The Way Into

Because he had forgotten and become proud, he could not face the fact that he, only he, was responsible for finding fault with the gift of a day. To appease the shame beneath the error that was his pride, he made up stories. He infused those stories with symbols that lit the way indirectly, suggested, through the abundant imagery of the world, a way to the truth that he could not admit, possible as it was, from the periphery, the blind side, unguarded back door. Only through sun, moon, gold, doorways, and monsters did the way to what he had forgotten become clear, admissible to a mind bent on abdicating, on finding the causes of his unhappiness outside himself.   

Sooner or Later

Part One:

You want it to go your way. You know: the money, recognition, achievement, romance, body and other trappings of what a great life is supposed to look like. But, then, for most of us anyway, you stumble, or life yanks out the rug, and you are out of the running. You have to face yourself and figure out what's really important. Because that is no fun, difficult, and not so lucrative, you avoid it, forget it, or just plain refuse to consider the fact, that yes, at some point, you have to lose. If you have the guts to admit it, you see that all those trappings are ultimately empty, especially when it comes time to lose the Big One. So what is one to do? You sit there and wonder and wonder and dig deeper, waiting for some insight in the deepest of deep meditations when a voice from somewhere other than you speaks to the living life within you says "Take a deeper breath."

Part Two:

You ask yourself "What the hell? Who is that?" And just like that, your body knows what to do. Before you can even get behind the idea, your lungs are off and running, taking a breath like no other you can remember taking, inhaling so much that you feel will pop like a balloon before beginning an exhale that evacuates the tiniest sac in your lungs of every molecule of air. You feel like you will die if you don't get some air. But you don't matter anymore because your body has remembered that it is here to live in spite of all your fear and chatter about how things are supposed to be. If you are really lucky, you get out of the way as your miracle that is human form embarks on the bliss of loading your organs, and all your divine architecture, with oxygen, so much that you cannot help but feel the cresting wave of mystery coursing through you, carrying you, being you.

Part Three:

Then the you that says it is you demands to take control of the apparatus and steers it back toward the hope, the belief, the illusion that, somehow, things will go according to plan, until there is no more choice.

You know then you will have to give in, sooner or later.

The Epic Trip Up the Driveway

The boot presses against my shin as I lean into the hill. My weakened leg strains against the resistance of the pedal as we -- leg, brain, balance, bike, boot, and fear -- all fight gravity. I shift into the lowest gear and find just enough strength to creep forward, hoping I don't stall and tip over, doing who knows what damage to the healing tendon. After long, wobbly seconds I reach the top of the hill of my driveway. This first time on a bike in three months is simultaneously a thrill and a reality check of limits. I turn onto Swan Road and gather speed in the downhill run to the bridge. I am rolling! The thrill is almost more than I can bear. Tears from the wind and joy stream down my cheeks. I tell myself I will remember this, will never again take this, nor any other, moment for granted. Traffic passes at fifty miles an hour. I doubt anyone notices the aging cyclist wearing his Aircast pedaling along in the bike lane. It doesn't matter. I am moving, moving back into the world, my waiting work, a new season, a great big unknown. The future is there waiting to be made as I slowly move toward it, into it, one pedal stroke at a time. I have another chance to try and get it right. Wheels, wind, growing strength, and a howling mystery sustain me. I bow in gratitude. 

Gravel Trucks and Hibiscus Lemonade

Cars and trucks, mostly trucks -- the heavy, gravel-hauling, hopper trucks -- speed past on the highway in front of the café. The café sits comfortably back from the press of traffic. It invites but does not demand notice. In this remote section of New Mexico, it is an oasis of sorts. Christmas lights line a wreath woven of juniper boughs while brightly colored wind socks in the shapes of fish dance and spin in the stiff breeze. “Your writing might sustain you,” Feather  says, as a musing after-thought. We are enjoying the breeze of July in the high country. He is a friend I see only a few times a year, times too short and spare for mincing small talk. I didn’t know what he meant by “sustain.” Did he mean I could make money? Sustain my happiness? Hold on to my soul? Or some other meaning of the word? Whatever he meant, I liked the sound of that simple phrase, spoken as it was, out loud, something I would never do, even to myself. Nobody other than he had uttered my dream back to me, simple as it was, before. I wanted so much to believe him, to believe it was possible to build a raft of writing that I might ride though this hungry, slavish life. I wanted so much to believe him that I took it in, rolled my mind around that possibility like I would a Key Lime gum drop between my tongue and the roof of my mouth. What a thought! Could it happen? Did I really have a shot at doing the only thing that meant something to me? If I learned to live by the law of lean times, the rules of constant change, undying love, hard work, mindful attention to each word as it played out into the song waiting inside to find daylight, I might just. Of course, I would have to sidestep the fears, and bad habit of running away. Those self-doubts are assassins of the creative soul. So for today, this one day, this moment on the side of a remote highway between the mesas of New Mexico, I let the hibiscus lemonade be the tonic that it is, ask for the last piece of cherry pie before the café closes, and watch clouds open to a blue sky. The gravel trucks roar by, carrying the life blood and flesh of the mountains. Their cargoes, freshly wrenched from darkness, raw, leave a hole like that of an extracted tooth, a gaping pit in a forest of deep green secrets. 

Bedrock

Tobacco. Sage. Ravens.

Sun. Moon. Rain.

Days pass without the distractions of cell phones, internet access, television. The days are elemental: work, food, sleep.

It's hard to lift my body from the camping pad I sleep on. I feel heavy and old. I stand on solid ground once I am up. I know the weight of my body, feel its bulk and its inertia, its draw to return to the earth from which it came.

Tremors keep me from threading a nut onto a small bolt that will fasten a light fixture to the stucco wall outside the front door.

I focus all my attention and slow down my movements, vainly trying to get the nut to bite. Just when I think I have it, I drop it. Again.

I am exhausted, standing on the lowest rung of a step ladder with my one good left foot and my aircasted right foot. It feels like I am standing on the top of a 30 foot ladder over nothing but air. How things change... Muscles in my left leg scream from the strain. I can't complete even the most basic of tasks. I will go at it again, and again, and again until I get it. Then I will go to the next task and its maddeningly slow progress.

You won't be surprised to hear what a blow to my ego this is.

I am impaired, weak, crippled.

I step down and look in the gravel for the 8/32 nut. I need my reading glasses to find it.

On one hand, I have no business being in a construction site. I am a danger to myself and others. On the other hand, I am getting stronger from the over-reach of climbing stairs, reaching down to pick things up off the ground, straining the broken tendon. I can feel it. Life is coming back into my legs, my heart, my breath.

It's a fight with myself. My odds are good. Progress is still too f*&#ing slow.

The real work is still to come, and this time of slow motion will have to propel me into the hard work doing work well with patience that is new to me. 

Something Out of Nothing

My day planner goes blank after May 19th. Every day before then has meetings, deadlines, tasks, and obligations competing with each other, overlapping, and spilling over the borders of date, time, and neat little boxes.

Then the pages are blank. The entire month of June has not one line of something I am supposed to do. Page after page is just empty spread sheets of dates, times, and blank paper for notes that never got taken. As a marker of how I have scheduled my time, this says I am nothing, no one, a slacker extraordinaire.

On one hand, I have lost six weeks, and counting, of my life. I have completed nothing of any social worth. I am also getting soft and weak. It's been a disaster of a summer.

On the other hand, I have been sinking down into silence, solitude, stillness. I have, in other words, been hanging out in a lot of nothing.

Now, nothing has its charms. It's a great place to rest for one thing. It's also a place to remember what and who one is when all the trappings of busyness are lifted away.

I notice a rising hunger for both distraction (movies, food, sex, beer, shopping, errands, fantasies, drugs, drama, and on and on) and sustained focus. The distraction wants out of the quiet; the focus wants to go deeper into it.

I am waiting to see what will emerge as I sink down deeper into this place of blank pages.

Low Light

It's coming back. Slowly.

I almost felt good today. The chronic ache of the torn tendon had died down; my brain seemed to be taking an interest in visitors, going out,  making contact with that buzzing, chaotic world outside my modest bedroom, kitchen, and living room. All of that has seemed beyond me, and, honestly I was, and am, uncertain that I will ever again function at the speeds necessary to my work life.

That's  a scary thought, one I run away from, deny.

Although I don't yet feel up to the task, I had a passing desire to teach in the fall. That was a shocker.

Two months ago, at the end of the spring semester, I was toast, beyond toast, a cinder. There was no way I could have dragged my sorry butt to the front of a class and done anything more than blubber. I was, and still am, in bad shape.

The injury,surgery, meds, and loss of fitness have all compounded my sorry state.

I was out of it, or so I thought, until I woke up this morning with no pain, a  clear head, and some hunger for something hard to do.

I don't know if it will last, but maybe I am not done yet.

Pass the coffee and eggs. There may be some miles still to cover before the light goes out.