...one small step...

40 years ago the 13-year-old me sat in the living room of my aunt and uncle's house in Carson, California (they had a big color television and we...my mother, my brother, and I... made the half-hour trek from our house near Culver City because of that)...I was cross-legged on the floor watching, with wide-eyed wonder, grainy pictures that had been sent from beyond our world.

Answering the challenge of a President who did not live to see the deed, two men from our planet were setting foot on Luna...our planet's faithful satellite...its bright and storied Moon.

It was amazing...and all these years later I am still amazed. Watching Neil Armstrong and "Buzz" Aldrin on the surface of the moon made it seem, to imaginative boys like I was and to just about everyone else experiencing it, like anything...ANYTHING...was possible.

I imagined then that we would be spreading out into the solar system and beyond...boldly going where...well, you know...

We don't have colonies on the moon or people walking on Mars or flying cars or anything of those kind of things we might have imagined on that summer's day in 1969...though, as I write this on a computer more powerful than some of the ones used to plot the course to and from the moon, there are 13 brave souls working on a space station in Earth orbit so we're not too badly...but it is still utterly delightful to remember that thrilling day when brave Mr. Armstrong took one small step...

A Sometimes Useful Idiot

Despite my best efforts to be the best staff that I can, I am well aware that my feline overlords regard me with a whimsical mixture of razor-thin patience, haughty indifference, occasional affection, and withering exasperation (I’m pretty sure that they tolerate me as much as they do only for want of opposable thumbs and access to money….had they both of those things I am quite sure that my services would no longer be required…)

I don’t take this personally.

I endeavor to meet their needs to the best of my abilities (said abilities are sorely lacking in their eyes, of course, but hey I’m only human…) hoping to exchange that for the chance to be able to work sometimes without having to stroke a back, try to decipher a meow, or throw a ball.

It’s a fair exchange.

And so I serve them and express my gratitude for being allowed to dwell in their presence. And they accept my presence and my ministrations while regarding me as what they know I am: a sometimes useful idiot.

Again, it’s a fair exchange.

Nightswimming II

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night
I'm not sure all these people understand
It's not like years ago,
The fear of getting caught,
Of recklessness and water
They cannot see me naked
These things, they go away,
Replaced by everyday...

- R.E.M. -

The night was bright, given vibrant life by the light of a full, proud moon and we were just drunk enough to cast aside our common sense and strip naked and run headlong into the icy surf. Even at 2 AM there were a handful of people on the south California beach but no one paid us any attention (people tend to come to the beach at 2 AM for reasons of their own…they really don’t care or notice why anybody else is there.)

The cold sea water didn’t sober us up as much as might have been expected and we splashed around for a few long minutes before we retreated back to the sand and fell down laughing. We lay in the sand, naked but not cold (perhaps the lingering aftereffects of the rum we’d consumed at the bar a few blocks away), and looked up at the moon. The world fell away and, for those moments at least, we forgot about the heartaches and disappointments that had led us to the bar and on to the beach.

Eventually we felt the chill of the night…and we felt the awkwardness of being naked together on a public beach…and we slipped into our boxers and jeans and t-shirts and sat in the sand listening to the surf. We sighed, almost as one, as the heartaches and disappointments started to crowd back to the front of our minds.

But we shook them off. The night was still bright and the morning would be time enough to deal with that stuff again. We glanced at each, grinning knowingly, and then got to our feet and wandered off towards the parking lot where we’d left the car. We slept in the car for a while and then, sober enough to negotiate the ever bustling Los Angeles freeways, we headed home to finish the night in our own beds.

* * * * *

"Nightswimming"

words and music by R.E.M.

Pop culture stuff: Neverending Rainbow

Another Monday Morning

My feline overlords were waiting impatiently outside my bedroom door. 5:31 was, it seems, past the time when they would have preferred to break the fast. Already put out because I no longer leave my bedroom door open at night (I used to but their nocturnal habit of walking on me at 2 O’clock in the morning put an end to that) they are barely tolerant of my tardiness but I ignore it until I have finished my morning absolutions in the bathroom.

Fed and happy (for the moment anyway) the overlords (actually two lords and one lady) drift off to places in the house (in the now open bedrooms mostly) and give me space to savor my first mug of tea, to glance through the paper, to delete a majority of the newly-arrived e-mail (spam filters are not nearly as effective as I would like.)

I did my household chores yesterday so I finish the latest research project (gotta make that coin) and clear the decks to work on my novel.

A shower and a second mug of steaming tea and I’ll be good to go. The morning clouds are clinging to the sky petulantly but the guy on the radio assures me that they will lose the struggle by mid-morning. It’s going to be a good day. It’s another Monday morning.

(Today’s soundtrack: “Michael Keith’s Summer Mix ‘09” and Bob Marley & The Wailers’ B is for Bob)

a good thing

There was a time…a lingering time…when I deluded myself into thinking I meant something to you…that your declarations of love were sincere…that my declarations of love were real and requited. Deeds have put the lie to that…but maybe that’s a good thing.

Hell, I’m not even sure if you ever really liked me…you’ve certainly gone out of your way to let me know that my well being is not within your sphere of concern now that you’re done with me…now that I’ve stopped trying to achieve the seemingly impossible goal of trying to figure out what would really make you happy (though in the process of stopping I have paradoxically actually discovered the answer I was looking for all along: nothing will make you happy, it’s the pursuit of the next thing that fires your soul, reaching any goal just turns to ashes in your mouth and you cast about for the next patch of greener grass almost immediately.)

Time moves on…as is its wont…and I endure. I am struggling…but content. I am alone…but not lonely. I have learned from us…the good and the bad, the real and the imagined, the noble and the petty…and taken it all into heart as the journey continues. It is, in fact, a good thing.

There was a time…but that time is gone and there is only here and only now and I’m okay with that. That too is, in fact, a good thing.

Dance

She glanced down as he came out of the bathroom, her eyes playfully hooded and her smile deliberately enigmatic but still undeniably teasing.

He finished toweling off, his skin still humid from the steamy water, and met her gaze. He glanced down and then smiled ruefully. “It’s a grower not a ‘show-er’,” he said, half-proudly, half-defensively.

She smiled brighter and threw open the quilt she was under. “Then pretend I’m from Missouri and show me,” she said, laughing the full-bodied laugh that never failed to thrill and arouse him.

There were times when he thought that she was too thin…that her breasts were too small…that her butt was too flat…but those times were fleeting and quickly forgotten. Most times he was besotted with the willowy curve of her lithe body and that feeling was more than quadrupled now that he was finally seeing her naked and welcoming.

He slipped into bed and pulled the quilt over them. She drew him close and he leaned into a lingering kiss, the blood rushing to his loins. “See?” he said huskily, “I told you…”

She nuzzled his neck, she sighed a long, warm breath. “Stop talking now,” she whispered thickly.

And they danced the dance of passion, bodies explored and entwined…they danced the dance of passion like it was their hundredth time together and not their first.

Afterwards, they lay under the quilt catching their breath while the sweat from their bodies mixed in languid little pools on his chest.

She kissed his shoulder and then snuggled back close to him. “Oh my,” she said without the slightest hint of irony.

His senses were still too fevered for him to be articulate so he settled for a quip. “We aim to please, little lady.”

She laughed that laugh. “Definitely a grower,” she said closing her eyes and luxuriating in the soft waves of passion still coursing through her.

He kissed the top of her head and closed his own eyes.

150 Words:...and she was flying...

And she was flying…soaring happily into the azure sky…laughing merrily as her little hand reached up into the warm sunlight, reached up to touch the face of God.

And then, just as suddenly, gravity gently tugged her back down towards the familiar expanse of mother Earth…and she closed her eyes, not the least bit afraid, and spread her arms wide as the breeze caressed her hair and tickled her face.

And then she stopped. She stopped and found herself where she began…in the protective arms of the best and strongest man in the whole wide world.

She opened her eyes and smiled, just a bit shyly. “Hi, Daddy.”

“Hi, baby,” the best and strongest man in the whole wide world replied. “Again?”

She nodded. “Yes, please, again!”

She giggled as the best and strongest man in the whole wide world said, “Okay, baby, he we go…”

And she was flying…

- for Dads everywhere -

(the best and strongest men in the whole wide world)

She's Like Marilyn/Safe Harbor

She’s the kind of woman that some men...that many men...covet…the kind of woman some men...that many men...want on their arms…want in their beds. They want her primal womanhood…so intoxicating and so terrifying at once…they want to imagine the light in her eyes shines only for them and the torrid mysteries of her womanly body have been waiting only for them to discover.

She the kind of woman that some men….that many men…covet. The kind of woman that some men imagine as everything they need to soothe their own needs: a goddess and a lover and a whore…a passionate savior and a selfless healer…a willing and nurturing receptacle for all of their hopes and dreams and their most carnal masculine indulgences.

If they see her pain…most do not…they dismiss it; if they hear the rueful echo in her sensuous laugh…and most do not…they recast it as something musical and magical that suits them, something musical and magical and meant only for them.

She’s like Marilyn, the kind of woman some men…many men…covet. She’s like Marilyn, the kind of woman that some men…most men…don’t care to really try to understand.

(He wants her too. He is a man and her feminine essence inflames his senses and quickens the blood in his loins too. But he sees the pain…sees the longing for someone, anyone, to try to see the little girl inside the powerful woman. He puts aside the aching to be her lover and makes himself a safe harbor…a place she can pull into with her tears and her laughter…her dreams and her foibles and her longing to be really seen and understood rather than just selfishly coveted and callously used. He loves her...as confusing and painful as that can be sometimes... and he passionately wants to be her safe harbor as much as…perhaps even more than…he wants to make her his own.)

She’s the kind of woman…she’s like Marilyn, full of passion and sorrow, longing and disappointment, full of the weight of disappointments and the lingering light of a hopeful, passionate heart…she’s the kind of woman that some men…many men…covet.

an appreciation

Every day is “Mother’s Day”, of course. Our mothers inform our lives from the moment we are imbued with the bright spark of life to the moment we return to the warm and welcoming shadows of eternity.

And not just our own mothers…though their influence is most profound…most amazing…most comforting…but all mothers in and about our lives as we wind down our verdant paths that make up our mortal lives.

So here’s to mothers…all mothers…our mothers and the mothers of our children and the mothers of our grandchildren; to our sisters of blood and our sisters of spirit; to all of the wonderful women who have given new and abundant life to this bittersweet and grand old world of ours.

So here’s to mothers…all wondrous mothers…here’s to you as we celebrate on “Mother’s Day”, the one on that Sunday in May and all the ones that shine softly and surely on every other day of the year as well.

Celebrate light and love and laughter…

Celebrate dreams encouraged and realities embraced…

Celebrate patient smiles and withering looks,

Celebrate firm hands and big plush hugs.

Celebrate light and love and laughter…

Celebrate the majesty of woman,

Celebrate the mothers,

All of the amazing mothers,

To whom we all owe so very much.

A Few Good Things Remain

I sometimes wonder if you think I still think of you. I do. And I’m sure you know that I do.

In the quiet hours…the soft minutes when memory rules and “what if?” becomes a doleful mantra…I still think of you…I still reach out for you with my heart…and I am still comforted though time and circumstance, foolish decisions of mine and the affection of others try mightily to put a lie to that.

I think of your smile…and the shyly passionate way you folded into my arms, into our kisses…I think of the easy way you laughed when I said something silly and the gentle way you sighed when our bodies were joined…and I am gladdened again.

In the quiet hours…the soft minutes…when memory takes hold…when “what if?” mocks me with gentle melancholy…I think of you…and the music you picked as our soundtrack…and even in the moments when hope seems a distant memory and love just a rapidly fading mirage, I know that a few good things do indeed remain.

- for my Mariposa (still and always) -