Big Girl Panties

Z is growing like crazy and I’m in complete denial that it’s going to keep happening. My idea of childproofing is putting things up on the arms of the sofa and I overlook the fact that she can not only reach the arm of the sofa, but has no trouble climbing on and off the thing. Partly I hope that by the time I face up to facts, she’ll have outgrown this phase where life itself is a choking hazard. But then I want to pull back hard on the reigns of time. She wore big girl panties to the playground today and is sitting on the toilet (boycotting the potty chair.. makes for a nice tote, but I doubt she’ll ever use it properly.) How is it happening that she’s wearing big girl panties??

The more I do it, the more I feel pretty clueless about this whole parenting thing. I’m glad that she won’t remember much of these first few years of life for the parenting mistakes I’ve already made. And I think there’s a natural schizophrenia associated with parenting a toddler. While on some level I’m glad she’ll forget, I want to savor and remember every second and partly there’s a deep sadness that she won’t remember and cherish every second too - even those terrible bad mommy moments.

She has a voracious appetite and is known to stuff a whole slice of cheese in her mouth. Or, stuff her pie hole full of turkey if the dog is watching (she hopes to make her jealous.) It’s not uncommon, in her enthusiasm, for her to start gagging and turn red with bulging eyes. I’ve become adept at the Heimlich. She has to be watched like a hawk when she eats because it’s not when they’re making noise when you have to worry about a blocked airway. When it’s blocked, one can’t make noise. Sometimes she can eeek out a little gagging sound as she tries to clear the block with the last bit of air accessible to her. Mostly she’s successful in clearing it herself these days. (Practice makes perfect I guess.) I usually wait to see if she can do it before I intervene. It’s unsettling watching her turn colors and her eye get all buggy. Night before last this happens, I hear the noise as I’m doing some prep work at the cutting board and I turn to watch her to see if she clears it. She does and I tell her, “Z that scares the heck out of me.” A few minutes go by and I hear the sound again, I jump and turn abruptly… she starts laughing. She thinks it’s funny, this reaction I have, when I fear for her life. So now she just makes the sound to see me jump. I can see where this all is going…

Shelby Knox

Nature never did betray the heart that loved her. - Wordsworth

T-85 and counting. I’ve had an extremely productive week even in the face of identity theft and fraud attempts on my checking account. Despite having to shut down and re-open bank accounts, update new direct deposit accounts, etc., etc., I’m speeding forward on my end-of-the-job-world deliverables. I’m not sure why I’m rushing it. When I complete everything I’ve set out to accomplish I’ll merely have to divine a new list of things to do that will make me useful until day zero. Even still, this first list includes what I think are important. I can busywork with them into oblivion after that.

I watched the documentary, The Education of Shelby Knox last night – a Netflix arrival a few days back that I’ve been putting on the back burner. It’s the story of a young devout (straight/heterosexual) Christian girl who gets involved with the local Youth Commission in Lubbock, Texas and spearheads efforts to improve sex education in the schools.

As much as I resisted liking Shelby, she won me over. Her parents are conservative and Republican and really quite proud of both of these attributes about themselves and they’re also proud of Shelby. It’s apparent that this precocious teenager is wildly more intelligent than her parents. I truly get the sense that her parents sense and perhaps even acknowledge this. It makes me wonder why her parents, inspired by this young woman, aren’t undergoing their own personal transformations – questioning the church, questioning the status quo, questioning their own values. Maybe they are, I’d have liked to see the results of any of that.

I suppose what I enjoyed most about it is that it authentically captured a young woman going through this period of earnest questioning, sitting down with her pastor time and again, exploring issues with her peers. I might not like what I heard and saw some of the time, but it was real.

In her community, it seems to have been all the rage to do these vows of chastity with the church. I wonder if now, as a young college girl, if she still clings to that vow. I wonder, if through her personal exploration, she’s found different conclusions. It would be great to see a follow up… something like The Continuing Education of Shelby Knox.

Pollyanna

In honor of TYWWBTBFSTT, I am leaving my job. My last day will be June 30th. I’ve been working with the Admin Director to time my leaving with the interests of the organization, least impact – most benefit, and I’m developing some objectives to complete between now and then given we’re firm on the timeframe now. Admittedly I feel both thrilled and nauseous about the impending change.

For those who know me best, this is a change that been some time in the making. The organization has been slowly de-prioritizing my area of expertise/emphasis and simultaneously I’ve seen the writing on the wall and preparing myself for the separation.

(It’s no secret, I’ve encouraged them to consider shutting down. While I contend it is the best thing for them to do – an elegant and brilliant end to part of a movement that has shifted and changed these past twenty-some years – it’s not something anyone is willing to hear or consider. In the past people have said, you should listen to Zuzu, however unpopular her opinions, she’s almost always right. But those same people won’t listen to this. While their ears are closed to it, I believe in my heart it is the right answer – and not a self-serving bone in my body speaks it. I don’t think it’s my job/role to convince them of this or keep them from pursuing other option, no matter how big a mistake I believe it is for them to do what they are doing. It’s best, in that light, that I go.)

Being anywhere sixteen years – being in any type of relationship like that – it’s hard to let go and I have all those mixed emotions that accompany letting go. Of course the people remain and those I care for most as friends will be in my life in those capacities and I’ll likely continue to support the organization in ways that make sense to me. In that way there’s not the grief of letting go and it’s not like a relationship is ending, it’s merely changing – in a good way. Change can still be challenging.. thus the nausea blended in with the excitement.

Because sometimes there’s supposed to be mountains to climb, I just got off the phone with Ed. He’s on his way home in the middle of the day because he was fired. I’ve just completed transferring my health care benefits to his coverage and initiated new relationships with a new team of doctors. (Fortunately, I’d just completed a physical and series of consults and all is good with this body, so it’s not a bad time to be without insurance I suppose… although that invariably sucks, it just sucks a little less than maybe it might otherwise.)

So the nausea I have been feeling over the change in my job is now expanded to embrace his unemployment. I can’t remember where I read it, but recently I read some Zen proverb that goes something like, If there’s nothing you can do about it, don’t worry. If there’s something you can do about it, don’t worry. Despite how messed up this looks, I’ve strangely got a good feeling about things. They’re going to work out – it’s just not clear how – but somehow when all the dust settles things are going to be even better. Call me Pollyanna…

Watch This Space

It’s nearly noon and I should be hard at work. Instead I’m drinking coffee and blogging (well, not just blogging… thinking and blogging.) I’ve finished one of those deadlines that has been hanging over my head and it’s released me to some degree such that from now until the end of the year my days should be focused on contemplating each day and creating the foundation of a job that I’ll do for a few years and love. A job that will make a difference and I’ll look forward to each morning. It’s hard to explain the journey to here and why it is the way it is.

I read a good article about Warren Buffett on the front page of the Wall Street Journal weekend edition. I’m tempted to get in touch with him, ask him perhaps if we could chat for an hour or so over coffee. What would Warren Buffett and I have to talk about? He doesn’t have a computer on his desk. He spends most of his time thinking – he doesn’t ruminate for hours over decisions, he takes a very liaises faire approach to management, his phone doesn’t ring constantly. It just seems like I might have a good deal to learn from this guy despite how disparate our vocational callings might be. What he does that I like is he reads - I assume voraciously – but I’d love to just witness it and ask questions and seek a little inspiration. Not a phone call. I just want to sit down and have coffee in his office and chat.

I’ve been thinking about children lately. I’d like to have more children in my life so I’m trying to convince my friends to start having babies. ((Lawyer Babe says to me, maybe you should have a baby. But the thing is I enjoy sleep, career options, a degree of financial freedom, personal freedom, choices…)) I think I would feel imprisoned by a child – at least for the first several years. These would be bad years of my life to feel imprisoned. Maybe if I could figure a few things out – find a good path in my career, then maybe.. but I’m not certain and it seems if I’m not certain it’s a pretty big commitment to walk half-ass into. Yes, I know… if I went there I’d be blinded and persuaded by love. I don’t even want to go there.

There have been times in my life where accidents could have happened – the anonymous Peruvian soccer player with the lickable hips, or even that first dysfunctional boy I loved. Isn’t it interesting that I really only see myself as a single mother? I just so fundamentally understand that that would be mine, regardless the context. It’s not a question. But see, I want Cassie to have a baby – she’d be such an amazing mom – and we could have such fun showing that baby the world.

(I call her Cassie, by the way, because of a teenage coming-of-age novel I read when I was twelve or so. It was called Me, Cassie and the character Cassie lost her virginity to a foreign exchange student from like Zaire or something… And my Cassie is so NOT like that Cassie that it’s funny to call her that.)

Anyways… why am I waxing this way? Perhaps because I’m evaluating life and choices (not in a maudlin or regretful way, but a good way… questioning whether or not these feet are touching the planet rightly, walking in the right direction, seeking boldly inward and outward with integrity and honesty.)

We learn from one another if we open our eyes to the lessons we need. The people I learn from aren’t even aware of the lessons they remind me of.

There is one young woman who reminds me that we make drama and trouble when we fail to take responsibility for finding and realizing our destiny. Yes, I believe in destiny – but I don’t believe everyone finds theirs – probably most people don’t. Some people run from it like wildfire, going to clubs, on vacation, creating drama with friends, lovers, family – as though emotional rollercoasters constitute doing something. Humans create drama with their loved ones by picking fights, betraying one another, lamenting irretrievable moments from the past, when they need to escape from the boredom that they wrap themselves in as an excuse not to look into those deep dark truthful mirrors, to not do the hard stuff of living - of following and realizing dreams, destinies, purposes.

I’ve been guilty a bit of this lately too. It was a lesson I learned many, many years ago while laying in a meadow in Heidelberg, Germany. I was so sick - feverish, distraught – my head spinning, my body ached. I prayed for death. I didn’t know anyone. I was alone in a strange land and I felt miserable – I was done with living. After several hours, death did not come. I only got up and moved because I was bored and suddenly some bit of wisdom sharpened into focus. Moving about just because we’re bored of waiting for death does not constitute living. Distracting ourselves from the boredom doesn’t constitute living either. There was this flash of a moment when I understood the difference between actions and reactions that were about distracting myself from the boredom and actions and reactions that were truly about living. Words fail me.. there is a difference between these types of actions. It’s qualitatively different - it leads to entirely different places.

I’m guilty of reverting to living in the boredom again – to some degree. Partly this is because I’ve needed to rest, or I’ve convinced myself that I’ve needed a rest. Living is hard work – despite how fulfilling it is. But here I am, resting on my figurative hillside – and out of boredom, once again, I am inspired to move on. When boredom is the underlying inspiration – well, no good can come of this. It’s time to take responsibility, recognize the boredom and, frankly, start living again.

I feel like I’m always writing here about how it’s time for a change, or I’m changing, or things are about to change – blah, blah, blah. This isn’t about change. It’s just about living – and I know how to do that. Watch this space…

L is for Loser

Sometimes I have so much to say, think and do and then I stop rather dumbly and become part of the great unwashed masses (wash them, won’t you!?). This isn’t me. I don’t know who this woman is - forgetful and slow witted. I don’t know her. I’m not using parts of my brain and I can feel it screaming feed me! I never stopped before. Why do I stop now? Why do I pause dumbly and slip into some trance of normalcy – or maybe it’s not normal, but it’s not me (is it?). Who the hell is this woman?

Enough lamentations – waxing like this, it’s the same as doing nothing. I feel like I’ve spent too much of the last few years wasting time. Perhaps it’s all relative. Sure, not compared to most people maybe. But I don’t know what that means. In this life, we’re our own control group. We don’t get to compare ourselves to others. It’s about change from baseline.

I did the interview with the local reporter. He encouraged me not to think of myself as a Loser. Heh. He doesn’t understand that being a Loser is liberating on some level. I’m a Loser who isn’t afraid of losing, doesn’t have issues about being called a loser and doesn’t make losing or fear of losing an excuse for not trying. Winning anything doesn’t take half as much courage as trying virtually anything for the first time, and sometimes even the second and third time.

Thief!

Speaking of driving… Did someone mention driving? Well, I just got home from another trek to Elliot – a brilliant morning sojourn to the waterfall. I stole a rock from the riverbed to replace the one Ed stubbed his toe on last night and catapulted into the neighbor’s yard. He was kind of being a dickhead. Sometimes he just doesn’t get it. The riverbed is not filing charges for the theft – the neighbor’s may, however.

I rode the mountain bike up the back side, from Phoenix Lake to Five Corners last night. It’s the first time I’ve made that hill without dismounting and pushing for the last leg or two or three. If I do it a few more times, I’m going to try going up the steep way – though it’s a brutal cruel climb.

Bad Hair Day

You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do. - Anne Lamott

To every heart love must come, but like a refugee. - L. Cohen

Puck is going to slap my hands. If you feel you can’t resist cutting your own hair, he’s said, time and again, just call me. I didn’t call him. It was in my eyes. It was just bothering me. In Berlin, one year, I took out a pen knife and sawed off my bangs. It was a tragedy – it looked absolutely terrible. Yesterday I was more careful. I used a scissors and a razorblade to soften the blunt edges. Jeez. He’s gonna be mad. But he’s only working Sundays and Mondays now and I leave for DC on Sunday morning, early and don’t return until late Tuesday night. I surely would have done something more drastic if left to my own devices in DC with hairs dangling in my eyes while I’m trying to focus and take notes at the meeting. I have to look at it like damage control. If he gives me that sideways look and sighs heavily, I’ll pretend I don’t know what he’s talking about. No, I didn’t cut my hair. You’ve always told me to call first. I wouldn’t do that.

Today is the day – or at least one of the days. It’s the staff meeting where preliminary proposals will be debuted and discussed for their feasibility and viability - proposals for staff reductions and down sizing.

It would indeed by a tragedy if the history of the human race proved to be nothing more noble than the story of an ape playing with a box of matches on a petrol dump. - David Ormsby-Gore

I already know what the proposals are. As I alluded to yesterday, they’re not enough to convince me. I’ve been told more surgical tactics are yet to be employed – and those are the ones I’m raising my eyebrow skeptically and waiting for. We shall see. We shall see.

Secret is particularly needy today. While the entire house and yard are at her disposal, all fifty pounds of her has climbed up on my study chair, shoved herself behind me, curled into a bean shape and her sleepy head is draped over the arm rest. She’s so adorable when she makes herself bean-shaped, despite the inconvenience I can’t bring myself to disturb her. Besides, she’ll spent the lion’s share of the day alone.

And if I merely make room, rightly, love will come.. albeit like a refugee. I need to muster being through this day rightly and make room for the unknown, infinite possibilities and the future. It’s not really about who is right it’s just about the way it’s gonna be. Bad hair day or not…

Summer

”If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito” – Betty Reese

I’m hopeful and hoping that I’ll be moving into the new place sometime in June. Two steps forward, one step back. When we pulled the tape from the crown molding and baseboards in the living room, it pulled the new flat paint and sheet rock paper right off the wall. Huge rips now, spanning the clean lines of classic light buff But, well, the crown molding is painted. Some previous occupant had painted latex over oil-based paint and it’s impossible to prep the baseboards for painting. So we ripped them off the wall and will replace them.. hopefully this weekend.

I have been trying, throughout the week, to steal lunch hours, breaks and time after work to make bits of progress in the place. If I commence on the kitchen, the last room to be reckoned with before moving in, by this weekend, I feel like I’ll be achieving some kind of meaningful momentum on the project. We’ve decided that we’ll continue to use the bathroom in the back cottage, even after we move in, and not begin the remodel work on that bathroom until after we’re settled in. Maybe that’s foolish – but at least I’m deciding what kind of fool I’ll be.

I look forward to a weekend when all there is to do is a speck of gardening and an adventure with Secret Agent Dog to the beach at Bolinas. We haven’t been yet at all this year and I’m in withdrawal. I miss the ablutions of summer. And I decided, by the way, that yesterday was officially the first day of summer. Not the day I spied the young rattlesnake, but yesterday. It was hot. It was really hot. It was windless and oppressively hot and the trees were still moist and neon green of spring and it was hot. I ate popsicles and didn’t cook dinner.

This weekend we’re supposedly invited to the annual Memorial Day pool party at the friend-of-a-friends house in Terra Linda. The wealthy women who had their lap pool airlifted (okay, they used a crane) into the back yard. I tried to wrangle an invitation to use the pool for months afterwards last year and then surrendered defeat. This year the friends invited us and then said, oh, we have to check to see if it’s okay that we bring you. Which makes the invitation seem like less than an invitation. I feel like I’m waiting to be picked by a team for a dodge ball game and I don’t even like dodge ball.

On Friday the big meeting begins at work – to decide organizational fate. I guess all the negativism I feel in my words (and bones) stem from a sense of doom and dread about these conversations, this process and the decision(s). People will be laid off as a result of decisions – the trajectory of people’s lives will take some dramatic twists and turns. While at some level I’m at peace with the whole thing – I’m just not ready to launch. I hate the waiting but I hate the beginning too. Hate is a strong word and it doesn’t serve.

Tick Tock

To always be intending to live a new life, but never find time to set about it – this is as if a man should put off eating and drinking from one day to another till he be starved and destroyed.” - Sir Walter Scott

I found a big monster tick - swollen, engorged on a feast of blood – dead on the living room floor this morning. It had to be attached to one of us. I’m certain it didn’t just wander in like that and die.

It’s important that I remind myself, more than once it seems, that living life differently isn’t pinned to decisions about work. Decisions like this just don’t wander in like that – they’re rather attached and sucking the life out of you before they fall off and happen. They’re greedy.

The Way I See It

On my doorstep, in my kitchen, adversity melts like ice in a highball glass. That’s the way I see it sometimes. Inverted reflections, changing shape as the minutes dissolve into dark spirits.

Postcards From The Cornfield

I was flying back from Los Angeles Friday before last I think it was. I’d taken a brief stroll on Rodeo Drive before an early afternoon lunch meeting nearby. That was a reminder to me of just how uncool I am. It crossed my mind that if things had worked out with the lover-who-shall-not-be-named that that place would be the context of my life. I would hate myself and feel out of place – I’d likely never really know that it was the place and not me that I loathed. It’s so difficult to make distinctions sometimes.

Flying back from Minneapolis a few days ago now. Things that must have once seemed commonplace strike me as odd. And the mere realization, the third-person-looking-in moment of awareness, colors events with an invented and surreal quality. I watch. Very through the looking glass darkly or maybe brightly. Serves to show me how much I’ve changed (and perhaps how much I haven’t).

I’m not saying good or bad. I’m just saying different. Leave the judgments to those who thrive on them. I’ll leave it to the you and the other to name which is which, what is what, who is who. All I know is that at once I felt like two ends of a magnet, both repelled and attracted. It was all laid out like an unmovable feast before me with a sign that says, look, but don’t touch.

I’m left with old familiar feelings. My heart and eyes too wide open - when to hold it in my vision I must put my heart and mind in separate rooms until it’s safe to come out. I tell Ed that I feel sad and wished-away. (What part of our history is reinvented and under rug swept?) He wishes me back.

Sweeping Pigeons

The Neighbor called to tell me that she got the apartment she applied for. She’ll be moving sometime between now and the end of the month. I’m vibrating. I’m so thrilled. She tells me tomorrow the precise date of her departure.

With the news of her imminent departure, my emotions feel like a ball rolling down a hill, gathering speed. I’m giddy and happy and like things in motion and accelerating, some of the details are becoming blurry – the details of the good and the details which outline my discontents as well. I want to hasten her exodus like sweeping pigeons from a belfry – a swoosh of something white and smelly, a few feathers floating down and poof she’s gone.

It could have, it should have been a great experience. It really held potential but never hit its mark. Instead it’s been a grand disappointment. It’s too bad.

Ante Up

I’ll be turning forty soon. Sigh. It’s been leaving me introspective. As silly as it may seem it’s also been inspiring me to go through my armoire. “Forty year old women don’t wear shorts that look like this,” I’ll say to myself as I toss another this or that in a Goodwill bag. I’ve decided that forty year old women don’t wear unmatched socks, socks that are stretched out, underwear with threadbare elastic waste bands and shorts with unpatched holes. As I near the closet I’m certain I’ll discover other things that forty year old women don’t wear. I hope this will lead to an examination of what forty year old women do and don’t do, what inspires their happiness and sense of adventure. I hope turning forty isn’t merely marked by a purging clothes.

So Damned Predictable

It’s still awfully quiet here. Is this the best you can do, offer me this profound silence?

So something… for something I haven’t touched on before. You know besides the fact that I’ve harvested several Roma tomatoes today, in addition to a small handful of yellow pear tomatoes and this would be the first time ever, in my life, that I’ve harvested my own crop of anything. Last night it was the third bountiful harvest of basil, which was promptly, as expected, turned to pesto and placed in the freezer. This, in the midst of winter, will remind me of summer. As now, in the midst of summer, I’m preparing for winter and imagining a cozy feeling. I’ve been pulling up onions now for weeks, nearly months. I’m not certain when to harvest the garlic. I’ve started snap peas for a late summer season crop.

Yesterday we walked around Lake Lagunitas. A bug flew down my shirt and bit me twice on the back. It left welts and then buzzed away. Now, what’s the likelihood of something like that happening?

I’m moving away from being there to being here. Here doesn’t talk back so well. I want the repartee. I enjoy the dialog. It’s so quiet here.

Let me tell you something different, something I haven’t touched on before…

When I ride my bicycle I feel free and I know it’s teaching me something about how to approach my world and my days. Mostly I walk. Mostly I move fairly slowly and methodically through the world. I pay attention to what’s near and there’s time to see everything coming for how slowly the world approaches. The bicycle is faster. I find myself looking further ahead and aware of just a tad bit more. When I’m riding my bicycle to the ferry terminal in the morning, I find myself thinking, “Yes, this is good. Look further ahead. Yes, this is good.”

How To Change The World

The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.

-Tennessee Williams

I Need A New Joystick

I have opinions about everything – fairly strong ones. In my internal life the universe is dichotomous – there is right and wrong, good and evil, black and white. I’m the right, but interestingly not the good. There is an intense discordance in my inner life. I’m learning to be okay with it. Ed is learning to be okay with it as well – all at once being my beacon of strength and support and an emblem of all that is evil in the world. He wears these clothes well.

I had the most productive day yet. But I don’t want to measure the value of my life in yardsticks of productivity. So it was productive but not as joyful as it could or should have been. I do want to measure the value of my life in yardsticks of joy.

So what is joy? What is joy? How do I find this thing that eludes my disposition so these days? Of course I could go off in another direction in a spiraling tome, but does it get me any closer. I’m not sure of this.

I think some people on this planet are zealots for their way of being, doing and undoing. Like Nietzsche wrote, “Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal.” I’m not so different. My path is my path. I’m not so different from anyone else in this regard. You know, this is my path so fuck off. But I’m also pretty keen on the goal and maybe to some degree that sets me apart – apart with a subset of humanity who are fairly married to both to process and the product.

So even I’m wondering where this is going - how this has to do with my joy. I might be wondering this for awhile. I need to be okay with this. Today is all that matters. I really, really need to see and feel my today with more clarity, love and integrity. It’s time to get a new battery for the meditation helmet and see if I can open my third eye a little wider.

Turning Corners

The mountain was beautiful today. Forget-Me-Nots and white wildflowers (I don’t know what they’re called) are popping out early. I see them and smile, like I’m opening a present that’s been waiting in a box since last spring. I took the short loop today, hoping that maybe I’d spy the first wild iris of the season. I didn’t. But I did see the purple ones. I don’t know what they’re called either. I’d seen a few fairly heavy with buds and thought that perhaps in a few days.. then I rounded the corner and there they were. Ms. Secret and I did a little spring dance right there on the hill. We climbed up off the trail. I spun in circles while she watched me then she started spinning about too – tucking her back end in and running about in that excited playful way dogs do.

These antics of mine used to frighten her. She’d look at me in a suspicious way and cow. Now as soon as I set foot off trail she seems to know that there’s something to celebrate. It truly is a wonderful life!

I still feel pretty toxic on the inside but at the same time I feel like I’m slowly turning a corner. Haroomf. Don’t we spend out entire God Damned lives turning corners? Just walk around it for crying out loud. Can we just get on with it already?

I was thinking, I was wondering… was I more intelligent when I smoked? Did I think more quickly, were the synapses firing just a bit more rat-a-tat-tat? Or was I more dull and did somehow the addiction and the drug lead me to believe I was more clever? Right now I find myself rather dull. With most other drugs, people just think that they’re more interesting but they’re not. So on some level I hope I just thought I was more interesting - and now if and when I have a thought that I find remotely compelling – well, maybe it will really be brilliant. Or something. I’m not sure.

You know.. one to lie and one to listen….

The Reunion

The Reunion

Ed and I rose at the break of day and stumbled around the hotel room, gathering our manies and fumbling about as we bumped into one another and wiped sleep from our eyes. We took a taxi from the hotel to the airport and slumped wearily in uncomfortable vinyl chairs waiting for the boarding call. I slept heavy on the airplane on the way back to San Francisco while he dozed and read a bad airport novel – written for travelers who crave distraction without demand. Occasionally I’d wake up and look over his shoulder to read a paragraph or two, make a comment about the bad prose and resituate the pillow.

We’d been up until near 3 a.m. I’m not exactly sure why. The reunion came and went. I still don’t understand it but it’s a good thing to do once every twenty years or so I suppose. Good to remind. Good to remember. Good to go back and see what’s there.

A pre-reunion event was planned at a dive bar on Excelsior Boulevard – an informal no-host gathering. In truth it was the best part of the reunion because you could hear the person settling weight across from you and have some semblance of conversation. If it hadn’t been for that I wouldn’t have marked the time as worthwhile.

Entering Al’s bar I recognized no one and was overcome with a sense of foreboding. As I settled in, however, pearls of remembrance flittered by and it wasn’t long before I was hello-ing and what-have-you-been-doing people. It was empty chatter. I largely found myself bored before I even asked the questions. This was the problem – the context. People were in a mad rush to connect and move on – say their paragraph and drive to the next stop to say their paragraph again. I’ve never been inspired by stop and go schmooze. It doesn’t make it wrong. I’m not judging it. It’s simply not my thing. That’s okay.

Eventually two old high school friends arrived, bringing along a beautiful Texan girl as one of their companions. We sat, we talked, we bought each other rounds of this and that and something started to feel a little familiar – like color was entering the outlines. It was pleasant and far less contrived and the evening moved from a hair shy of unbearable into quite pleasing. This was good.

Reunion day approached and Ed and I collected our things and ambled over to the hotel with a collection of snacks for sustenance. We arrived later than we’d hoped and didn’t have time to avail ourselves of the pool or the hot tub. Instead we lounged in the room and watched a special on the attempt to salvage some wreckage from a Southern California breakwater region. Despite heroic efforts the salvage crew failed and left the fate of the disaster to nature’s devices in the end. We dressed with reluctance and eventually descended.

I was titillated, excited, to see old friends who were old friends, learn about lives and indulge in a feast of discovery and rediscovery. It didn’t really turn out this way. I actually had more substantive conversations with people I hadn’t known at all in the day and some of those who I was most anxious to see had few words and seemed readily distracted. One of the women looked at me rather passively and sighed, you just dropped off the face of the earth.

Yes. I did. Perhaps I thought we all did. But it was true. I did. It was taking more than just the weight of what we all had together to hold me to it. We were strikingly different creatures, moved and motivated by different things that weren’t apparent to us then for all our self-indulgence. But as the evening passed, at least among those women, I realized that my own self-indulgence was perhaps the mirror I was seeing. The weight had kept them together and grounded with one another. They had marriages, children and connected lives – they passed holiday cards among themselves and were genuinely involved with each other’s lives. In witnessing their ease, comfort and joy with one another I found myself looking on this with reverence and respect and a chapter of a book had written out its ending for me. I had to unclench a fist on that reality and admit that something real and enduring persevered out of it. A rather beautiful little epiphany unfolded and those women molded together to be an emblem of it. They closed a cold circle, but it’s the coolness that often lets the caste harden into shape. Not for a moment could I find myself begrudging that. To the contrary, it was a reflection of how we all chose to live out this story and it seemed impudent to resent fate in the face of beauty. I held to awe instead and let the pen fall.

I spent the evening largely with three of the boys turned to men over the years. For some reason men seem more willing to let life happen and remold even in the face of varied journeys without making it a betrayal. Maybe it’s simply more an expected and accepted gender norm. Ed inspired dancing and we waded through music and laughter. The rum and the whiskey loosened our spirits and our lives. We didn’t speak on the past, just the now. So we bounced around the evening with a casual disregard and this was good – an honest form of grace in the evening. Ed maneuvered his usual antics, stirring events to benefit the underdog and rise a little ire. He was a gem for the evening and we danced and we laughed and at some point late in the evening we fell into a short quiet sleep and it was over.

I’m left with a montage of stilted conversations – some of which it would have been interesting to carry through to some conclusion or another. Instead most will be left as things unfinished that were suppose to be in just that state of growth and decay. The evening was a little ribbon on the past – decorating something that’s perhaps more interesting when it’s left unopened as a perpetual surprise waiting to happen.

The Origin of Love

I wonder how many people have actually read Plato’s Symposium.

The last time I saw you, we had just split in two. You was looking at me. I was looking at you. You had a look so familiar, I could not recognize. You had blood on your face I had blood in my eyes. - Hedwig (and the Angry Inch)

Lowering myself off the back of the boat into the deep blue waters I had resolve to just face whatever it was I had to face. The cold made me catch my breath, draw her into me with reflexive conviction – as though my body were saying, one last time. And in she came, doing nature’s bidding with pure abandon. Once in, there was little point or thought about going back. Maybe just a moment of hesitation. I looked at Ed, he looked at me, and we laughed then situated our masks and bit down on the mouth pieces and alone, together, one last glance and smile, we laid our body’s prostate and peered into her soul.

It was the most amazing moment. It was like going home. And home is a hard place to describe, as much if not more of a feeling as it is a place. We laid adrift and stunned – something beyond awestruck, looking down at the reef shelf below us, hundreds, no millions, of brilliant coral as backdrop to millions of the most amazing fish of every color and variation that I could possibly imagine. And I felt my heart skip a beat as I saw what we were heading into -the edge of the reef - dropping down perhaps a hundred feet or more – not into darkness, but into depth. Again I hesitated as we moved toward the edge and then suspended over a huge underwater canyon. At varying layers of depth larger fish lumbered about as next to us in this vast expanse beautiful fish of indigo and emerald swam with us, not below us, through the pristine clear waters. Across this great divide was another reef shelf where a sea turtle glided peaceably, like a bird around us. In every direction there was something. As far as the eye could see, this was an endless feast.

They called this place the Super Highway. I have never seen anything like this before in my life, didn’t know such a place could exist. I’d read books about these places, had heard that the most amazing underwater places on earth were off the coast of Niihau and now I’ve seen and nothing has come even close to describing it. I feel somehow forever changed.

Dumbstruck, afterwards, Ed and I looked at each other. That was amazing, he’d say with a complicit understanding of the frailty of words. I’ve never seen anything so spectacular in my life, I’d say like a fact. We grasped at someway to speak it, but could not. It was holy – sacred.

I’ve been to the Caribbean and was rather nonplussed despite the brilliance of random triggerfish around a sad lump of reef off the coast of Saint John’s. I was much more impressed with the amazing caterpillar of a rather drab moth in the rainforest there.

The shores off Miami coastal waters divulged rather dull sea life and a gaggle of piranhas that I could have lived my life without encountering. I’m not ashamed to admit that the restaurant I went to, in the hotel with the infinity pool, curtains of fabric, two stories tall, wafting in gentle breezes embracing the pool area and a life-sized chessboard was more titillating then the subterranean spectacles I saw there.

In cities across Europe while other young twenty-something’s were chasing beer halls and adventures, I was chasing aquariums and flea markets with my backpack in tow. While rather unkempt and not well attended, in all regards, the aquarium in Barcelona was strangely among my favorites (although the Baltimore aquarium is certainly something to behold). But perhaps it was just that it was in Barcelona – among the most beautiful cities in the world with its magical Rambles, Miro mosaics tiled into the very streets where one walks and melting architecture.

In the great halls of the Hermitage in what was Leningrad, the place they now, again call Saint Petersburg, there are divine works by human hand, in the Metropolitan or MOMA in New York, in the museums of Amsterdam, Madrid, Berlin, Paris, London. I’ve been to all of these places and been witness to their treasures. But nothing, absolutely nothing, even begins to compare with what I saw off the coast of Niihau. It was organic and alive and mutable – a metropolis of color, species – a living art untouched and unspoiled. There was a pain that ripped down to the very heart of me, a deep soulful pain of finally coming into contact with that which makes one whole.