina, and our friend from the winery, my eyes scanning the crowds for a familiar face whilst I tried not lash out like a cornered rat at the crush of humanity around me. Years in the mountains has made me more misanthropic than before. The show would end, and with a mei fei tsu into the darkness, I would walk away, silently mourning what was lost.
I am not a creature of blind faith. Perhaps I am cynical. Maybe I'm realistic. it could be it doesn't matter, given my reaction when my phone buzzed with a digital message in a bottle;
Hey, man, it's possible I'll be there...
I loath surprises. Sabina-quite baselessly, I might add-says that, despite my embrace of chaos, I am a closet control freak, when, in fact, I neither like to be ignorant of something or caught off guard. It's my funny little way. Be that as it may, I could not help up smirk, and, perhaps even, yelp excitedly at this unexpected turn of events.
There was a response here, a reply there. Correspondences to the ether, either, and or. Sabina was quite insistent I tell my daughter who might be at the show. She asked me if I was excited.
"If I see him, I see him," I said and I don't think anyone believed me, despite my reptilian tone.
Before the show, we sat at one of my old monkey watching spots along Sixteenth Street. It took me back. Sabina and my daughter made it a point to get closer to the stage, so they could slobber over Roger Clyne, as some girls are wont to do. I chose to hung back, our friend joining me, closer to the adjoining sidewalk, closer to an escape route from the growing crowds, that lynch mob in the making, I was considering murdering one by one, entraining thoughts of razorblades and maggots. My eyes scanned for a familiar face.
It was during Banditos my phone got my attention;
We're here! Over west of the stage...
Being an aberration, of whom, were my spine straight, I'd stand a little over seven feet tall, instead of the almost six and half I am, it could be stated with a fair amount of accuracy that I am indeed head and shoulders above quite a few and people tend to look up to me. Be that as it may, I began to lean up on tip-toes for a very vantage. Seeing someone with tattoos and ballcap was a dime a dozen, but then I saw particular set of tattoos and that certain swagger.
I threw the horns-how punk rock-and he waved back with a beaming grin that more than one girl has lost their inhibitions to...
"There's the the tall lanky bastard!" Lee exclaimed as I came up and we embraced.
I'm sure the rest of the show was fantastic, and I do remember knowing all the songs that were played. However, I was busy. After two years, we needed to play ketchup; he is betrothed and living and tattooing up in Boulder, I'm the father of a recent high school graduate. It was lovely. Brief, but lovely.
We ended how we started, hugs, good-to-see-yous and love-you-brother[s]. So it goes. I promised to swing by his shoppe in the near future, if, for no other reason, a promise to my daughter to get her nose pierced.
"I hope that someday this fence can be mended," someone said to me recently when I more than three-quarters wondered if my friendship with Lee had drifted into that entropy where old friendships go to die.
As I watched him disappear into the city crowds once more I caught myself smirking hopefully. I am not a creature of blind faith, but I caught myself wondering in this context. Perhaps the fence was on its way to being mended, but maybe it was never really broken in the first place.
I am not a creature of blind faith. Perhaps I am cynical. Maybe I'm realistic. it could be it doesn't matter, given my reaction when my phone buzzed with a digital message in a bottle;
Hey, man, it's possible I'll be there...
I loath surprises. Sabina-quite baselessly, I might add-says that, despite my embrace of chaos, I am a closet control freak, when, in fact, I neither like to be ignorant of something or caught off guard. It's my funny little way. Be that as it may, I could not help up smirk, and, perhaps even, yelp excitedly at this unexpected turn of events.
There was a response here, a reply there. Correspondences to the ether, either, and or. Sabina was quite insistent I tell my daughter who might be at the show. She asked me if I was excited.
"If I see him, I see him," I said and I don't think anyone believed me, despite my reptilian tone.
Before the show, we sat at one of my old monkey watching spots along Sixteenth Street. It took me back. Sabina and my daughter made it a point to get closer to the stage, so they could slobber over Roger Clyne, as some girls are wont to do. I chose to hung back, our friend joining me, closer to the adjoining sidewalk, closer to an escape route from the growing crowds, that lynch mob in the making, I was considering murdering one by one, entraining thoughts of razorblades and maggots. My eyes scanned for a familiar face.
It was during Banditos my phone got my attention;
We're here! Over west of the stage...
Being an aberration, of whom, were my spine straight, I'd stand a little over seven feet tall, instead of the almost six and half I am, it could be stated with a fair amount of accuracy that I am indeed head and shoulders above quite a few and people tend to look up to me. Be that as it may, I began to lean up on tip-toes for a very vantage. Seeing someone with tattoos and ballcap was a dime a dozen, but then I saw particular set of tattoos and that certain swagger.
I threw the horns-how punk rock-and he waved back with a beaming grin that more than one girl has lost their inhibitions to...
"There's the the tall lanky bastard!" Lee exclaimed as I came up and we embraced.
I'm sure the rest of the show was fantastic, and I do remember knowing all the songs that were played. However, I was busy. After two years, we needed to play ketchup; he is betrothed and living and tattooing up in Boulder, I'm the father of a recent high school graduate. It was lovely. Brief, but lovely.
We ended how we started, hugs, good-to-see-yous and love-you-brother[s]. So it goes. I promised to swing by his shoppe in the near future, if, for no other reason, a promise to my daughter to get her nose pierced.
"I hope that someday this fence can be mended," someone said to me recently when I more than three-quarters wondered if my friendship with Lee had drifted into that entropy where old friendships go to die.
As I watched him disappear into the city crowds once more I caught myself smirking hopefully. I am not a creature of blind faith, but I caught myself wondering in this context. Perhaps the fence was on its way to being mended, but maybe it was never really broken in the first place.
24 May 2013
The Dance
Twenty-two years ago, I did the pomp and circumstance dance. A girl I knew once said Send in the Clowns would be a better song to play at such occasions. I couldn't agree more.
I was up at very early in the morning to stand in a wind-blown stadium and see the true love of my life do that same dance I did twenty-two years before. For all the dog and pony show, I stood in awe. My girl, the one who was once the length of my forearm, was standing getting the piece of paper, which, according to the social construct of reality, says she's ready to step into the real world.
Girl, you're to be a woman soon...
Pride might be a sin, but today, I felt especially sinful, and you can't convince me to feel bad about it...
I was up at very early in the morning to stand in a wind-blown stadium and see the true love of my life do that same dance I did twenty-two years before. For all the dog and pony show, I stood in awe. My girl, the one who was once the length of my forearm, was standing getting the piece of paper, which, according to the social construct of reality, says she's ready to step into the real world.
Girl, you're to be a woman soon...
Pride might be a sin, but today, I felt especially sinful, and you can't convince me to feel bad about it...
21 May 2013
100 Words; Runoff
The world becomes filled with sound of rushing water. Little gulches, dry, frozen, silent, during other times of the year become talkative streams. Hot weather has not truly come yet. Once that arrives, in the afternoons and evenings, the river will not only sing, it will roar.
We saw river rafters the other day. Miguel Loco's down the Grand Canyon, vacation before summer season gets underway and catharsis from a divorce. On walkabout, I think of three trails I want to do directly, all of which have Gulch in their names. The siren's song of running water fills my ears.
We saw river rafters the other day. Miguel Loco's down the Grand Canyon, vacation before summer season gets underway and catharsis from a divorce. On walkabout, I think of three trails I want to do directly, all of which have Gulch in their names. The siren's song of running water fills my ears.
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