caveat emptor

Such Accord with the Spheres

In the trajectory of this planet through space-time from violent birth to violent death we enjoy this season during which the innumerable environmental variables are temporarily hospitable to life such as us. The complex motion of this planet has turned me away from the nearby star we orbit, blocking the relentless radiation of heat and light so that I could, were I so inclined, step out into the cool shadow we call night and see other more distant stars filling the sky. But instead I am hiding inside the box I call a house, nestled in this soft bed, blinking into the artificial light of this bright phone, tapping into it symbols that attempt to capture my pondering such an accord I share with the spheres. And it's like that with us, too. From violent birth to violent death, orbiting each other through cycles of light and dark. Turning toward you is warm and bright, blinding me to all the lesser stars. Ride this rolling world with me. Lets make the most of this season we have, temporarily hospitable to life. Reaching out for you, I would pull you close and watch the entire metaphor collapse into sensual singularity under the cover of these warm blankets. The universe is expanding and cooling. Quick, let's make love while there's still time.

Her. Her and Him.

She plays outside with him whatever the weather, sometimes in yesterday's hair, sometimes in shiny, fancy regalia. When the money is short, she buys him the handful of foods he will eat and forages for herself. She does all this because he is more than other people understand to her. He is the other half of her soul. He showed up to take care of her just in time. Sometimes he plays nearby and she rakes the shoreline, washes the clothes, mops the kitchen. But he is never far from her thoughts. They ride scooters. They draw pictures on the sidewalk. She knows how to make him laugh like no one else. She wrestles him sleepy. She makes him Poptarts (the tops only) and sees him to school. She celebrates hooky days when she senses the changing weather is frazzling his nerves. She doesn't care anymore if you understand them. She has given up on most of us ever getting it. They get each other. They deserve each other. Figure it out if you can. They don't have time to explain. Too many adventures await.

Hello, friends. I hope you’re well.

Later. Love.

Waif

She prefers the mild winter or fall because she loves the way she looks and feels with high black boots hugging her legs and the swish and sway of long, light jackets or sweaters. Her best friend has long, full, dark hair that hangs around her face and shoulders like mystery and seduction so beautifully she almost falls in love with her friend on a regular basis and she thinks she would love to grow her hair out like that, a warm cover of cascading beauty, but she always keeps her hair cropped close in pixie-short cuts that leave her slender neck for showing the scarves she loves too much, she thinks, the scarves she owns in questionable numbers, she often feels, bright and light and billowy. Her favorite day is walking blustery sidewalks alone from shops to cafes to boutiques, one or two small bags, no great burden, with some new, lively treasures. Her favorite feeling is words, just a few, with some new stranger. She always tries to put love and praise into what she says. She never wants to discourage or hurt the way they did to her for all that time, long behind, in dingy, smokey rent houses she never lets herself remember. She wants to see eyes light up or smiles, always from a distance, a few feet away, not close enough to touch, to hurt. At night she lies alone and listens to the endless stream of music recommended for her by sweet, innocent Leo. She doesn't like it or dislike it, she just wants to hear it, to feel it, like sheets on her sensitive skin. People see her on the sidewalk and smile. Her friend loves the feeling of her fingers playing forgetfully in her long, dark hair as they talk of the easy nothing much that happens each day. Leo loves her but will never let her know. She falls asleep and dreams of floating naked in a warm, bottomless sea. Love songs whisper her far away.

Hello, friends. I hope you're well.

Later. Love.

Tough Day

I was a little surprised to see an octopus sitting at the bar, to be honest with you, but I acted cool about it. I try to be open minded, you know? I just took my normal seat - two stools over from the large cephalopod - and ordered my usual, Glenfiddich, neat. I sat there quietly, looking at my phone a little and humming along to the music.

"Tough day?" the octopus said after a minute.

I glanced over to see if it was talking to me, realizing quickly that I was too unfamiliar with octopus anatomy to tell for sure. "What's that?" I asked casually.

"Tough day?" it asked again.

"Not really," I lied. "Why do you ask?"

"I was just noticing your coloration. You're showing a kind of down color." It turned to face me a little, I think.

"My coloration?"

"Yeah. Coloration."

"I'm always this color," I said, pretty sure I was right.

"Really?" It sounded surprised. It turned slightly blue.

"Yeah," I said.

"Oh, well, my mistake then." It turned a little bit green and moved back into a position facing away from me, I think.

We sat there for a few minutes in silence. I sipped my drink. It picked up its beer with a tentacle and pulled it into some hole and drank it, I can only assume. "Truth is, it has been a bit of a tough day." I said after a minute. I waited for a response, but It didn't reply or turn toward me. It just turned slightly orange and reached for another beer.

Hello, friends. Tough day?

Later. Love.

The Road

There's a road at the edge of town that only a few of us know and if you take it your sorrows and your fears and all your weary years cannot come with you. At the end of the road is a swimming hole, clear and deeper than anyone knows. By the time you get there you're a kid again, bewildered and excited in your swimming suit. It's always a hot summer day. The water is always cool but not cold. When you jump in you don't have to hold your breath or close your eyes. You can laugh under the water. You don't have to come up until you want to, maybe to lie on your towel on the bank in the sun and dry off. Every touch and every look is innocent there. You might lie beside a girl or a boy. If you kiss or hold hands, it's only sweet and simple and fleeting. You might just talk or stare up at the clouds. You might, once you're dry, look for fossils or shells or dive back in the bottomless pool. It's light all the way down, and full of wonders. However long you stay, you're never late getting back. I know where this road is. What do you say?

Hello, friends. I wish so badly that this were true. I really, really do. Sorry.

Later. Love.

Cloud Animaler

I dreamed an old dream I've not dreamt for some time that I was the one responsible for shaping the clouds so that they looked like animals to children staring up from below. It's an important job, and difficult, though incredibly rewarding. I wish I could do that job in waking life, but I don't know how to apply. It's my dream job.

Hello, friends. I trust you're well enough.

Later. Love.

Ming the Adorable Thing

In the land of adorable things
An adorable thing who's named Ming
Had the job to sing songs for the king
But there was always one line in each song that didn't rhyme or keep the tempo

Though the rest of the song was sublime
This flaw caused him a terrible time
For the king was enamored of rhyme
So he sentenced Ming to five years of hard labor in the royal prison

And Ming's days in the prison were hard
Breaking rocks with a pick in the yard
In the watchful eye of a cruel guard
But while he worked he practiced writing songs that the king would enjoy, though he didn't seem to get much better, so he decided to try something different

At the end of those five toilsome years
When Ming stood at the throne full of fears
The king waited with skeptical ears
And Ming sang, "Noses can't wear braziers."

The king furrowed his brow, most confused
"If you're joking I am not amused."
Ming replied, "But I can't be accused
Of not rhyming. Two pigs melt, become fused."

The king asked, "What's that bit about swine?
It's just gibberish, no place in that line."
Ming exclaimed, "That's just it, king of mine,
I'm an abstract song writer. Duck wine."

So now Ming makes up words in abstraction
And they rhyme for the king's satisfaction
And they've garnered fair critical reaction
Though in his spare time Ming still likes to work unfettered from such structures and strictures and explore formless forms more suited to his natural aesthetics.

The end.

Hello, friends. I trust you're well.

Later. Love.

Truth or Consequences

He preferred to listen to the radio as he drove, but there was nothing in this part of West Texas but country stations and Mexican radio, so he was sitting in prickly silence except for the wind noise, which was considerable since the AC in this jalopy sedan didn't work and, although it was an early October afternoon, it was 92 degrees. Sweat dripped from the back of his hair down his neck. Out of muscle habit he tried to swig from the beer bottle that had been dry for more than two hours. Still empty. The outside air was gritty and arid. He started to hum the guitar riff from "Smoke on the Water" and tap his hand to the remembered rhythm on the warm metal of the car door just outside the window. She was asleep in the backseat, angry, or at least she had been when she'd climbed over the front seat back there and turned away from him. He was taking her to pack her things from her parents' house in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, but now he suspected she had had enough of him. Probably she would just get out the car and he would drive away. He wondered how he could persuade her to stay, what justification he could offer for his many offenses. He couldn't think of any. He'd never been able to. Maybe they were unjustified after all. He'd always assumed some code of justice drove him, made his iniquities understandable, but he doubted it now. It was sobering, like this long dry road, this empty beer bottle, this barren country with no rock music and not another car for as long as he could remember. Years later, when she finally left him, he would think back to this drive and wonder why she'd stayed all that time.

Hello, friends. I hope you're well.

Later. Love.

Humble Lunch

Every morning, however she feels, she packs a modest lunch from home, because she has learned that the ritual discipline of small practicalities builds, bit by bit, the quality of life she had no hope for when she was out there, her life on fire, out of control. She trusts people slowly now, especially men, but she is more sure of the ones who make it through, open and real with them. Sometimes she is gripped with sudden residual dread and she has to remind herself that danger is less likely now, that some worries no longer apply, however real the phantom grip clawing at her chest. Even if there is money and someone invites her for lunch out, she almost always politely declines. A humble lunch, packed herself, is a breath of wellness in her day. It gives her just a little more pride. And hope.

Hello, friends. I hope you're well.

Later. Love.

Explorer

At the place where the copse-tangled creek - deceptively untamed for the urban neighborhood through which it meandered - passed under the busy boulevard, he trekked through what he was tempted to call a culvert, though in fact it was technically a bridge. Walking on the lower edge of the ramp of concrete he was able, just barely, to pass through upright without stepping in the muddy, mossy water or banging his head on the concrete roadbed that trembled overhead with the motion of passing cars. Near the far side he saw that someone had spray-painted "skate" on the bridge support in angular, graffiti script, black with a red outline. A few yards farther ahead an overturned shopping cart in the creek bed was rusting badly and gathering quite a mound of moss as the water passed through. He enjoyed walking these city creeks for some reason. They made him feel in touch with something primitive or organic. They relaxed him. It's funny how little it takes. A few feet on either side can be like another world. Twenty feet away there's an office park, but somehow he's exploring the uncharted wilderness.

Hello, friends. I trust you're well.

Later. Love.

What I Want

If someone asked you the question, "What do you want?" could you answer it? Do you know what you want?

Because I don't. Well, I might. I asked myself, and I didn't know. I really didn't. For the past twenty-one years, you see, I was along for the ride with a competent, intelligent (and beautiful) woman who had a plan for what we wanted out of life and I didn't know all the details but I was happy to just go with it because she was smarter and she had ideas and I really hadn't thought about it. But then she got cancer and then she died. And now I feel like all the momentum she built up is dissipating and I'm coasting to a stop, which isn’t good. I'm only 41 years old, after all. I plan to live to be 200 (at least), so 94% of my life is still in front of me. (I think. I'm no math expert.) So now I have to decide what I want in life. And I don't know. But I've been thinking about it and I'm starting to get some ideas.

1. I want my children to grow and develop independent, autonomous lives, so that their potential to thrive is not bounded by mine, so that they can continue to thrive after my inevitable death, and so that I can enjoy, once they're grown, an independent, autonomous life that I have never known.
2. Regarding material possessions I want a life that is small and simple enough that I can fully inhabit it, that I can fully understand it, that I can afford it without extravagances of money, that I can use and care for it properly, consisting of things characterized by efficacy, sustainability, reliability and beauty.
3. I want to continue learning all my life, focusing on knowledge, skill and wisdom that increases the happiness and well-being of everyone in my life, including me.
4. I want to pass my days in a healthy balance of working, spending time alone in self-improvement and relaxation and spending time with other people in love, service, fun and peace.

That’s what I’ve got so far. And I know I need more, and I need specifics, but it’s a start. I’m okay with it.

Hello, friends. I hope you’re well.

Later. Love.

Where?

Does someone wonder where you are, when you aren't there? Does someone wish you were here? Sometimes it's nice to disappear, I guess. But when you're out for days, for months, and no one ever calls to ask, "Where are you? Won't you please come here?" you get that awful, endless howling. No one's going to call. No one wonders where you are. There's nowhere you're expected. You're completely free. Like a stray dog is free to fend. Like an abandoned farmhouse is free to fall. A forgotten name someone used to know.

Doomp the Oompus

Doomp was an Oompus. Oompuses were adorable creatures by nature, natives of Goompus. (The similarity of the name of the group and the land from which they came is common among the cuter people groups.) Doomp wasn't a typical Oompus, however. Doomp was, in the opinion of most who met him, entirely unadorable. He was neither cute nor entertaining. His countenance was pensive and his carriage was a sort of slouching shamble. Even if he tried, which he never did, he could not evoke mirth or adoration. Most people just felt sort of sorry for him as they gave him wide berth, lest he converse with them about all the wearisome, serious things about which he was constantly preoccupied. His lack of whimsy and charm was so complete, in fact, that it rose to the level of a crime according to the code of law of the Oompuses (a code containing only one law which, to summarize, said you had to be adorable). And so the other Oompuses captured Doomp and, most adorably, cast him roughly out of the land of Goompus into exile, never to return on pain of cute death. So Doomp went into the city and got a job as a mid-level bureaucrat in local government. His favorite part of the job was reporting monthly performance metrics. He found it deeply satisfying, in a most unadorable way. No one enjoyed working for him, which suited him just fine. The end.

Hello, friends. I trust you're well.

Later. Love.

Never More

There are four Corvus corax that I know of in this cemetery right now. They caw loudly to each other or maybe just out to the universe in general. They move, one at a time, from tree to monument to tree. They are not together, but they follow one another distantly. I try to imagine the space as they utilize it, undifferentiated by blocks and lots that humans have drawn and carved to bring the order and organization we need to perform our mental abstraction. We have to remember how to get back to this particular spot. We employ common patterns to make this easier for us. Corvus corax, the common raven, has no such need. The cemetery is one large field, and even that is not differentiated from the world around. There is only earth, sky and perch. All these little squares, rectangles and structures mean so much to me as a human. There is more to know in these few city blocks than I could ever hope to absorb. Earth, sky and perch. Food. Water. Night. Day. What must it be like, to be so free?

I am struggling, as I lean back against what I have come to think of as your tree, the tree beside your grave, with a notion that I need to come to terms with the legend of you, of our love, of our marriage. Death decorates a life with stature and status, builds up a fantasy of the departed, of how we loved them. It’s just another chapter in the legend of self that we author throughout our lives, that we tell ourselves and anyone who will listen. My loved one is dead. Sit and I’ll tell you her story, her legend, the epic of our love. It is both more and less than who we really were, who you really were. There’s nothing wrong with this. It’s another part of being human. We abstract. We simplify. We draw and carve lines to make things easier to remember, to understand. And then affection, respect, honor lead us to embellish and polish, smooth and sand the roughness away. One does not criticize the dead, especially those beloved departed. It’s good that we do this. It’s a fine and lovely thing to do.

The problem is, there are no legends walking the living streets. Everyone I meet is mortal, and flawed, and perfectly lovely in their frailty and mundane charm. None of my plans or activities are epic in sweep. Every day I get up and accomplish something perfectly ordinary, and I’m content to have done so. I cannot hope to replace the legend of my past with anything that compares if I choose to believe the wonder of the story. I will never be able to look at another person and say, “Would you like to enter into a twenty year heroic love affair with me? I’m looking for a fairytale relationship. I’d like you to be legendary.” If I am going to move joyfully and confidently forward, I have to be honest about the mundane wonder of my former life. It was a perfectly ordinary wonderful relationship with a gloriously human beautiful woman. We met by accident and stayed together because we liked more than we didn’t about one another. None of the impressive things we accomplished were perfect and none of the sweet, blissful days were ideal. The net result was amazing, but the details were simple, doable, everyday. I can do that again. When I’m ready, I can do that. The results won’t be the same, but they can be good. I don’t have to find magic and perfection in my future, and I wouldn’t know what to do with them if I did, because I’ve never seen them before. We didn’t build this life from legend and heroism. There was just laughter, touches, tears, home, safety, loyalty, forgiveness, perseverance, fun, struggle, love. Earth, sky and perch. It’s freeing to know how simple it can be.

Hello, friends. I hope you’re well.

Later. Love.

Haunted

I keep hoping you will haunt me

Every night I lie and wait

For you to come through the wall

Or rise up from the floor

Or float down through the ceiling fan

But you don't show up

And I lie there

Haunted by silence

Haunted by absence

Haunted by memories

Haunted by everything but you

So if you're ever in the neighborhood

Come on in

I'll be awake

Who can sleep

In such a haunted house?

Enough, For Now

Outside under the warm blue the scattered trees shading the sidewalk and peering up over the low shop roofs are fidgeting about a fitful, hot breeze. A few grackles and one male cardinal light on the brick edge of the vegan café across the street, just above a parked El Camino with a wheelchair in the bed. It is early September, the first free weekend after finishing a sunup-to-sundown, seven-days-a-week work project that lasted a little over two months. I am trying to remember what I used to do with myself. I’ve already eaten breakfast, browsed social networks over a cappuccino on the leather chair at the coffee shop and now I’ve moved on to the sturdy wooden table and a hot cup of Irish breakfast tea, staring out the front window at the lazy, early Sunday afternoon street, typing my thoughts onto the recently blank screen, blank for months now.

My life, for as long as I can remember, has been an exercise in uprooting and transplanting, taking root, growing, then uprooting again. From the meadows of youth to farmland of manhood. From the tended garden of religion to the wilderness of doubt. And now from the shade of her lifelong companionship to the arid exposure of her death and departure. You have to keep finding ways to survive in new climes, snaking new roots to find new water in strange soil. There is virtue in all earth, the same sun shines down, goodness follows familiar patterns and the waste of all you’ve lost mixes into the loam, feeding you bitter nutrients yielding strength you never wanted to need.

My teacup is empty, a few more dollars spent on fleeting pleasure, the kind you can buy. The birds have all flown and the shadows have shifted to the east, always moving east as shadows do outdoors. Lou Reed sings about Rock and Roll, how it saved her life, whoever she was. I want to tell you how I feel, but first I want to feel some way that makes a better tale. For now it is enough to recount the birds and the sky, a metaphor for growth and loss, a drink and a chair, a song and a street. For now it is enough just to say, “Hello.” I am still here, and I’m trying to figure out why.

Hello, friends. I hope you’re well.

Later. Love.

Happy Susie Day

After she finished her accounting degree in 2008 my Susan got a position as an auditor with Rylander, Clay and Opitz (RCO), a local accounting firm in Fort Worth, Texas, where we live. Dennis Opitz, a partner in the firm, is a member at the Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, and so they occasionally hold company functions there. While there for some occasion, Susan had a burger. She loved it. It was, as far as she was concerned, the best burger she had ever eaten, and she told everyone she knew how great it was.

Susan worked for RCO about a year before she was diagnosed with cancer. Shortly after she began treatment she started having trouble eating. During that time she was talking on the phone with our good friend, Wendy, as she often did. Wendy asked Susan what she would want to eat if she could eat anything. Susan told her about the hamburger, and Wendy had the idea to contact Dennis and try to get Susan invited back to the Colonial for lunch. Susan was embarrassed about imposing, however, and asked Wendy not to call Dennis, so she didn't.

Almost three years later, after Susan passed away, Wendy decided to follow through on her previous plan. Unbeknownst to me, she contacted Dennis and asked him if our family could be invited to eat at the Colonial for Susan's birthday today. Dennis was happy to make the arrangement and, although Wendy had intended to treat our family to lunch, he insisted on picking up the bill.

And so, this morning Billie Faye (Susan's mother), Katie (Susan's twin sister), River, Robyn, Rayn and I stopped by Susan's grave to leave flowers and wish her happy birthday. Then we went to the Cork Room restaurant at the Colonial Country Club and had a wonderful lunch looking out over the beautiful golf course. Several of us had Susan's favorite hamburger, which was delicious.

Thank you, Wendy, for your proactive generosity and love in arranging this great lunch for our family. Thank you, Dennis, for inviting us and for treating us to lunch, and for all the other help you've given us during this difficult time. This lunch was a very special time for Susan's mother, her sister, her children and for me. I will make a point of passing this kindness on to someone else in the future.

Happy Birthday, Susan (and Katie).

No Chess, So a Dream Recounted Instead

I came downtown to observe the Friday night chess games at the coffee shop, but no chess players showed up, so, instead, I will regale you, the anonymous reader, with last night’s dream, about which I cannot stop thinking. I’m skeptical and scoff at most dream interpretations (please do not take this as a personal affront if you value them), so I’m not looking for meaning in it. I just want to recount it for you because it’s a story and telling stories is what I used to enjoy very much. I hope to rediscover that joy soon.

The setting was my home, but not my home. It was some fitful amalgamation of disjoint places to which I’ve never been and never hope to go. The mood was full of stress and dread, angry and worried. The house was bustling with my children and too many other people I didn’t know – ostensibly their friends – but no one specific. I was feeling generally invaded and deprived of my rightful privacy, as though I were trying to change underwear or examine some blemish in a delicate location while people kept opening the door and barging in for no good reason.

The first scene of the dream (or at least the earliest I recall) had River late for work. In the dream I felt as though he was being flippant about it and needed to display greater urgency, and I got bizarrely furious over it, to a point that I was roughly manhandling him (something I’ve never done) in an attempt to convey the gravity of his lackadaisical work ethic. It was strange and not at all pleasant.

I don’t remember the segue, but the next and last scene had everyone gone and me in my bedroom, alone and in a foul mood. I was getting dressed for bed when I noticed an odd motion under a towel strewn over a stuffed chair there in my room. Walking over, I removed the towel, and there, lying in the chair, was a strange baby girl. She was tiny, like an infant, but thinner and with long hair and an almost adult face, like some bizarre, baby grown up. I remember that she could talk, but I don’t remember what she said in her oddly grown voice. I remember feeling empathy for her – here where no one knew her and she obviously did not belong – but I also remember this sense that there was something darkly unnatural and even sinister – though not willfully so – about her. For some reason I picked her up and carried her to the hallway, where I turned to look in the mirror. I was immediately struck by something unusual in her reflection. I turned a bit, to change the perspective, but the peculiarity was still there, and the nature of it was specifically this: Her reflection was not in the correct place. It was five or six inches to the left of where it should have been. From my perspective in the dream I could look down in front of me and see her in my arms and I could also see the reflection, and it was shifted. They didn’t match. I remember being overcome with a sense of wrongness about it, and then I awoke.

That’s it. Not my favorite dream, but I cannot stop thinking about it. Odd, don’t you think?

Hello, friends. I hope you’re well.

Later. Love.

How Houses Grow

A house takes no note when the inhabitant leaves for the last time. However elegant or civilized humans might consider the structure, a house does not differentiate itself from the external world. A house is just a complex arrangement of materials, participating, like everything else, in the dance of elements, creatures and the shifting firmament. A house in neither eternal nor impregnable. The outside will not stay outside. Insects will patiently wheedle their way in. Water will search for the smallest cracks and expand them. Ice, heat and wind will swell, shrink and buffet the edifice. Minerals in the soil will react with and decay the foundation. Beams will fall out of level and plumb. Angles will skew. Joints will weaken. An empty house, unmaintained by human ambition and optimism, will eventually sag and fall. We think it looks sad, abandoned, empty. This, however, is life for inanimate objects. This is the way where there is no will. It is not sad, it’s progress, growth. A house, left to its own devices, will turn back into an empty field. The wind, water and creatures will carry away the detritus. It takes great patience to see the end result, but it’s beautiful in its own way. Come out of your house and settle on the lawn. Watch the show.

Hello, friends. I trust you are well.

Later. Love.

The Dream Where You Were Still Alive

In the dream you were still alive. We were at some strange art and music fair and you were playing an impossible dream violin that used a long, flowing curtain instead of a bow. I cannot describe how it worked. Everyone was watching you, amazed, and I kept trying to come over and talk to you but you would always move on to some other room through the crowded, labyrinthine dream venue and I could never catch up with you. Then, as happens in dreams, we were at home and you were sitting on the foot of the bed looking down at the carpet and I was standing in the doorway to the bathroom facing you. I felt anxious and guilty because we’d had a funeral and everyone had been so sad and here you were, still alive. I was about to say, “We had a funeral for you. What if people find out you’re still alive?” but then a realization washed over me and I said, “You died, didn’t you. You died.” And you wouldn’t look at me. Then I woke up with the fading feeling that you were there.

Life is good, but not perfect. I’ve been playing the guitar quite a bit. I’m horrible at it, but I expect that to improve, if slowly, as long as I don’t stop. I might stop. It’s a thing I do. I’m not quite on top of shopping and cooking, but we’re getting by. I need to go back to the gym. The housekeeper has been great, though she was on vacation this week. I have been spending a little more money than is prudent, but not dangerously so. Work is very busy. Robyn is off in Colorado doing charity work for the week. River is working a lot and taking  summer. Rayn is spending time with friends, especially Lauren, whose house caught fire last week. All her cats died, as did her bird, but the Labradoodle made it through unharmed. They won’t be able to move back in for months. Rayn and Lauren will be heading off to camp in a couple of weeks. They always enjoy that. Life is good, but not perfect.

If I could control my dreams I would take you out to dinner and talk to you all evening. There would be no cancer and no medication, so we’d be sharing a bottle of wine like we used to, before you got sick. You would look me in the eye and smile as we spoke, laugh even. Later, at home, I’d pick you up like I used to before you had so much pain all the time and I would carry you into the bedroom. I cannot control these dreams, however. They tease me with you from a distance and then leave me bewildered and hollow. I don’t know why.