One Foot Over the Edge

Sometimes I wish I had said no, had turned away from the shimmering imperative to follow the call, to say yes. Those are the dark days, the ones where energy hides out under some rock, and my tired bones just want to lie down and sink into the earth. Those days come more often now that can't move as fast. Until the dragon catches up to me though, I'll keep throwing one foot over the yawning chasm of what I don't know and hope that some support extends from the unknowable to catch my weight and give me a place to stand so I can swing the next foot forward, again over emptiness that somehow becomes something, even when no one seems to care where it is that I walk. Certainly no one reads what I write. So I just keep moving, placing one foot in front of the other, trusting that my weight will be held, until it isn't.

When the Waters Recede in Tucson

            It is Sunday night in our little mesquite bosque. I grab a Key lime soda from the fridge and find a chair on the porch next to Megan. We can hear the highway up the hill behind the house, but the light of the setting sun and the breeze off the mountains – a breeze still carrying the chill of last night’s snow – honeys the light, quiets the drone of traffic.

No gauzy film, billboard, corporate-sponsored dreamscape, or media hype could capture this subtle shift of the season, this last, cool, goodbye kiss of springtime that spills over and through us as we sip drinks and make small talk.

            The last of the snow runoff is withdrawing back to the high country. Clear water still runs over the sand at the foot of the mountains, but has disappeared just today here in the valley. I followed it upstream as the mouth of our winter creek retreated, growing silent, its piece said, overtaken by the thirsty sand.

            Shadows lengthen. Trees have gone opaque with blossom and leaf in this last week. I watch my wife read, study her crossed legs, and wonder how many times I will see her again in a light like this, a breeze like this, my shoes wet with the last drops of a vanishing desert river. Once more? Twice? Not more than a few, if any.

            The shadows overtake the light, and the sounds of the highway come down to us, no longer held at bay by the breeze. She gets up. It is too dark to read, and friends are coming over. I sit and listen for the sounds of coyotes, somewhere.

Crescent Moon

It's still dark, and a crescent moon hangs over the horizon with Venus beaming next to it. Saturn is right there in line. A cold stillness sits on the snow and trees, and even the coyotes are quiet. The air is like a knife. It cuts through my jacket and sizzles against my skin. The world sleeps, but I am sharply awake. Everything is clear and crisp with edges. For just this snapshot of a moment, the stars look still, but I know they are up there spinning away, lit by fusion and matter that will run out eventually. Maybe it has already, and what I see of them is the light they sent out while they were still young with so much time and light and gravitational attraction ahead of them. 

Teachable

What would you do if you could? she asked. No limits, no obstacles, no barriers. Well, I said, something creative -- like music, or writing, or art, and certainly some exercise. And why would you do that? she asked. Because I want to keep learning, I said. And creativity, by definition, is new, out-of-the-box, giving birth to something you didn't know before, that maybe didn't even exist before. Now that, she said, sounds terrifying. You'd have to leave the well-trodden, sleepy, checked-out way of being and actually be present with the effort to learn a new lick on the guitar, a new technique with a brush, or a twist of phrase on the page. That's real work, she said. I had no idea what she was talking about until I actually tried to leave the auto-pilot way of being and throw myself to the wolves of learning something new. This old dog has found himself at square one: a rank beginner, know-nothing novice, a clumsy, awful-sounding, mess-maker. Of course, practice plays a role in polishing new skills too, but that being teachable is a tough one; real work it is to clear away the habits of knowing and try something fresh. But that attention thing -- that looking hard, staring at my fingers as they stumble all the frets of the guitar and persevering... that takes effort, and guts. It aint easy being teachable, says the die-hard, humbled, suddenly young-at-heart teacher.

A Thin Line

There you are, cruising along, heat pumping out of the vents in front of you, tunes wafting out of the speakers, engine purring along like a happy cat. Then you hit that rough patch, that stretch of slick-as-snot ice that sends you spinning like one of those Olympic ice skaters, and you watch the fields and snow and trees and mountains play across the screen of your windshield like some amateur music video, and you watch as the ditch rushes up to you and takes hold of your forward momentum and uses that against you, like some perverse martial arts master, and then the force of you moving forward turns into a gravity-defying lift upward, and you watch as the cab tilts and all the pens, coffee cups, notepads, and book bags you have in the console and on the seat next to you suddenly lift off and fly across your field of vision as you slam into the door and come to rest on your side, music still playing, engine still purring away, dirt now blocking your view out the driver's window as sky fills the passenger door window, now above you, and you realize that you live by grace, a fine line between all that is necessary to hold the parts of you together, working in concert to keep you breathing, living, loving, and the dark night of mystery. This time, though, you take the hand offered that lifts you up, away from that precipice, and rise back up, into this the light of living, and, for this moment, out of danger.

The Dark Part of the Story

They met at night, when the hassles, chores, and anxieties of money and making a living and all the pressure to look good and follow the rules died down enough to let a person think. And feel. Darkness helped too. Not seeing anything but the colors of touch and the waves of passion were more than enough to fill the senses and satisfy that hunger that never seemed to abate. The age difference between them didn't seem to count for as much either. Skin was skin, whether taught and smooth or less than perfect. And breath was breath. He was a she and she was a he, and black was white, and I was you and you were me, and all that mattered was the electricity of the heart. Of course,  all of that changed when light crept between the curtains, and the distinction-making began to divide the known universe into this-and-that, categories and differences, taxonomies and hierarchies. It was like that in the mind, the ruler of the light, the rest of the story, the part that weighed down on you, crushed the living breath right out of you.

He Would Be 90 Today

If he were still alive, he would complete ninety years today. If he were alive, I could call him and tell him happy birthday. I could ask him how his day was going, listen to him talk about what he had learned from ninety years of living. If he were on the same trajectory he was on when he passed, likely as not he would talk of love and how much he cherished his children of his first family and his second wife and her family. He had morphed from a soldier into a philosopher in the last chapters of his life. He spent his mornings quietly, for the most part, with his companion sipping hot water while she had her coffee. They watched the birds and squirrels in the back yard. He found comfort there. Because I loved him I wanted to hear about that new life, to see for myself where he had gone, how he was doing, even if that meant that I had to accept that things were not as they had been. He was softer in his old age. Many did not like that, and wanted him to be what they knew of him before. I went to see him alone. And that's the way it has stayed. I live in no man's land now, between tribes, because I followed a father who changed. He did what he did and found love but paid a price. I saw him -- and loved him -- as he was, not as I knew him to be, and, for that I am not forgiven by those I left behind.