My Good Reason

She didn't even cry.

It was hot. The sky was cloudless and there was no wind at all. I kicked at the grass, digging a trench with my foot and leaving an 'M' for their left fielder to see, when the inning ended. If it ever ended.
I took off my glove to let the sweat on my hand air-dry and Black Lung Larry yelled at me to put it back on. The effort it took him to shout across the field provoked a coughing fit that made everyone in the bleacher shift uncomfortably on their seat. It was hard to listen to his gurgling breathing and see the expectorated phlegm that always followed one of his shouted encouragements.
I looked over at his son, Geoff, but he didn't seem to notice or care that his dad was hacking up a small piece of lung by the dugout. Maybe he didn't. He didn't care about much, except baseball.
A sharp crack caught my attention and I looked up just as she took the ball in the nose. She'd put her glove down as it skipped toward her but it caromed off a divot three feet in front of her and jumped her glove.
I started running before the ball hit the ground.

Her name was Joelle and her family lived in the trailer park on the highway. I had been in love with her since the first day I saw her. For reasons that seemed perfectly logical then, the teacher liked to seat the class in alphabetical order. That meant that for two years we sat beside each other. When the news that Mrs. Myers would move to the sixth grade along with the rest of us was read aloud to the class, I looked up and said thank you to the ceiling tiles. That gave me another year to work up the courage to speak to her.
As I remember it now, I didn't learn a thing in those two years. I was occupied by the complicated mathematics involved in maneuvering myself into the space next to her when we sat on the floor for the interactive reading sessions that took place every afternoon. I could have spoken to her, I suppose, but it never occurred to me. Really.

Middle school brought it all to an end. Things were very different there. The teachers spoke to us like adults. No longer the gentle foster parents to our blooming intellects, they sometimes didn't remember my name. No one ever forgot Joelle's name. The first song I ever wrote was called Joelle. As was the first story. And my bike.
Without the assistance of the alphabetically challenged Mrs. Myers, Joelle drifted out of my daily routine. The unfortunate growth spurt that followed squeezed my eyeballs into an oblong shape and I couldn't see the board from the back of the classroom anymore. The letter that my mother wrote, asking that I be allowed to sit at the front of the class, ended my lack-lustre performance in the rotating chair game that Joelle's random seating choices had created. Every day she sat in different seat and every day five or six boys rumbled for the one closest to her.
I make fun of her, sometimes, because she was so completely oblivious to what was going on around her. She thinks I'm exaggerating. I'm not, though.

It took me more than fifteen years to ask her out on a date, during which she confessed that she always thought I didn't like her. I never spoke to her and even after she'd made it clear to her girlfriends that she would sit beside me during the interactive reading sessions, a request which they all found odd, I didn't pay her any attention. She remembers her knee touching mine. That memory is seared into my brain as well but the flush of panic and excitement it caused me, she mistook for discomfort and dislike. I laughed so hard when she told me that, that I had to leave the table.

I was crossing the baseline just as the dust settled and the blood began to flow. She had her hands cupped underneath her nose trying, vainly, to stop the flow. Black Lung Larry surprised me by beating me to her; he didn't do anything fast. He was crouched beside her and looked up when I skidded into third. He told me to get back into the field. I looked around and saw that no one else had moved from their positions on the field. I slouched back to the field as Black Lung Larry helped her to the bench and I tried to ignore the laughter coming from the stands. Black Lung Larry's kid, Geoff, called me a doofus and the game was on.

For years, I believed that everyone knew I had a crush on her, except her. She tells me that the only person she remembers being there, was me.

She taught me that anyone can re-write a memory. You just need a good reason.

In the Eyes of the People

He read the words again, not sure if he was translating correctly. When he was satisfied that he knew their meaning, he stood and with a gesture to Martinez, he strode into the main hall. It was the only room that could make him feel small.
The vaulted ceiling disappeared into the darkness above, but it didn't ease the apprehension he felt walking under the eyes painted there. He was careful to keep his face impassive, careful not to betray any sign of emotion; it was a practiced calm and fooled no one.
He stopped in the exact centre of the room, where the tiles had been worn to a dull sheen and that no amount of polishing could restore. His father had stood here, nearly thirty years before and held his head high as the bullets, smuggled from the camps hidden deep in the forest, ripped into his chest, his face and had pierced his right hand, leaving a perfectly round hole that was a clear and certain sign that he had the right to rule. That alone had put down the rebellion, spread the story and deified the man.
He waited and when he saw Martinez nod in his direction he spoke. He talked about the signs he had seen, the dreams that had held him captive for three days, the milky eyes that transmitted the gods wishes through telepathic means and then he fell silent.
There was no movement in the hall. Every breath was held tight between the lips of his people, his accusers. Minutes passed and then in the darkness above there was a flash of light and one of the eyes opened, then another, until all seventeen flooded the hall with the light of their purity, their remorse and their anger.
For long minutes, the room was held in stasis, outside the effects of time. Martinez' gaze never left his face and his finger never left the trigger of the pistol that was levelled at his President's head. After two or three minutes had passed he began to relax; the longer they waited almost always meant a resolution that would spare the man.
In those moments he seemed almost human, Martinez thought. Sweat creased his forehead and stained his shirt and he wavered, very slightly, as the effects of the sedatives struggled against his muscles, clenched tightly and protesting a lack of oxygen. Then, very slowly, the hue of the light changed and a soft amber glow began to infuse the room. It was the signal Martinez had been waiting for and he thanked the Gods for guiding his hands and raised the pistol into the air.

Thinking. It Could Save Your Soul.

My long lost sense of humour turned up last night, wearing nothing but Mu-Mu and quoting Sufi poetry. As it settled in, after filling the laundry basket, I began to reflect on the last couple of months and now I see things in an entirely new light.

According to Bahá'u'lláh, our terrestrial life is a proving ground, of sorts, for our faith. Personal development is paramount in determining how close we get to sit to God when the recess bell rings.
I like that.

In the womb we slowly develop the tools (and limbs) we need to manipulate the outside world and by deduction, the tools we develop in this life will be a benefit when we shake loose the stink of this realm.
It was pointed out to me, recently, that our intellect, of which we are so fond, has no conceivable purpose to us now, as far as survival goes. For example: The Basarwa, or Bushmen, a people who have lived in approximately the same area for more than 22,000 years, have never felt the need for microwave ovens, Tomahawk missiles or vegetable steamers. These things simply aren't necessary for their survival. The only thing threatening them is the developed world, who see them as backward and standoffish. The Bushmen, however, just want to be left alone.
The argument I allude to indicates a purpose connected not to this world, but to the next. Think about it. Thumbs in the womb serve no purpose, but they still develop, well ahead of their necessity. It stands to (some) reason that our overly clever brains might have something to do with the next scene in our ever developing drama.
I don't mean to say that we'll need microwaves in the afterlife, although it might be nice if we have to heat something up in between genuflecting on the Almighty's smarts and thumbing our noses at those poor souls on the wagon train to Hell.
The argument goes that if we develop our intellect rationally and with a forward view, it might serve some purpose down the road. In that sense, the enormous amount of brain power we use to make life easier here could be better spent developing our capacity for self-realization.

But before you all toss out the baby with the bath water, think about what this says about the afterlife. It looks to me, if I was to accept what Bahá'u'lláh has said, that he might be guilty of a little wishful thinking.
While he would freely admit to having no idea what the Supreme Being has in mind for us, he's come up with his own vision of the afterlife and has been warning us to get ready for it. What if he's wrong?
What if God, while basically a nice guy, gets a kick out of watching things blow up? We were made in his image, after all. Maybe our intellect is an anomaly; an offshoot or mutation that survived because we also developed the ability to stand upright. Maybe our intellect just tagged along on the coat tails of some other genetic mutation and its appearance was accidental and serves no purpose.

It's interesting to think about the reasons for the development of the intellect and, although some of us seem to be putting it to good use, most of us won't. I, personally believe that we've just hit our terrible twos in our psychic development and that we've got a long way to go before we come close to gaining admittance into the ever-loving arms of the Creator.

In fact the question is moot, for me, because I don't believe there is a Creator. I told you my sense of humour just got back from a whirlwind tour, didn't I? It's barely finished unpacking and here I am putting it to work.

I Missed a Spot

"Do you have an extra cigarette?"
I looked up from my paint brush and saw one of the welfare shut-ins, dressed in track pants and a t-shirt, with a hopeful look in his eyes. I get asked everyday. The contract to paint the building was paying the bills but I was spending the rest of it, right here, handing out cigarettes to every second person who walked by.
I stood up and stretched out my back. Hunched over for most of the morning, I wasn't in a good frame of mind and getting tired of the constant interruption.
"Nope. I ran out this morning." I was telling the truth but they never believe me when I tell them I'm out. If I had one and didn't want to give it up I'd simply say, "No."
"Hey, you missed a spot." he chuckled.

A few minutes later I heard the woman in apartment fourteen launch in to one of her tirades against her children. Apparently, she believed that the reason she was stuck in the endless loop of poverty, living amid society's broken and battered refugees, was the fault of her children. The kids immediately began to wail, their voices echoing down the halls of the dilapidated building.
I reached down and turned up the volume on my iPod to drown out the noise.

Yesterday, I was entertained by a freely offered guide to which building in the projects had the best quality drugs.
"You know that red building, at the end of the street?" said my guide.
I said that I did.
"Don't ever buy pot in there. It's all skunk, man."
"I'll keep that in mind." I say, turning back to my work; seventy-five feet of chair rail on one of eight floors.
He nodded seriously, as if he had just saved my life and it was all in a day's work.
He closed the door behind him and, right on cue, the volume of his stereo went up until I wondered how he could hear anything at all, anymore.

Day after day, I find myself face to face with teen aged mothers, drunk and disorderly malcontents, drug dealers whose doors swing wide a couple of times every hour and elderly grandmothers who have been lost, discarded and forgotten in a world where few work and anyone who does is a chump.
There are other stories, too. There are the unfortunate accidents, that have resulted in near destitution; some of the residents need help and will never get it. It's also true that some of the people who live here are hiding out. They're hiding from their sorrows and from their inability to cope in this world. They hide from creditors, their families and from the light of day.

Most of my days are like that. Some of them are better.

I could hear someone tapping on the front door of the building, as I changed floors, and saw cigarette guy grinning at me. He'd found someone who would give him some smokes.
"Thanks, man. It's freezing out there." he said when I let him in. Why he had gone out without his keys was a mystery. He wasn't even wearing a coat.
"You found a smoke." I congratulated him.
"Yeah, I got two."
"Good for you, man." I said as I turned back to my paint pail.
"Here." He said. "One of these is for you."
He handed me one of them, precious to him, I supposed.
"We got to take care of each other, man." he said with a smile.
"Thanks." I said, surprised, and he was gone down the hall.
I went back to work, thinking about why someone with next to nothing would go out of his way to be nice to me. I know people with lots of money who wouldn't do that. It was refreshing in a place where the Darwinian rules of nature are so fearsomely observed. I have to admit that this place scares the hell out of me, for reasons that have nothing to do with the violence that is so common, here.
"Hey." he was back.
"Hey." I answered.
"You need some matches. I found a pack. You can keep them." He tossed them at me and disappeared again.

On the other hand, people are people, and like anywhere else, you'll find something good if you look hard enough.

Simple Sleep

The sidewalk was a muttering mess of drunken girls and hopeful boys. Their loud cursing and jostling was a wake up, to me, after an evening of relative calm. I walked the line of empty cabs until I reached the one in front and I pulled open the door and got in. As I swung the door shut, a hand held it and a face appeared in the opening.
It was distorted by hours of carelessly downing shooters and flushed with a near collapse of self-control. She tried to focus her eyes on my face and, somewhere, in the rickety assemblage of recognition and preservation she realized that I wasn't who she expected to see.
I said nothing. The seconds passed as her weakened synapses struggled to connect, and finally, she said,"This is my cab."

We joked about it, the cabbie and I. He told me that it had been a bad night for fighting and arguments. As he dropped me off in front of my house, I tried to recollect what she had said, right before her legs gave out.

I had said, "This is my cab." mimicking her tone and demeanor. She weaved to the left as she tried to process the words I had spoken and somewhere in her fogged brain she understood that I was mocking her.
"Don't ap a tor this is condition to go." she said.
I have to admit that I laughed at her, out loud. Not at her slurred words and the broken text of her understanding, but because of the indignant look she gave me, assigning every last harsh word anyone had ever spoken to her a subtext that hurt her feelings, as unjustified as the first time words had cut her down.
Don't misunderstand me. I'm not cruel and careless with strangers. I understand that sometimes our real reasons for getting blind drunk disguise themselves as a desire to have fun and celebrate rather than to crack open long held grudges and release a bit of steam. She'll survive but she won't feel very good about it, later.

I put the key into the lock and I felt a wave of sorrow pass by me, seeking a home, somewhere to rest. I shrugged it off and closed the door on it. I'll get my turn, just not tonight. Right now, the balm I seek is simple sleep.

May My Feet Find Purchase in This Rocky Soil

Nelson pulled into the Fifth Wheel and parked his car across the lot from the idling transport trucks. He felt like a trespasser, an outsider, and the sullen looks of disapproval he received from the occupants, a waitress and her only customer, reinforced that feeling.
His exaggerated politeness failed to impress the waitress when she came to take his order and, desperate, he decided to tell her a joke.
"What has four legs and a moustache?" he said, hopefully.
The girl sighed as she picked up the menu.
"Nothing on this menu. What can I get you?"
Nelson ordered a smoked meat sandwich and vowed to keep his mouth shut until he was done his sandwich.
The girl placed his order with the unseen cook and went back to her conversation at the counter. She smiled as she sat down across the counter from the big man, who was wearing a hunting jacket and a thick down vest that reflected the dim light, causing him to glow slightly.
Nelson squinted his eyes and moved his head back and forth, creating streaks of colour and blurry washes of light that smeared the interior of the diner with a much more hopeful ambiance, he thought. He opened his eyes all the way and found the trucker and the girl staring at him with no sign of indulgence in their eyes. He quickly looked down at the table.
The shellacked surface was transparent and Nelson saw that trapped there,forever, inside the table top, were leaves, all brightly coloured, advertising a variety of local trees. He let out his breath in a slow whistle as his eyes darted from one leaf to the next, ignoring the names printed under each.
"Those leaves are the reason so many people come up here, in the fall. We get a spectacular show, all around us, every year."
Nelson looked up and saw a woman holding his food, not a girl, like the distracted waif at the counter, but a vibrant and full-bodied woman in the prime of her sexual awakening. He smiled and let loose the predator inside.
"I suspect they come here just for a sight of the most beautiful woman in town." he purred.
"Well, aren't you observant. Here's your sandwich, sweetie. If you need anything else, you just call out my name. I'm Isabel." said Isabel as she set down the plate in front of Nelson.
Nelson took a deep breath and let it out slowly as he openly took in every inch of her full figure.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Isabel. My name is Nelson. Can I ask you if you know a place where someone like me might find a drink and some pleasant company?"
Isabel frowned down at Nelson, not at all disturbed by his perusal, and said, "What you need is someone who can show you the sights."
"I was just thinking the same thing, Isabel."

It has been said that a man, in his last hours, gains a clarity of mind that allows him to reflect openly and honestly about his life. Sometimes, the raw and emotionless reflection affirms a lifetime of intention in a positive way and sometimes a man gets a chance to contemplate the decisions he's made and is allowed a final breath to atone for the way he's lived. Nelson didn't get a chance to do either, as it happened. He did, however, learn one final lesson about obsession. He also learned that time and space don't mean a thing to the hounds of retribution and that vengeance travels faster than the speed of a 1978 Pacer.

Nelson whispered the words to a song that had floated free from the distressed tissues of his brain but couldn't remember what it meant nor did he notice that it was disassociated from any purpose. His head lolled forward and through his swollen eyes he glimpsed shuttered exposures of a woman methodically poring over the pages of a book on medical procedures.
He no longer felt the biting pinch of the ropes that held his ankles and his wrists, though he had rubbed them raw, trying to escape in the first hours of his confinement. His pleas were exhausted and his cries didn't have the strength to pass his split and bloodied lips. He could no longer count on his tired muscles and his arms jerked reflexively away from his body, although she hadn't touched the crackling end of the cattle prod to him in some time.
He gurgled the words, roughly cadenced, against some internal metronome that had escaped damage in the preceding hours, cordoned off in a remote corner of his brain and where the pain had yet to find purchase. Although he couldn't discern the meaning of the verses he mouthed, somewhere, down the seldom used paths in his brain, images associated themselves with the words and he found himself, crouched in the dirt, in the back yard of the house where he grew up.
From behind him, he heard a voice calling his name and when he looked up he saw his mother, pinning the laundry to the line and then shunting it out over the yard and his head. He leaned back and looked up at the sky, blue patched clouds and layered streams of gauze describing a beach front complete with white capped waves coming in, and in his imagination, a dog whose name he couldn't remember.
"Nelson," called his mother, "I think it's time you came in, now. I think it's going to rain."
And then he felt a jolting shock that rocketed up his spine and propelled him into that sky completely untethered by the weight of his body. As he rose into the heavens he looked down and saw his mother, her head back and her hand held up to block the light of the fading sun, and she held up the other hand in a wave and said, "I'm sorry, Nelson. I should have taken better care of you."
Nelson didn't understand what she meant by that, but by then he had stopped trying to condition his vision with meaning and he released the breath that he had been holding and felt lighter than the air.
Then, coming from a long way off, he heard the heavens expand and contract and he recognized the oscillation of words as they were forming.
"You still don't recognize me, do you?"
Nelson tried to turn his head toward the voice and felt another wave of pain explode over his head and run on tendrils throughout his extremities. He was in a small room, quite bright, and peering into a woman's face, her eyes cold and without compassion.
"Isabel." he spit out the name that came to him.
"No. Not Isabel. My name is Loreen, Nelson. It took me a very long time to understand why you treated me so badly. Eventually, I just gave up on you. Imagine my surprise when you walked into the dinner. You walked right into my arms after all these years. And finally, I can make you pay for what you did."
Nelson's head reflexively snapped back and in the early light of dawn Loreen saw that he was gone. There wasn't any sign that he had heard her admission and there was no longer any sign that he could feel the pain she was inflicting on him. With a final sigh, his body slumped in the chair and would have fallen to the floor had it not been bound. Her eyes hardened as she realized that he was going to escape her and she let out a cry of frustration as his lifeless body relaxed. Nelson left her again.

"Nelson, I'm so sorry."
"That's okay, mom. I didn't really want to go to the museum, anyway. Ritchie Clark said he went there once and it was pretty boring."
"But, you've been looking forward to it all week. This is all your father's fault. If he hadn't taken the car we'd be there by now. I should have asked Mrs. Plaintree to drive us." His mother stopped and Nelson looked up at her.
"I know what we can do."
"What?" said Nelson.
"Let's go to the Palisades and get some ice cream."
"Ice cream?" Nelson tried to inflect his voice with the just the right amount of innocence and yearning.
"Yeah. That would be a nice treat, wouldn't it?" she said, her words dissipating into the air as the light faded to black.

Loose Ends

When the old woman passed away there was no one to call, no one to inform and, worst of all, no one to take care of the funeral arrangements. When Perl found an address amongst the old womans belongings for a William Berber in Smith's Falls, he had the operator check it and he had the telephone number in minutes. When Mr. Berber arrived, less than an hour later, Perl finally allowed himself a sigh of relief. In his business, loose ends spelled disaster.
William Berber was prompt in his arrival and equally prompt in pushing aside Perl to stalk from room to room, seemingly looking for something. When Perl asked Mr. Berber if he wanted to see the deceased Berber grunted. Unsure what that meant, Perl asked again and Berber said "No, I don't want to see the deceased."
Confused, Perl followed Berber around the house, worried that he might have pulled one of those figurative ends loose. When Berber's hurried search failed to turn up what he was looking for, he strode to the bottom of the stairs, tucked behind a mouldy armchair, and pulled on the door handle only to find it locked.
"Open this door." said Berber. He didn't turn when he spoke. He simply waited for Perl to comply, staring at the thinly panelled door.
"Exactly how do you know the deceased, Mr. Berber?" asked Perl. He searched the ring of keys in his hand for the one that would open the door.
"Didn't." was all Berber said.
"Well, Mr. Berber, I'm sure I can't let you into that room. I assumed you were a relative and had come to handle the funeral preparations. You understand, I can't find any living relatives of the deceased." Perl took a step back as Berber wheeled around and pushed past him.
Perl breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that the man was leaving. He followed Berber into the kitchen but drew himself up short when he realized that the man was rummaging through the drawers, and he became alarmed when Berber took up a knife and returned to the bottom of the stairs.
"What are you doing, Mr Berber? I can't allow you to do this. There are considerations to be met, Mr Berber. Who will assume responsibility for the affairs of the deceased?" Perl's voice rose in alarm as he stammered out his objections but Berber ignored him and wiggled the knife into the lock.
"I have a key, Mr. Berber." Perl shrieked, more alarmed at the break and enter taking place right in front of him than the dead body being ignored in the next room.
Mr. Berber turned and snatched the ring of keys from Perl's hand and quickly found the one that fit the ancient lock.
"Perhaps you can tell me what it is you're looking for, Mr. Berber. I have inventoried the entire house and made a list of all the valuables. I assure you that there is nothing of interest in that room, sir." Perl bounced up and down, trying to see over Berber's broad shoulders and his progress with the lock. With a snap it opened and Berber tossed the keys behind him, only missing Perl by an inch or two.
"Mr. Berber. I insist that you stop this at once. I will be forced to call the police if you don't tell me what is going on, here."
Berber forced open the sagging door and was gone up the stairs before Perl finished his complaint. From below Perl could hear Berber methodically upending boxes and pushing aside the many coatracks, hung with winter clothes that likely hadn't been outside in years.
Then, the noises stopped and shortly, Berber came down the narrow stairs with a large vase in his ape-like fists.
"Mr. Berber, I did not invite you here for a looting spree. A woman is dead and there doesn't seem to be any one who will take this responsibility off my hands. I expected you to do that." Perl looked up Berber as he brushed past, silent and grim, his hands wrapped around the thin neck of the vase.
"I can't allow you to remove anything from the house, Mr. Berber. I must insist that you give that to me." Perl attempted to run around the massive bulk of Berber before he could reach the door, but Berber simply manhandled him aside and was outside before Perl could stop him.
"Mr. Berber, I'm calling the police if you don't return with that piece right now." Perl yelled at Berber's back.
Berber stopped, at that, and turned to face Perl, who hadn't expected his plea to be heard. Berber held up the vase with both hands and said, "Belongs to my mother. Don't care about nothing else." and he walked off.
Perl ran to the telephone, fully intending to call the police and have them stop Berber before he got away, but as he picked up the receiver he looked out the window and noticed a passenger in the truck Berber was climbing into. If he hadn't been sure of the identity of the woman stretched out on the bed in the next room he would have sworn that it was her, sitting on the seat of Berber's truck.
Berber handed the woman the vase as he got in and Perl saw her clutch it to her chest. She said something to Berber, who simply nodded in answer and then he put the truck into gear and was gone.
Perl stood with the reciever in his hand, staring out the window, wondering what he should do. Finally, he roused himself and put down the receiver. He looked around the room dejectedly and then he noticed something he had passed over before.
He went to the mantle and picked up a dusty photograph that rested there. In it, he could see the deceased as she must have appeared in her teenaged years and beside her there was a girl who shared the exact same features. "Twins" he said to himself. That was the obvious explanation for the uncanny resemblence between the poor deceased and the woman in Berber's truck, thought Perl. He smiled to himself, happy that he had solved the mystery but then he remembered where he was. This was not the time or the place for levity.
He returned the photograph to the mantle, methodically straightened his shirt and jacket, adjusted his necktie and lastly, carefully returned the room to its pre-Berber state. Then he bent to pick up the ring of keys Berber had thrown at him and he locked the door at the foot of the stairs.
Everything was, once again, in its place and if he could somehow forget the rough and tumble intrusion of Mr. Berber, the stolen vase and the mystery of the woman in the truck he could be satisfied that everything was as it should be. No more loose ends, he thought. In his business, loose ends spelled disaster.

In Memory

Two years have come and now gone. When I woke this morning, I sat on the edge of my bed and I wondered how I ever made it this far. I still don't know.

Nothing will dull the ache that I feel. I don't have the words to describe it.

I do, however, have the words to describe the love I still feel. It is ever-present. With the light of each new day I remember the light of days past and with it the memories of Beth. The pictures I have can show me the smile I miss. I can remember the day it was taken, where it was taken and why. I remember what she said to me and I remember how I felt looking at her, being with her and being in love.
More vivid is the feeling of her near me. The feeling that your senses supply even when you're not looking for it. The nearness, the touch and the quiet assurance that comes from being with someone who has changed your life in profound ways. If I close my eyes I can feel her, still there, chatting about her day, laughing at my bad jokes and then, for a second and sometimes more, I can feel her slip her hand under my arm and take my hand. She's not so far away.

I got up and I made myself a cup of coffee and sat at the desk and wondered what I could say that I haven't already said. Then I realized that words aren't neccessary. That all I need to do is shut my eyes and she's there. She always was and she always will be.

The Scorcher and the One Punch Wonder

"Here he comes."
I turned to see Brian coming down the stairs. He paused, looking around, and when he saw me, he set his shoulders, as if he was bracing himself, and then he waved.
It was a curious thing, that wave. His face was rigid with anger and yet he waved at me, as if he were caught half-way between the two extremes that had defined our relationship since I married his sister.
"Brian." I nodded to him as he stepped onto the platform where I was waiting for the ball return to spit out my ball.
"Fuck you." he said just before he swung his fist and caught me on the side of the head. I didn't bother trying to get out of the way.

Twenty centuries ago the Greeks entwined the heat of summer with the brilliance of Sirius. I like the expression 'Dog Days of summer' because of the lyrical association with our canine companions. Dogs have the right idea when it comes to dealing with the heat.
I looked out over the lake for a long time with nothing more on my mind than the easy contemplation of the luxury of rest. The trees sizzled in the breeze and the water undulated hypnotically, both lulling me towards sleep. Occasionally, I looked around and for a few moments I wondered about getting up and going to the house for a beer. I decided that a swim would be more refreshing and hauled myself out of the hammock.
I dove into the lake from the dock and when I surfaced she was there, treading water and watching me. She smiled at me.
When the bonfire began to sputter and most of us were asleep in our chairs or crowded into one of the two cabins, I took her hand and we melted into the darkness.

I understand Brian's concern. Rather, I understand, in a general way, what he means when he talks about the fierce and irrational feelings of anger and machismo he falls victim to when he feels that something is threatening his family. I'm not much of a threat, really.

I've always believed that growth comes not from the simple lessons we pass along to our children but from the horrors that penetrate the psyche as life unfolds, revealing disappointment and sorrow, standing in stark defiance to the hopes and dreams most of us will take, unfulfilled, to the damp earth. The true measure of a meaningful life is the desire to continue after all hope has been eradicated. Once the needless and uncertain belief in the right to happiness is extinguished, the wonder of simply breathing casts a clear light into the recesses of the mind.

It is important to remember that the dog days of summer are short but full.

Another Kick at the Can

What is most remarkable about the end of 2006 is that we appear to have survived at all. The news yesterday, the 'litany of shit', as Gordon put it, detailed horror after horror and yet here it is the second of January and life goes on.
In that vein, so also does the endless need to lighten my load via this space, A Thousand Words (with Rob) and the newest edition to my slowly developing empire, the Mourning Kitchen.
My New Year's resolution might be to post a little more frequently than I have in the past couple of months but I'm too old to make promises I can't necessarily keep. I'll give it a shot, though.
I hope everyone celebrated the passing of the year appropriately and is looking forward to a fresh start, this morning.
Everything looks the same but something feels different. That bodes well for us all, I hope.