The Way of the World

Sometimes he thought he saw the boundaries of heaven.  Sometimes he thought he knew something about the meaning of life.  Sometimes…well, sometimes, he thought he knew.

But most times he knew that he didn’t really know anything of significance.  But that was okay with him…it was the way of the world after all…the way it was and the way it would ever be…and it really didn’t make him sleep any better or any worse knowing that.

Sometimes he tasted the sweetest wine…on the lips of lovers, on the tiny fingers of guileless babies, in the spray of the mighty ocean crashing against foolish, helpless rocks, in the way the sky felt on his tongue after lingering autumn rains.  And sometimes it made him feel so intoxicated, so utterly free, that he couldn’t imagine anything else could possibly ever taste so wonderful.  Sometimes he tasted the wine…and sometimes he liked to imagine that the wine would flow freely for all of the rest of his days.

But most times he knew that it wouldn’t.  He knew that it just couldn’t.  And that was okay with him…the sweetest things should always be taken in careful moderation lest they lose their honeyed luster and come to seem mundane.  This too, he knew, was the way of the world….the way the world was…the way world had ever been…the way the world would ever be…and it didn’t make him feel any better or any worse about his place in the universe.

And sometimes he thought everybody in the world could feel his secret thoughts, read all of his unwritten words, sing all the songs that he had deliberately forgotten how to sing…sometimes he imagined and sometimes it made him feel naked and exposed.  And sometimes it made him feel special, the guardian of secret knowledge entrusted to him by the knowing universe, the seeming fool who strode the world an unknown, but blessed, shaman and scholar.

But sometimes…most times, in fact…he knew that was hubris too arrogant and too fantastic to be taken very seriously at all.  This bothered him, in his heart of hearts, but as long as it remained true in his dreaming times…and it most certainly did…he was okay with the real truth of the matter.  It was the way of the world after all…the way it absolutely should be no matter how much he might wish it to be otherwise…and so it didn’t really trouble his mind…except in the quiet moments of whispering and wishing that everybody has but nobody admits to.

Sometimes he thought he knew…knew the hidden places…the secret, sacred hearts…the perfectly peaceful vistas and the eternally calm and calming hideaways…all of the gentler, more grace-filled truths of the infinite…sometimes…just sometimes…he thought he knew.

And sometimes he did know.  But most times he knew that he didn’t know much of anything and he was, only a bit reluctantly, okay with that.  It was, after all, the way of the world…the way it was and would ever be…the way it was for him, for everyone he knew, for everyone he had known at one time, for everyone he would never ever know….and it really didn’t play games with heart or make sport of his head.  Well at least not too much…sometimes…at least not too much…

A Spring Day on the Circle

The spring day felt like summer.  Warm Santa Ana winds came rolling in…playful but insistent…off the desert and any lingering clouds fled out to the Pacific.  Under powder blue skies heat spread…insistent but no oppressive…over the city…over the neighborhood…over the Circle.

D, across the street, was the first to leave for the day as usual.  A soft roar into the waning darkness of the morning, taking the red SUV instead of the powerful white truck he most often favors. 

Shy, enigmatic C was next, waving as she passed, her headlights illuminating me fleetingly as I paced the Circle, tea in hand. 

And then the Marine on the corner, coughing and smoking…smoking and coughing…as his truck warmed up for the short jaunt off the mesa down to the sprawling base. 

The sun was rising and the birds were awake and already happily gossiping.  The winds were already gathering and the trees were dancing, their spring foliage singing songs to the new day and to the grace of the infinite.

The Earth turned and met the sun.  I dressed appropriately for the weather…baggy blue shorts, muted red shirt…and proceeded with my previously planned chore of finishing the spring cleaning of the garage while the morning was still relatively cool.  The screened doors and windows open to the gathering, warming breezes, music…Van Morrison, Ray Charles…spread from my stereo in the family room and out through the house and into the garage, and into the street.

A, across the street, climbed into the family’s white SUV, the warm breeze carrying a whiff…vague but insistent…of cigarette smoke around the Circle before taking it off towards the sea…and slipped off into the day.  It occurs to me that I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen A smile.

L, two doors down, leaves next, her red hair shimmering in the morning sun, while her husband J sets to work in their garage before the day becomes too oppressive for such endeavors. 

The reclusive young couple who live in what old-timers on the Circle still call “George and Ginger’s house” go their ways…he in his jeep, she, with the toddler she gave birth to not too long after they moved onto the block, in her gleaming black SUV.

P…fair skinned, porcelain, warily affable…comes over to retrieve the mail she had asked me to collect while she and her older daughter were off spending a few days in Idaho with her younger daughter and the grandchildren.  We made small talk about the weather and she, having taken a day off after her trip, went to tend to her plants and flowers and I went back to work in my garage.

I filled the trash and recycling bins and rolled them out to the street for pickup the next day; I rolled C’s bins out to the street because I do that every week as well.  The garage as done as it was going to be, I closed it up and went to finish an assignment on the computer.  The day was getting warmer and the cats had already staked out territory under ceiling fans of their choosing.

Noontime under the big tree in the front yard, the Santa Ana winds (yeah, that Steely Dan song kept playing in my head and I'm looking over my shoulder for Babylon sisters to be shaking it) really kicking up an impish ruckus, the warmth continued to rise, and the day on the Circle continued to slow down.

Mid-afternoon, D, early to work, early home, is riding around the Circle on a bike he apparently rediscovered in his garage.  The lithe D, who walks in both boyish whimsy and…vague but insistent…melancholy, goes shirtless whenever he can and as he delights in making circles on the Circle, his little gold nipple ring glints in the sun every once in a while casting tiny sparks of light here and there. 

Someone visits J, the wind carrying the pungent aroma of his cigar around the Circle. 

Early evening, the air is still thick and sweaty, doors and windows are still open all around the Circle, soft music (from my house) is gliding on top of the heated air as our part of the world started to slowly move away the mother sun.  I spend sundown in the yard…on my bench…luxuriating in the gathering coolness.

The spring day…the spring evening…felt like summer.  And, they tell me, this “summer” wasn’t ending just yet.

the nights go on forever

“The nights go on forever,”  she said with a rueful little smile that I found enormously endearing.  “It’s the days that are never long enough.”

I nodded, pretending she was giving some hidden wisdom that had somehow escaped my notice.  It hadn’t.  I was a friend…no, not a friend…an acquaintance…I was an acquaintance of shadows and whispers; of cold mornings on chilly sheets, alone in the  dark, languidly pawing at indifferent erections and wondering why the nights…like this long forever night…hadn’t swallowed me at last and set me free once and for all.

‘You’re such a little boy,” she said, just a bit unkindly, as if she knew what I was thinking.  “You lie to me but I don’t care…you have sad brown eyes and hungry brown lips…you’re a beautiful liar and I would lay with you…I would make you moan my name and breathe carnal whispers to the infinite…if you really knew what love was.  But you don’t.”

I wanted to slap her.  But I didn’t…you don’t hit someone for the truth…it’s not proper.  And I always try to be proper.

“You make angels out of cigarette smoke…saviors out of chilled wine bottles…you think navel gazing singers pirate your diaries…and you pride yourself that the head on your shoulders, not the one at the tip of your dick, calls the shots when nothing could be further from the truth…you dream even while you’re ‘awake’, why the hell would you want more daytime?”

Because.

She laughed, a brittle, decidedly unkind laugh, and shook her head.  “I love you.”  She looked me in the eyes.  “Or maybe I just think I love you.”  She paused, her cool eyes mocking me.  “Or maybe I don’t love you at all but say it anyway because you want to believe it.”  She paused again.  “Do you understand that?”

I nodded.  Yes.

“Does it make any difference?”

Hot tears welled up in my sad brown eyes.  I shook my head.  No.

She frowned, sadly, and pulled me close.  She kissed my hungry brown lips.  She put my head on her breasts and rocked me slowly.  “Silly little boy,” she cooed, stroking my head and rocking me gently to a song only she could hear.

And the night, of course, went on forever.

Every Morning

Every morning, a little bird…hidden in the pre-dawn shadows of the big tree across the Circle…sings the first song of morning, calling…hopefully, plaintively, unabashedly…until, eventually, a distant, sleepy reply comes.  Until, eventually, more distant, sleepy responses sing out in the cool morning air and the conversation, musical and gossipy, begins in earnest.

Every morning, an old man, bundled against the chill before sunrise, comes down New Salem Street walking his happy little dog.  The old man’s pace is brisk and sure; the little dog, his tail wagging, his head held high, effortless keeps pace.  The old man cuts through the darkness with a tiny white light shining from his cap.

Every morning, the trees sway in the lazy breeze…every morning, the stars seem to fade away as the sun’s first tentative fingers of light turn the indigo horizon to a softer shade of darker blue.  Every morning, one neighbor…holding her robe securely…comes out to see where the newspaper guy has casually tossed her copy of the Union-Tribune that day.

Every morning…every weekday morning…my next door neighbor, walking briskly, gets into her car for the journey to her job.  She smiles shyly (I can’t see her face in the shadows but she always smiles shyly) and offers a soft greeting…”Good morning, Michael”…before she backs out of the driveway and, with a little wave, drives off into her day.

Every morning…every weekday morning…my neighbor directly across the Circle yawns as he clambers into his big white truck, waves and nods in the way men do, and roars off towards his own day; the neighbor next to him does likewise with a black truck that growls even deeper than the first one.

Every morning, life slowly rouses itself on Whitehall Circle…slowly rouses itself all around the city…singing and yawning, waving and smiling shyly…while the softly rising sun, slowly but surely, turns the sky from black towards blue.  Every morning…

150 Words: I Want

I want to sleep for more than five hours a night.  I want to stop wandering through the haze in my happy guy mask.  I want to be understood without having to spell things out in exhausting detail.  I want to understand much better than I obviously do.

I want to breathe easy and laugh unabashedly.  I want to cry when I need to and not have it held against me.  I want to stop disappointing the world.  I want the world to stop disappointing me.

I want to kiss somebody who thinks I’m their hero.  I want to make love in the warm heart of cool clear nights and wake up entwined, whispering, sharing silly, bawdy endearments with someone who couldn’t imagine any better place to be.

I want the life I live to at least try, just try, to mirror the life I imagine.

I want too much.

breathing

I feel it breathing.  I feel it…lingering just off the near edge of my perception of the world…lingering just off the near edge of the perception of my world.  I feel it…breathing…yearning…hungering…whispering…whimpering…crying…commanding…dreaming…dancing…being…being…being.

I feel it breathing.  I see it curling…black and blue and golden smoke…in the bright blue, cold gray, stark black daytime nighttime never-time sky.  I feel it breathing…I feel it calling…I feel it cajoling…I feel it singing…old blues, new country waltzes, rock and roll that makes me sweat, makes me forget…I feel it.  Breathing.

I feel it breathing…a song I pretend I know (I am a singer who can’t sing)…a movie that I feel connected to and detached from (I am an actor that can act too well)…a ballet that I know all of the sacred steps to (I am a dancer who doesn’t feel the music)…a prayer of salvation and serenity I murmur into the ether (I am a sinner who doesn’t believe in…anything…)…I feel it…black and blue and golden smoke in the every-time never-time sky.

I feel it breathing…feel it coming closer…closer…closer…please God closer…I feel it reaching for me…reaching for me, calling for me…I feel it. 

But it stops at my skin.

Tough Love

He needed “tough love”.  It seemed to be the consensus opinion and so, of course, he had to presume that it was right. 

It was strange, he thought, mildly confused, that none of the people proposing this had ever come to him for this “tough love”…they came to him, make no mistake, he was, he was often told, a good listener and some one who held confidences with fierce loyalty; he was, he was often told, a soft and healing place to fall…but, it seemed, he must have had it all wrong. 

And being so sure, he realized that they must have been getting their “tough love” elsewhere all along.

So it seemed he had failed them.  He had failed himself.  He needed to pull his head out of his ass and shake it off…that consensus opinion again…grow a pair and stop looking for a soft and healing place to fall.

Yeah “tough love”…took him a while…a long while…but maybe he finally understood.  Keep your head up…keep your doubts and fears to yourself…be strong and invulnerable…don’t cry out loud…don’t be surprised when your foolish confidences are turned into weapons against you…be too busy soaring to bother looking for someplace to fall.  Give and, especially, take “tough love”…it’s what’s needed, consensus opinion can’t be wrong after all.  It was, he realized, good information to know.

Thanksgiving

I don’t want to think about her today…I don’t want to think about her sitting in her kitchen, her face stoic but her eyes bright and mischievous, teaching me how to clean the green beans from her garden while she told me stories from her colorful past.  I don’t want to think about her laughing quietly and winking every now and again to seal the pact of love and affection and secrecy between us…I don’t want to think about her vaguely smoky voice calling me by the name no one but she was allowed to use.  I don’t want to think about her at all.

And I don’t want to think about him today…my greatest champion and my most pernicious foe…I don’t want to think about the times we laughed and the times we cried and the times we shared secrets and the time we fought like…well, like Cain and Abel…I don’t want to think about his theft of pieces of my youth…I don’t want to think about his unrealized potential seeping away on a cold, lonely street in Los Angeles.  No, I don’t want to think about him at all.

I don’t want to think about my boyhood friends…one lost to time, forever wearing his silly grin and his almost gaudy blue suit as we left Louis Pasteur Junior High School and spent one last perfect afternoon together before parting, unbeknownst to us, forever; one lost after Alexander Hamilton High School turned us loose on the unsuspecting world and found…fleetingly…smiling with his family in a photo sent from a distant shore…before being lost forever to the arms of the blessed Universe.  I don’t want to think about them at all.

And Lord knows I don’t want to think about my baby girl…tiny and inquisitive and quick to smile whenever she saw me…my sweet girl who grew into a troubled woman, a lost and angry soul who I felt, foolishly, that I’d abandoned when life took me from my hometown to another town down the coast (her 5 year old self had said, quite seriously, that when she grew up she was going to marry me and take care of me.)  I don’t want to think about how her heart failed her and took her back to the light from whence we all came.  I don’t want to think about her at all.

I certainly don’t want to think about my best friend and most stalwart companion, in my life for too brief a season and in my life forever and a day…I don’t want to think about the sad, brilliant soul who lost himself in bottles because life was sometimes much too hard to face…I don’t want to think about the girl who gave her strength and comfort to us even though she was losing a battle with an invader in her own body…I don’t want to think about any of them. 

I don’t want to think about them at all.

And yet I do.  I do think about them.  I do want to think about them.  I want to think about them and all of the others who’ve come into my life and left, lingering indelibly even in their passing.  I want to think about them.  I do think about them.  And I give love and blessings and gratitude and humble acceptance of their grace.

I think about them…and give bittersweet thanks.   I miss them…now and always…and I give love and blessings and humble acceptance…and heartfelt thanks.

Magic

A little girl smiled at me when I thought I was projecting bearish aloofness.  She made me smile despite myself and reminded me, yet again, that I believe in magic.  I sometimes forget that…I sometimes want to forget that…but, in my heart…the boy’s heart that shines within my man’s chest…I do believe in magic.

Magic doesn’t always seem to believe in me…but that’s not the way it works…you believe or you don’t, needing proof means that you don’t.

Magic is child’s guileless smile…magic is a hug from a man who seems too macho to give heartfelt hugs but in fact isn’t…magic is a song that instantly takes you to a place where memory is golden and love is real…magic is a hug from across too many miles that still warms and sustains you in gray, aching moments…magic is feeling intimately connected even and especially when you’re all alone…magic is…well, magic is real.

And I believe.  I believe in laughter and tears…I believe that there are true hearts and fake hearts…I believe that yesterday is gone, tomorrow will take care of itself, and today is where we live…I believe in the power of music and the power of an impish twinkle in an old man’s eye….I believe that it’s okay to feel sadness as long you remember how to feel joy…yes, I believe…I do believe in magic.

Four Crushes (The Songs Remember When)

When I was a boy I was shy, aloof, fat, anxious, and impatient with my peer group…not the best combination for social success in the emotional cesspool that high school could be. I was also cursed and blessed with a vivid imagination, a facility for written expression, and a yearning poet’s heart that, in ways both naively expansive and painfully insular, wanted to love and be loved.

Not surprisingly I had crushes that both elevated and devastated my foolish romantic’s heart and soul. Each one had its own soundtrack...songs forever identified with specific people.

Back in those days…the halcyon days padding the halls of Louis Pasteur Junior High and Alexander Hamilton High School (Los Angeles liked to dedicate their schools to dead white men…a function of the times they were built rather than any overt racism…to the point where a tongue-in-cheek suggestion to change the name of another school to honor Marilyn Monroe rather than James Monroe, a seemingly reasonable notion to me given where we lived, was shot down with vehement disdain by the powers that be)…back in those childhood days I carried torches that warmed and seared me to the core.

From the perspective of age I look back and see that some of my crushes from that time…four of them in particular…added more color to the tapestry of my life than I had previously consciously acknowledged.

Those four…two older, two among my peers…linger with me in ways I would never be arrogant enough as to believe that I linger with them.

They all seemed to like me. They all saw me as harmless. They all loomed in my head with more vividness than the reality of our acquaintance should have allowed for. They still do.

One died suddenly while I was still in the process of becoming a man.

One I willingly surrendered my virginity to in an act that meant much more to me than it did to them.

One shared what turned out to be final goodbyes with me on the last day of our High School life in the parking lot of Hamilton early one morning after having spent the previous hours indulging a last gasp of childhood at Disneyland, the place where childhood never ends.

One never saw my crush because I was too scared to really let it show…it was, of course, a time when I imagined that rejection would literally kill me… and because they had a crush of their own that was not me.

Those four…one gone, two hopefully living well out in our sweet old world somewhere, one in the circle of my acquaintance once and again…none of them knowing what an indelible impact they made on my journey from then to now…linger in my soul, memory making the music of their souls ever sweeter in the golden realm of affectionate nostalgia.

It was and is a gentler, sweeter madness...the songs, like my heart, remember when...and I thank them all for that.

My Town (San Diego Serenade)

My town…and, having spent half my life here, it is indeed my town…suits me to a tee. It sprawls and changes like a city and but it feels like a town…someplace to belong not just someplace to be.

It shimmers lazily in the warm South California sun…kissed by Pacific breezes and hardened by insistent but eventually forgiving desert winds…and when the rains fall, as they sometimes do, it glistens with possibility from its winding roads to its powder blue skies.

We welcome in the Marines…we welcome in the surfers and the sailors, the workers of every stripe, the artists of every notion…we welcome in the children of pilgrims and the children of freedmen, the children of all of the Americas and the children of all of the bright world…we send them in and bid stay…my town…this simple, complex, gently golden town…welcomes them all and gives them shelter for however long a season they choose to embrace.

People come to visit…people come to stay…people love and complain, share and covet, curse the clouds and laugh with the sun…my town…this perplexing, utterly rational town…is ever someplace to belong not just someplace to be.

The Gray Man

The Gray Man was sad again. People would be exasperated with his navel gazing if they recognized the shadows dancing behind his big brown eyes…but they don’t see and so they don’t have to bother being concerned.

“It would be funny if it weren’t so sad,” the Gray Man said, his voice a flat whisper. But it wasn’t clear if he was talking about the people around him who don’t see or his own inflated sense of self that made him think his sadness should be of import to anyone other than himself.

Maybe both…maybe neither…didn’t matter…the Gray Man was sad again and nobody saw and nobody cared. And it would pass.

The Gray Man would not disappear to far flung shores. Nor would he take a header off the nearest skyscraper. He wouldn’t even try to explain…he was quite sure that nobody really wanted to hear it…that had been made quite clear more times during his journey than the Gray Man cared to think about.

No, he wouldn’t do anything foolish. The Gray Man would put on his bright face paint and fake a twinkle in his big brown eyes and everything would be cool again.

“That’s the way that works,” the Gray Man said, dampening down the ruefulness as best he could. “That’s the way it’s always worked.”

The Gray Man was sad again. But he’d get over it…he always does.

The Garden

The garden always mocks me for the fool that I ready know that I am. I go there…the same time, give or take an impudent minute or so, everyday. I sit on the stone bench, letting the breeze tickle what’s left of my thinning hair, letting the sun play solitary games of hide-and-seek through the gnarled branches of the liquid amber.

I sit and read…pulp fiction and comic books, biographies of serial killers, pop culture nonsense, English translations of Gabriel Garcia Marquez…read so I don’t have to think.

But think I do just the same.

I think about crying the night I ran away from home and shivered through a long night on a windswept beach….I think about the ones I “loved” without ever having the guts to find out what if heart had purchase with theirs…I think about never kissing my father…I think about never apologizing to my mother for being a barrier between her and new love long after my father had flitted away to what he foolishly imagined were greener pastures…I think about hating and loving my brother for living as he chose to and I think about hating him for dying the incredibly stupid and heartbreaking way he did…I think about the last time I really cried…I think about the last time I really smiled…I think about thinking.

And I think about whores and scoundrels.

I smile ruefully as I read…pulp fiction, serial killers, Marquez…and think about the scoundrels I’ve known…the scoundrels I’ve been…think about the whores I’ve known…the whores I’ve been…the whores I’ve slept with. No, that’s a lie…I never slept with any of them…I had hollow, humid sex with them and then I went home and slept alone. I always slept alone. I think about the sterile sanctity of my bed…of my heart…and I tell myself that it’s all right…I tell myself that it’s just so.

The garden always mocks me…the breeze carrying its perfumes of rose petals and maple leaves and casual hubris through me and on out into the world…as I read…comic books, soap opera given gravitas by time and acclaim, Senor Marquez…and think.

Batwoman and Supergirl

Batwoman and Supergirl showed up at my doorstep in the cool gray of the late July afternoon. I hadn’t seen Batwoman in years and I had never met Supergirl at all. The Yankee lesbians from Frisco…as I insisted on calling them (they only took umbrage at the “Frisco” part…some people from San Francisco are apparently very touchy about that)…had come south to be as one with their people at the annual Comic-Con only to find that their lodgings were not in place.

Southern (California) hospitality being what it is I did not hesitate to invite them in and soothe their parched throats with generous glasses of sweet tea.

Yes, I said before Batwoman (who had actually called ahead) could ask, the intrepid heroines could stay in my sanctum sanctorum for the night (their lodgings in the gay enclave of Hillcrest…much closer to the downtown Convention Center than my house… would be available to them the next day.)

I was rewarded with grateful hugs and kisses on each cheek…one scented with mint (menthol cigarette smoke and breath spray) and the other with chocolate (the new M&M’s with pretzels.)

The cats had disappeared to wherever they disappear to when strange voices are about…save for Bart, of course, who casually sauntered out to see who the newcomers were and if they had anything for him. Batwoman retrieved two bags from their well-traveled SUV while Supergirl went into the bathroom to shower off the long hours they had spent on the road.

I fed them leftover chicken and new potatoes and then Batwoman and I talked about old times while Supergirl happily perused by CD and comic book collections and occasionally asked me about the people in the many framed photos on the walls of the family room and the front room.

Being a gallant Southern gentleman, I gave the Yankee lesbians from Frisco my bed (the only comfortable bed in the house) and I slept on the couch (much to the curiosity and delight of the cats who found “charming” ways to keep me company during the night.)

In the morning I made coffee (I don’t drink it but I keep some in the freezer for company) and Supergirl made French toast. They put on their faces, threw on their costumes, and…with more hugs and more kisses…the caped crusaders were off to join the Comic-Con throng.

Excelsior.

The Sergeant

The sergeant didn’t smile…he just didn’t have it in him…he just sat, folding his long, sturdy frame into my favorite chair barely able to contain him. He wanted his eyes to be steely…he was a Marine after all and that’s the way they were "supposed" to be…but they were liquid and wounded despite his best efforts to the contrary.

I sat quietly on the sofa. He would talk when he could. I would not invade his emotional space until when…or if…he was ready.

“I’m not a pussy,” he said, apropos of nothing. He was fit and square-jawed, his hair was cut high and tight, he was all masculine presence and military bearing…nobody would mistake him for a pussy.

I sat quietly. I knew he had come because a mutual friend…a woman, a Marine, we were both friends with...had told him that I was a good listener, a trustworthy confidant. I had no idea what he wanted to talk about…and we were not really friends… but I would listen if he wanted to talk.

The sergeant bolted his feet. “This was a mistake. Look, man, I’m sorry to have wasted your time.” He looked at me but made no move to leave.

“It’s cool.” I stood up and closed the space between us. “If you need to go, then go.” I paused and, tentatively, I reached over and patted his arm. “But if you need to stay, then…please…stay, I’ve got plenty of time…”

The sergeant stared at me…I wasn’t sure if he wanted to run…to laugh…to hit me…to burst into tears…and then, very subtly, he nodded. It was as close to “thank you” as he could muster in the moment.

I stepped back across the room…shooing the curious cat out of the room as I did so…and sat back on the couch.

The sergeant still didn’t smile…there was no laughter in his eyes…but he sat down in my favorite chair…and, hesitantly, he began to talk...

Father's Day

I picked out the names of my first son and my first daughter when I was 12. It was apropos of nothing but it felt right and I went with it. I wrote them down in a diary I was I keeping at the time and carried them in my heart from that moment on.

I always wondered if the little humans I helped to create would fit those names or if they would come into the bright world with other names the universe gave to them. I was cool either way…the names weren’t remarkably original or anything, they just felt “right”…but I carried them just the same.

I never got to use them. Because I never got to actually co-create a child.

But I did get to be a father just the same. And I think I had some good moments.

I would be lying if I said there wasn’t some sense of loss in not being a biological father but I only dwell upon that, quite fleetingly, in extremely rare moments…life is what it is…things happen in this life as they are supposed to and not as we might want them to… and I have nothing complain about in this area.

(My life has always been blessed by the joy and magic of children…babies and toddlers have always seemed to like me…felt safe with me…for some reason…maybe they recognize someone close to their emotional age…maybe that’s not really a good thing after all… :-)

Father’s Day always makes me think about the men who became fathers. The good ones (like so many I know and have known) delight and amaze me. The not-so-good ones (like mine) are still worthy of acknowledgement for having brought new life to the great pool of human energy and experience.

And so…to all the Dads, Papas, Daddies, Poppies, Padres…to all the Fathers…thanks.

And Happy Father’s Day.

...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...

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.

Memories

And the laughter flowed…easy, bittersweet, joyful, rueful laughter…and the tears were held in check (though sometimes just barely)…as friends gathered and shared memories…memories of our friend.

And I was pleased…and not at all surprised…by the number of people who came to celebrate the fact that he was, for too brief a season, here on this sweet old world with us. I was pleased…and not at all surprised…that his passing on to whatever comes next for our eternal energies could not…would not…go unnoticed.

In the end the most precious treasure any of us could ever possess is the fact that there are hearts and souls that will miss us when we are gone…that there are hearts and souls that will carry memories of us…that will carry us…long after we have ascended from this verdant mortal coil.

And in the end he lingers…in memories, in sacrosanct corners of our hearts…a humble and blessed being here for too brief a season, possessor of the most precious treasure any of us could ever hope to possess. And in the end our lives…those who had the sublime pleasure of knowing him…are much better for having had him in our lives…for having him in our lives still and always.

Numb

It's strange...my friend...my best friend...passed away a few hours ago and all I feel in the moment is numb.

Maybe not so strange...I don't have the luxury of breaking down because there are still things I have to do for him and for those who will mourn his passing...especially since that passing came with so little warning (just three weeks ago he was bright and alive...he was everything that made him the person people gravitated towards...and now he's gone...lingering in our hearts and in our memories...but gone from this bittersweet old world.)

At some point I will break down...at some point I will embrace the enormity of the void in my life...but right now...right now...I'm just numb.