Who are you, there in Boardman?
I was on the second floor of my family’s downtown home, out where the ballroom is — my father was there and also a film crew. The director was explaining “set and prop integrity” to a group gathered around him. He was talking about the importance of having a stylist on set to ensure items were appropriate for the time and the context of a scene. “A guitar is not just a guitar” he was using as an example. Dad had lost his identification cards and it was his birthday so all of us sang to him “Happy Birthday!” As well as to some other guy whose birthday it was. I’ve forgotten his name that I once knew.
I then found myself in my socks skating around the perimeter of a Nordstrom —always a good roller skater and ice skater I was simply dazzling as I rounded corners and placed one foot in one of another. A crowd formed in bleachers to watch me.
We’d slept most of the flight, especially the last leg. So we found our hotel, quickly dropped our luggage off and found a charming spot for dinner because we were famished and flight food had made us a bit nauseous. Quick-to-conversation I wanted to discuss how we had “nearly” the perfect trifecta — cerebral intensity and connection, spiritual intensity and connection. Missing? But then our orders arrived and we talked Amsterdam.
And we wondered.
Most of the day was spent driving around shadows and at day’s end I ran into the woman with nowhere to turn.
I definitely looked as if I was just passing through.
They self-sanction.
“What do spooks do when they get spooked?”
We wear jeans now. Both Levis and Wranglers. And cowboy boots and Sunbody hats, Big Gus be mine? Snazzy shirts and leather belts. Not-so-simple-skirts-and-tops and a fringe jacket, too. I create cairns wherever the rocks may be whenever my heart’s not stopping — yard art sculptures Maggie calls them — and did I mention how much she loves to dig in the dirt? The ways she spoils her stems of color? Her truck’s license plate reads LUV2DIG; well it did on The Old Gray Mule (the correct spelling of the color gray in the United States is “gray” with an “a”). Chickens once created nine eggs a day from a magical place in the lawn of Florence. They’ve since flown. And the border collies and baby Bear rescue us as we rescue them and the wind plays hard in the hilltop flora. A nearby neighbor rants and raves and the canyon below is filled with everyone else we’ve no desire to know. We’re closer to the sky than we have ever been before — Arizona blue beneath Sedona’s sun. We’ve a Beretta and oatmeal, coconut and bee pollen cookies and cold, tasty kombuchas. Remembering Hissy-Bitchy-Rutabaga having flung toasters and forks and-Lord-knows-what-else from our southern cliff at Guardian Ridge Ranch — as Indian flutes sing from the strawbale architect Maggie created twenty-five years ago. Lucinda Williams grooves to J.J. Cale with love ricocheting throughout our souls as Miles purrs, resting his furry head upon the cat walk’s raw crystals. Loving all of this more than I know how as I hear the loop from “Magnolia” yet again, “You’re the best I ever had.”
Driving past Kachina beneath the green canopy of Pecan Lane in the Rubicon I’m reminded how easy it can become to over connect. Shake it out.
The way baby Bear runs through the creosote bushes always makes me smile, laugh out loud. She lays so close to me at night and finds comfort in the sound of my beating heart. Always smelling like a fresh donut.
Red fruit flavors and gentle tannins. Sharing buzzed gazes from across the dimly-lit kitchen, she sipped her pinot noir as we shared a familiar silence and mirrored smiles. Rhythmically rocking in my stance, I savored — with a most delicious intensity — how clueless she remained as to how close I'd just come to snapping her fucking neck.
On what side of three are the wee hours of the morning?