caveat emptor

Erzurum

The sun through the front window of the bus blinded me awake as we jostled over the rough street heading into Erzurum. Somewhere nearby I had, or so I had been assured, a hotel room reserved. Presumably there would be a bed there where I could stretch out this stiffness for a few hours – two days tops – without the onslaught of knees, elbows, voices or the ubiquitous stench of people who smelled as bad as I almost certainly did. I shifted slightly to relieve my throbbing side from the lump of the boots in my duffle and turned to stare out of the side window where there was no morning star trying to enkindle my brain. On the outskirts of town the buildings were sparse and dingy without the prickly stabbing of minarets mingling among the crowd of swollen Byzantine domes that marked the cities of the region. My mouth was thick with the pasty memory of bad food and burnt coffee and I closed my eyes again as we churned along. Her face filled the eyes of my daydreams.

"I want the song to be a cloud, to evoke the feeling that a cloud is talking to you, telling you what it's like." She is hugging her guitar on the blanket where we sat that Wednesday in the field just outside Elsdon, the only day the sun came out for those two weeks.

"Telling you what what's like?" I ask her.

"To be a cloud," she says, furrowing her brow. "What else would a cloud know to say?"

She had been right, of course. What the hell else would a cloud know? It was clear to me now, bouncing along the road in Erzurum, like it hadn't been back in Elsdon. I winced to think that we'd probably have made love one last time if I'd only seen it clearly that day, but instead I had droned on sourly, darkening her one sunny day, and, inventing some commitment, she had taken her guitar and her beautiful, soft blanket and her wonderful, generous breasts off to her cousins' house for the evening. Suddenly the bus driver blazed his horn at a bicycle and I jerked upright, startled. The cyclist, an old man, took his time moving aside and then we lurched and shambled forward. My heartbeat faded slowly back to normal and I settled back, closing my eyes.

"Be safe, then," she says to me, leaning in to kiss my cheek with a chaste innocence that burns like an accusation. It's the day I'm leaving for London and then on to the Continent and she's standing outside the car. I want to get out and wrap her up in arms and legs and pack her away and bring her with me, but she's keeping a distance that subtly but clearly tells me to stay in the car. She's a wonder like that with communication, knowing every way to say everything. I envy that.

The bus window was open and I could hear a muezzin calling adhan nearby as we burrowed into the city, walls pressing closer and climbing higher on all sides. The familiar feeling of being far away had, for a long time, been like a hum in ears that accompanied me unceasingly, and that place was no different. A baby girl with a dirty face but bright eyes, naked except for a diaper, stood in the bus aisle holding onto the seat in front of me to keep from stumbling. Her stare was intense and unwavering, right through my bloodshot eyes and into my soul. I smiled at her, but she was unmoved like stone. I wanted to pick her up and hug her, maybe sing her a song. I wanted to sing her a song to make her understand a cloud, but I didn't know how to say everything like that. Not many do.

Hello, friends. I trust you're well.

Later. Love.

Boy

A sufficiently old boy who is still sufficiently young, maybe nine or eleven, and has woken up just after sunup when the light is still coming in sideways so all the shadows are different and everything is a little golden, has no objection to yesterday's underwear or to the jeans and T-shirt rumpled on the floor at the foot of the bed. If you throw the pajamas on the bed it’s going to work out perfectly tonight when you need them again. Socks already properly utilized, however, are stiff and feel wrong. Even a boy will don clean socks if there are any, new, clean socks under old, dirty sneakers and then off to the day. There are seasons of gaming days, sitting for hours in front of the television honing reflexes and problem solving skills with deft fingers and thumbs that wield pretend massacre in passionless pursuit of some invented objective. Then there are seasons, like now, of outside play, late summer and spring with no jacket, otherwise with this year’s jacket, or maybe last year’s if it still fits. There are toys in the dirt, balls in the fields, thickets, ponds and creeks to explore, or, with good fortune, real woods, rivers and lakes. There are seasons with friends, maybe even a gang, other boys or, if a boy’s lucky, some girls. Then there are solitary seasons, just one other person or not even, just a boy and his survival gear alone in the fauna and flora. These are years for honing mechanical aptitudes, learning to control the large muscles and the fine, learning how humans interact in conflict and cooperation. Subtleties might still befuddle a boy of ten, flushing in anger or embarrassment, confused at the brush of another’s hand that tingles like most things haven’t before, the seeds of things that will grow to awful, wonderful fruition in more complicated times to come. Sometimes that howling longing, that disconnected wind of restless despair or desire might stir briefly in the heart of a boy this young, and he’ll feel the echo of it in the vast cavern inside his chest even though he won’t understand it. He’ll stop digging and look over the tops of the trees and wonder how far a person can go from home, what they’ll find if they do, whether they’ll ever come back. It’s fleeting, though, shaken off and washed away in the torrent of young questions and ideas, the maelstrom of learning and growing. Youth burns away fast, but not when you’re in it and every hour feels like a day, every day like a week. How can we wait until tomorrow? It’s so far away. Let’s do it now. Everything. Let’s do it before we have to shed these stiffening socks in the sleepy, darkling decline of today strewn across the carpet and up into the warm, soft, unmade bed.

Hello, friends. I hope you're well.

Later. Love.

When Inspiration Comes

I am waiting, ostensibly, for the paint on the canvas to dry. Never mind that it dried long ago. In the meantime I am sitting, inviting inspiration to move me. The paint on the palette is not usable now that it has hardened like rubber and cracked, caked with a mat of dust that makes the colors indistinguishable, falling to the floor in little broken crumbles. The brush gripped between my weary fingers is stiff with desiccated cerulean blue, cobwebs hanging from it to the jar of mineral spirits skimmed over with dust and a single dead fly. I am staring at a place on the wall where I am certain something will happen soon despite all evidence to the contrary. I dare not move lest I discover that I have died, succumbed to years with no water, no food, a lack of basic human care. I might crumble with soft noise in a billow of dust at the feet of this filthy, neglected easel, toppling the canvas with its single, faded blue stroke - the beginnings of the sky, perhaps, or maybe the sea. Sometimes you have to wait for art to come to you and exhale life warmly into your moldering remains. You have to have faith that the universe has not forgotten you forever. After a long, dry season inspiration will return, falling like rain on yellowed fields, tracing through your matted hair over your forehead and into your eyes, then running down your cheeks like tears, whispering to you the ancient secrets of life: Breathe in. Breathe out. Repeat for as long as you can.

Hello, friends. I hope you're well.

Later. Love.

The Sun and Me

After sunset, when the sun gets off work, sometimes we meet for a cup of coffee or maybe a cocktail, depending on how the sun is feeling that evening. The sun always wears an overcoat and some shades, to avoid being recognized. If people see the sun in the evening it makes them nervous. Occasionally someone will stop, furrow their brow and say, “Hey, aren’t you the sun?”

“I get that all the time,” the sun will reply dismissively. Eventually the person will move on. It must be tough, being such a star, not being able to show your face. Still, the sun takes it in stride and is surprisingly humble about it all. Many famous people act as though the world revolves around them, but not the sun. The sun, once the workday is done, just wants to hang out with friends, keep a low profile, chill.

“It’s winter solstice,” the sun said last evening, a little depressed. “My workdays just get longer from here.”

“Cheer up, sunshine,” I said. “Enjoy the shortest workday of the year while its here. Lament the long days when they arrive.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” the sun sighed, sipping a martini. “Just feeling a little under the weather.” The sun is always down in the evening, but always up again by morning.

“You’re just not a night person,” I said. “Things will look brighter in the morning.”

Eventually I have to go home to sleep and the sun, who never sleeps, will usually wander the streets or sit in the park and wait for dawn. Sure, it doesn’t make any sense and science will tell you it couldn’t happen. Nevertheless, there the sun sits on a bench looking out across the river snaking darkly by in the murmuring nighttime silence, trying to avoid recognition, brilliant source of all our light and warmth.

I’m not really sure what the sun sees in me, to be honest, but we’re pretty good friends. Sometimes we play Scrabble.

Hello, friends. I trust you’re well.

Later. Love.

The Reflected Grey

Several different shades of grey pass mottled overhead in stronger winds more decisive than these dancing chills below that keep my jacket zipped. It’s cold enough that my cheeks and nose are red, but not so cold to discourage walking these lake trails on a wet, late autumn day. It’s been raining and it will again soon, but for now it’s not. There’s no telling when it will start, but I’m betting I have enough time for a cathartic hike. I’m in casual street clothes and these same sneakers I wear everywhere, though there are probably better shoes for doing this stuff. Somehow I’ve never been able to engage in life that way that almost everyone else seems to, with the right shoes for various activities, the right clothes, a few different styles of jackets with understood purposes. I guess it’s not too hard to be so put together, but I’ve never been able to pull it off. The terrain here is a patchwork of grass fields and copses and thickets of short, crooked Texas pasture trees scattered over softly undulating hills that descend down to the lake shore. The beauty is subtle, not majestic. Some might even miss it. The colors in this filtered light are not so brilliant as a painter might assemble but washed over with dimness, like photos on the walls of a smoker’s house. Out here unplanned and alone I feel like this isn’t how most people do it, a familiar feeling. Maybe I should have invited someone along for conversation and laughter, for communion. Or maybe I should be somewhere else, somewhere brighter and more overtly happy. Maybe I shouldn’t duck and hide when someone I know enters the coffee shop, hoping not to be seen. Do we do instinctively the things that make us happy, or should we struggle against habits, exerting effort toward our own contentment? There are animal tracks along the trail, coyote and deer, but the animals that left them are nowhere to be seen. I can appreciate that, I suppose. Every time I hear a group of voices coming up the trail I feel an urge to dash into the trees. Turkey buzzards circle overhead. Maybe I should get involved in the community somehow. Seems like a good thing to do. The benefit it might be to others would probably be worth the time I’d have to spend in the company of the kind of people who do such things. Those people are great, and I appreciate their generosity, so why do they make me want to excuse myself and walk out the front door to find some quiet alley where I can sit against the wall and watch cats stalking birds or ants crawling up the wall? The choppy surface of the lake looks cold with small black ducks bobbing around in the reflected grey. I wonder where turtles go when ponds freeze over. Herons soar overhead, getting nowhere. There are probably other things I should be doing, but I sit down on the rustic wooden bench installed at the scenic overlook and invade the tenuous privacy of these avian drifters for a while, wondering things that do not matter, things that will not advance my objectives in life. It’s no matter. I didn’t invent any of these goals. They were given to me and I was too polite or bewildered to refuse them. Not that I resent them, exactly. They’re fine, and probably I’m better off for them. Still, it’s hard to put my back into them all day every day. I’m not convinced that they’re all really important or even appropriate. Heading back to the car I imagine a renewed calm and I credit it to this brief excursion, but I’m never sure. My knees complain a little on the hills, but some part of me suspects that the exertion is good for them, like it or not. Tough love, I’ve heard it called.

Hello, friends. I hope you're well.

Later. Love.

Wardrobe Sighs

Sometimes you stop paying attention, distracted by the deadlines and all the assholes on the freeway, rainstorms and bad meals, and, next thing you know, you’ve had the same three pair of blue jeans for twenty-something years. A couple of unimpressive slacks and some scuffed shoes, black pair and a brown, and a small mess of saggy socks hide rumpled in the bureau drawers or hang crooked in the closet with a few short sleeves and a few long, two cracked leather belts, the stitching frayed. You don’t remember where you got any of it, or the handful of faded pocket tees stained with grease you cannot recall. Tucked back behind somewhere are a couple of neglected hats, maybe a glove or two, a scarf. All the seams look tired, loose threads, buttons missing here and there, a few broken by cleaners that closed down years ago. Standing there sleepy, up too late again, you try to recall one occasion and what you wore. It had to be this stuff, every time. Some combination of these weary vestments have been with you for longer than you can remember, which isn’t saying much. Where were you yesterday? Where did you go, and why? Was it that shirt or this other? A hat? Like a shrug that tells your life story, you let the thought go and throw your jeans and undershirt over the chair, shambling off to the unmade bed, past the socks in the bathroom floor. Asleep at once, you dream into that threadbare pillow case places that never were, people mashed together in something that’s half the church you went to as a kid and half that factory with the giant vat of acid that spit when you threw stuff in it, stuff that wasn’t yours to destroy, in a place you shouldn’t have been. There’s a girl you haven’t seen in ten years and never said two words to asking you where you got the jacket. She’s wearing a white dress with little blue flowers. “Not sure,” you reply.

Hello, friends. I trust you're well, and well dressed as well. Well, well, well.

Later. Love.

When I Seem Far Away

I keep a part of myself far away. To get there, you have to break the constant drag of gravity and rise up into the air. Float through the shifting winds and mist of the lower sky and swim the clinging wetness of the grey winter clouds. Lift through the cold, thin upper atmosphere and escape to the dark void of outer space, the nothing that holds the universe together. Tumble long years past asteroids, sister planets, former planets, out past the solar system to the undifferentiated vastness of the Milky Way. Leaving that turning spiral behind, spin weightless for longer than you can fathom past the sparse but infinite scattering of indescribable wonders. Keep going until you come to an undiscovered brightness, a small barred lenticular galaxy with no human name. Deep inside, near the bulge of old stars that hides the voracious event horizon of an ancient black hole, there is a large, white star only a few million years from the end of its main sequence. Around that star, in a long, slow orbit, I keep a part of myself floating in the quiet stellar wind, far from the influence of visceral life and vital concerns. Sometimes, when things are complicated or troubled here in animal world, I spend as much time as I can out there. It’s impossibly peaceful, dangerously so. An animal like me can only abide a fleeting exposure lest I forget how to participate in this organic agitation of chemicals we call life. I have to remember to come back, to attend to all these moving parts. Still, you might catch me from time to time looking as though I’m not listening. I might seem to be far away. That’s because I am. I’m farther away than you can imagine. I apologize that I cannot bring you with me, but don’t worry. I won’t be gone long.

Hello, friends. I hope you're well.

Later. Love.

The Comforter Has Come

Until that day it had never occurred to her that optimism could be cruel, minimizing the suffering of the sufferer, almost like an accusation. Trying in vain to stand strong there in the flood of third person pain, she learned for the first time that sometimes smiling just means you're aloof, cold and blind. Suddenly she was ill-equipped, insufficient for the role she had come to play, the comforter she had been for as long as she could remember. Her face, that panoply of compassionate confidence, became a betrayal of dismay. Her generous abundance became an imploring need, begging sustenance from these pitiful souls with none to give. Weeks later, when she spit out her apology like soured milk at the feet of the survivors, it turned to obvious selfishness before her eyes, a tasteless plying for something from them with nothing left. Her haunting failure was her ordeal and they could not complete it for her. Much later, when guilt turned to unconscious wisdom, she never entered a room again without some fear and respect for the gravity of what might lie within, the other people she had never really noticed before when comforting others was primarily something she did to herself.

Hello, friends. I hope you're well.

Later. Love.

Perspectives on a Rocky Place

Across maybe a mile of hard-packed dirt textured with scattered bursts of scrubby desert brush is a small hill of smooth sandstone, like a boulder dropped and embedded in the arid terrain. Just beyond that, about twice as tall, is a jagged scramble of broken stone thrust by hidden underground cataclysms up through the surface like a blade. I can't see what lies just behind that for half a mile, maybe more, but real mountains stand, one after the other, before the horizon. Mountains in the distance are tricky, so it's difficult to judge how far away they are. The last of the horizontal morning light illuminates the peaks so that, unlike all the oranges, and pinks of the terracotta landscape, they shine a brilliant yellowish gold. There is snow on the heights, possibly the only water for miles. I know what is behind me, nothing good. The way is daunting, but it lies over those mountains, through the arduous cold and elevation. Life is a long shot, but I feel somehow anxious to meet fate, whether close at hand or years away.

For longer than I can describe I've stood here with my sisters watching the slow undulation of this terrain, my life's vista all around. Deep down my roots feel the unrest of the planet's crust vibrating and jostling, never content to just relax and be. Up at my peaks the wind and snow are cold, though the morning sunlight breaking over the horizon brings another day's fleeting warmth. Off in the distance, beyond the rough ridge of crumbing sandstone, a man is staring at me, a man I've never seen before. I think he's coming this way. I wish I could speak his fast, chattering language and welcome him. I wish I could ease his treacherous path, warn him, guide him. I hope his passage is better than so many before. Let fate meet him somewhere else, many years from now, far from my ancient eyes.

I can see the mountain and the man as I descend through the light of the morning sun. She looks familiar, this mountain. I've gotten here a bit early, so I float there above for a while and watch his oblivious progress. There is no hurry. The man still has quite a trek ahead of him before he reaches that rocky place – I can see it now – fifty feet below the snowy ledge. I wonder if this is what they call sad. I can never really tell. I think it might depend upon where these women and men come from before I meet them, but it is not given to me to know that. I only know where to meet them and when, late this evening at that rocky place.

Hello, friends. I hope you're well.

Later. Love.

Words from Too Far Away

For me, there's something satisfying about the scratch of pen or pencil over paper that just isn't there in typing. I want to write this with loops and lines of sweeping black ink on rough pages and mail it to all of you. It's impractical, though. I don't have the time. It would be hard to justify the use of resources. So much is lost in this compromise we have with reality. We call this compromise life. The tragedy of no ink and no paper and no wonderful feel of writing is small, the sort with which we deal daily. I'm posting this to you and you'll be able to read it, perfectly legible, but I want to paint the words directly onto your eyes with soft watercolor brushes. Don't be nervous. Just be still. It tickles a little, that's all. You can read it for a split second and then your tears wash it away. Here goes. I have to get pretty close. I hope that's okay. Try not to blink.

Hello, friends. I hope you're well.

Later. Love.

In Among Giants

I'm weaving my tiny economy car among and around these rolling edifices here in the land of big trucks. Tractor trailers grunt cargo around from place to place, the raw materials from which hard, cold reality is bolted together, boulders and trusses and giant felled trees. Stalwart, starched right-wing males roar around in metal monsters that look like some fearsome cross between a pickup and a craggy mountain, talking business on Bluetooth headsets as they sip hot, black coffee like tar and scroll with their thumbs on their smartphones through stock tickers. Buxom women with painted skin and painted hair shoulder phones to their ears and sip fat-free white mocha as they charge obliviously forward behind the wheels of leather-upholstered rumble tanks. And here I am among them – both hands on the wheel – maneuvering my little economy car under and over and between the hulks, just trying to make it out alive. It's fun, if you put the terror out of your mind. I turn up my subversive music and secure my seatbelt. I don't know where I'm going, but you cannot stop me from getting there.

Hello, friends. I trust you're well.

Later. Love.

On Having Reached the Edge

When you come to the edge you do not have to jump. You don't. You could sit down and dangle your feet over the edge. Just be careful; it's a long way down. Sometimes strong winds blow out of the abyss and you want to lean into them. Don't. They are fitful, stopping suddenly, and you might lose balance and tumble headlong beyond all hope. Just sit there and lean back on the balls of your hands, kicking your feet like a child out over all that oblivion. Consider the virtue of firmament for a while. Feel the cool breeze. Watch the condors that soar at play on the fickle updrafts of dismay. You've reached the edge. You did it. After a while, if you get hungry, you can turn and go back from whence you came. There's a great sandwich shop that has the best coffee. You know the one I mean. The edge will always be here. Let's grab a sandwich and talk.

Hello, friends. I trust you're well.

Later. Love.

Road in the Woods Pixelated Slightly

The shadows of the trees stripe the sandy, tan dirt road as is curves away to the right up ahead, disappearing into the woods. There is a scattering of dazzling autumn color in the foliage but still so much green that it's hard to imagine where all these orange, red and gold leaves that form thick shoulders almost four feet wide on either side of the road once clung. Dappled sunlight is brilliant among the leaves and mottled up and down the linear geometry of the tall, pale trunks standing at slight angles almost crowded as far back into the dense wood as you can see. Branches from the trees closest to the road curve high to form a canopy over it. It is a cool day, not cold, but not warm. It is jacket clime, nice weather for moving in no particular hurry down a lovely, soft, dirt road through a beautiful wood. In another life – a better life it could be argued – this would be your setting. In this life, it's just the background photo on your PC desktop, one you found on Google and stole, though without ill intent.

Hello, friends. I trust you're well.

Later. Love.

Questions and an Answer

Have you noticed that all the birds fly away when you approach? It's a crowded sidewalk café and you're meeting your friends. There are birds on the utility wires, birds on the low roof's edge, birds pecking precariously among the feet around the tables. As you round the corner they all stop what they're doing, spring into that whip-snap readiness of muscle, prepared to light out. When you are close, within a few yards, they all leave in a startling flurry of wings. Are they afraid? Have you noticed this? Does it concern you? How do you explain it?

One thing is certain: It's a hot, pressed ham and cheese sandwich with fresh tomato. In tetã Paraguái we called it a "mixto caliente." "Sándwich de jamón y queso con tomate fresco a la plancha." If you eat it with a cup of hot tomato basil soup and a cup of black coffee, it will make you a better person for several hours. I cannot prove this, of course, but neither can you disprove it. Leave out the ham if you're haunted by piggy faces. It will still be wonderful. The secret is in the deliciousness and also the inherent virtue. Sometimes the answers to life's persistent questions are simpler than we imagine.

Lights flicker when you get close to them, especially when you're alone. Cats watch you pass, their hackles raising slightly. Second hands slow down on analog watches. Do you even realize these things? What do you suppose they mean?

Hello, friends. I trust you're well.

Later. Love.

Why I Eat Here Now

Great white herons, a pair of them, cast shadows shifting across the uneven landscape as they glide in grace over the autumn marsh, soft shadows muted by a thin grey overcast low in the morning sky. Gently they light on the dewy grass at water's edge, folding wide white wings in beside them as they settle on lowering legs. The herons' arrival, however lovely, sends a couple of young turtles scuttling away with an almost inaudible slosh through the water's calm surface and down into the relative safety of murky marsh bottom, little widening circles telling the tale of their escape. The water is dense with particulates and unknowable tiny floating life so strange as to defy personification. The cloud-softened sunlight does not filter down far through the cool mire and one turtle, the smaller of the two, cannot see the thing until she is upon it, a strange, unmoving thing on the squishy bottom, like no fish she has seen. Unbeknownst to her, the thing is Winston Stanton, owner of a small sandwich shop in the nearby city. The turtle bobs in the murk and looks curiously at his black hair wavering in the water and at his expensive sunglasses. He is an unusual thing in the marsh, with his silk floral shirt and black slacks. She stares for a while, but he doesn't move, so she loses interest and swims lazily for the surface, breaking her forehead through to become a small, dark bump in the water as the sun pours through a break in the grey. The sandwich shop doesn't open that day, and people begin to wonder if something is up.

Hello, friends. I hope you're well.

Later. Love.

They Know But They Won't Tell Us

The old people know. They know and they won't tell us. They just sit there reading the paper, exerting more effort than seems proportionate to lift a cup of lukewarm coffee to their elderly lips with shaking hands. They move slowly through doors, opening them only as wide as necessary in that economy age teaches you. "You know, you old bastard," I think toward one old man as he waits impatiently for her to come from the bathroom, his mouth hanging slightly open in mild disdain at how late it's gotten in general, all those calendars he's had to throw away. They only talk about it when we're not around. They never tell us. Eventually we just figure it out, I suspect. They take it to their graves, the dead ones. Why won't they tell us the truth? Do they think we cannot handle it? Is it because fuck us, that's why? Here's one now, peering into her purse as though everything in there is strange to her, bewildered and bothered by all these things that aren't what she's looking for. She glances over at me and I smile. She smiles back briefly, and then looks back into her purse. She never says a word, never lets on, but I can see that she knows. I'm no fool. They all know and they're not ever going to tell us. "What's eating you?" the young man sweeping the floor asks me. I guess it was the look on my face. "Nothing," I say. He wouldn't understand. You can't tell anything to these kids.

Hello, friends. I hope you're well.

Later. Love.

Year of the Car

When I look back over this past year all I remember is sitting in my car, driving down the highway, parked in whatever shade I can find in some parking lot and eating something less than ideal alone with the radio on, off, on again, MP3, off again. I remember watching birds pecking for insects in the stiff afternoon summer grass at the foot of a young, scraggly live oak tree just this side of the barbed wire fence decorated here and there with old, dry litter shaped by the prevailing winds. I never dreamed a life like this as far as I can remember. I never imagined this mustard splotch on a shirt I've loved for years, a shirt that's seen better days. Haven't we all? "Do you think you're depressed, or possibly mad?" a wounded bird asks, turning to me with a doomed moth fluttering in its beak. I pretend not to hear and take a sip of iced tea from a paper cup, condensation falling darkly just below the mustard. I wish it would rain, rain so hard that you cannot see the tree or the fence, the litter or the birds. I love the sound of rain on the car roof. I love the look of a world warped by water washing down the windshield. "Turn on your wipers," she always tells me. "Why?" "So you can see the road." "I've seen it." In truth, of course, there is no rain. In truth my food is gone and I'm chewing on ice, turning on the radio to NPR, AM, FM, CD, FM again, off. After a few minutes or hours I push the button and the hybrid murmurs to life like a high-tech sigh. I'm off again. I've been off for a while now. Just a little off.

Hello, friends. I hope you're well.

Later. Love.

Divided We Fall

Somewhere between drought and flood we've likely crossed paths unaware on the road from calamity to calamity. Rarely do we commune these days as we once did when our disasters were more aligned, when we fought your fire with mine, hand in hand as the waters pulled us under. Today our aftermaths rarely factor together. Tempests plucked us apart long ago and dropped us in the settings of different tragedies. Maybe one day our luck will run out and we'll succumb united in our separate fates. I'll meet you at death's frontier. We'll jump together into the flames, hand in hand like in better bad times.

Hello, friends. I hope you're well.

Later. Love.

Garden

Life is a garden in which experiences grow, some wild and some by design. An untended garden, overgrown and untamed, can be interesting for a while, a pleasure the artistic eye, a novelty, an aesthetic delight. More often than not, however, it becomes unhealthy and ugly, with good things choked by strange weeds, out of control. Intentions plant seeds. Actions tend the fragile shoots. Most of us cannot afford to hire out the gardening, we must care for our own plot of life. As for me, I've planted too many things. The weed vines snake around my ankles as I rip at them as fast as I can, though, to be honest, my mind often wanders. Mostly I'm dreaming of some new seeds to sow as the vines reach my knees, others coming from every direction to snare my hands or reach for my neck. They're actually pretty, in their own way, these tendrils trying to pull me into the underbrush. What was I doing, anyway? Do you remember? Was I planting new flowers? Maybe some tomatoes or watermelon? The shade is a relief from the heat as the sun disappears from the view of my unfocused eyes, hidden by this leafy canopy. The dirt is moist and cool as I sink in, pulled by the strong embrace of roots. I wonder where we're going?

Hello, friends. I hope you're well.

Later. Love.

Remembering Hard Afternoon Rain

Days like this I like to remember big daytime rain, water pouring from the sky more in streams than drops, a seemingly endless deluge on a warm, still afternoon. I love the stark danger of violent storms that rage all around but pass leaving you unharmed, the thrilling threat of wind, lightning and thunder. What I'm talking about now, though, is calm rain that falls straight down, heavy and unrelenting. I can remember walking in sneakers and jeans – soaked through – gym socks sloshing, shirt clinging to my young man chest and back, wet, dark hair stuck in hanging strands on my face and cheeks, and the rain doesn't stop. We are mostly water, this whole planet, even these bodies. Water everywhere all the time, the theme of our wet world. We cannot long bear to be without it. From space it's probably hard to believe that people die of thirst on this boggy sphere, that parched skeletons are etched by blowing sand in deserts that stretch from horizon to horizon. Today I remember rain so dense you could almost swim up to see from whence it fell. Do you remember that kind of rain, filling your footprints in the mud as soon as you take a step? If you close your eyes, can you still feel it falling?

Hello, friends. I hope you're well.

Later. Love.