Been Around the Block. Got Some Stories. These are Them.
Mount Shasta, California, December 28, 2019 — When I was a child and a teenager, I was very insecure. And needing reassurance all the time, in the tough-guy culture of Northern Texas, I became a loud show-off smart-alec, even though I was actually an introvert.
As a result, even when I gained confidence over the years, I had to *learn* how to talk to strangers, and how to approach women. I did learn. However I wish I’d seen this article, which is both simple and [Read more…]
October 19, 2018, Medford Oregon –– Tomorrow a big truck with moving guys comes, and nearly all my home is packed into boxes. The last few weeks have been overshadowed. As the leaves were turning gold and falling from the huge tree out front, I worried that packing up seemed overwhelming, but bit by bit …
Behind the house of the neighbor across the street, her name is Linda, her trees have turned bright and colorful. It’s Autumn.
The neighbors next door had yet another fiesta last Friday. Although it’s sometimes noisy near my bedroom window, I like the sounds, men talking in Spanish, kids yelling and running around.
After tomorrow, I don’t live here any more.
I’ve felt this before. Maybe you have, too …
It’s time to go, and the rooms become empty again, until finally the place looks vacant like the day you moved in. And you walk around these empty rooms, and whether or not you liked the time spent there, nostalgia comes over you.
In my bedroom, in my mind I again see gooddog Charlie. This is where he died, not that long ago. I feel like I am abandoning him, because I am leaving the room. I miss him and feel like somehow I am also leaving him behind, because it’s the place where I hold his memory.
But he will not miss me here.
A few years ago, I moved here with Susan, before she lost her sight and went away to learn how to be a blind person. I thought it likely that the relationship was completely gone. I felt no different toward her, but had to accept letting it go.
A few months ago I was surprised to hear from her reaching out by phone again. And a few trips to visit over the last few months where she’d landed again in Mount Shasta. Surprised and happy to discover the relationship was not gone after all. And so I am moving back to Mount Shasta.
Unlike some other moves in the past, this time I do not have the feeling of moving forward. I feel like I am moving backward, retreating. But it’s what I want to do. I cannot remain, no reason. Though I’ve made a few good friends here, there is nothing to keep me in Medford.
I just didn’t have any other place that called to me.
Until now.
8 Miles North of Henrietta Texas, July 28, 2017 — My mother would be one hunded years old today, born in 1917.
In this photo near the end of her life, she leans on the front fence before the farmhouse on the farm where she grew up. She (and my two brothers David and Paul) had moved back to the farm after the death of my stepfather. She’d been born Margaret Ellen Hurn, became Margaret French as my mother, and later remarried to Dr. Strickland in Henrietta.
Around the base of that tree on the left, you can just make out a dark metal band. Once upon a time, long before I was born, the tree was planted inside what must have been a wheel part. A metal band about a foot tall, and maybe four feet diameter. The tree grew and grew and grew, until the band was quite snug, about 20 years before Margaret Strickland was photographed here at the front fence.
In a recent photo from google earth, the tree is gone. I wonder what became [Read more…]
Medford, Oregon, 2015 — In memory, an entire lost continent can repose, with sometime awakening to peek through eternal mists. And so many things can remain the same, in memory.
Once and again upon such a time, on a particular this morning, toward the end of breakfast, Susan said, “Oh, look at that,” pointing far to my left.
While I’m oogling out the window, seeing nothing unusual, she’s stealing the last sips of my coffee.
Ha! I’d let it go cold. Serves her right.
The rewards of crime are cold.
Such feelings come and go,
as tides from an unseen sea
touch, spread, then withdraw.
San Francisco, Spring 1982: In the house on Tenth Avenue that I shared with Quinlan the photographer, I had a dream one night, that I saw Carolyn my high-school sweetheart. I’d like to say she came to me and that she cared for me, but she just passed nearby with a glance. And I was filled to overflowing with yearning. I awoke, and the dream left me with the yearning, as if it had been yesterday.
Last night, I had another dream …
As I crossed the street in front of the English building, I saw the Beatles in a large open Cadillac convertible parked across the street, along with three other musicians in tuxedos whom they had added for the concert. The new musicians had orchestra instruments, but they were singing along with the Beatles, a complex, multipart harmony. It was quite lovely
By the time I’d crossed the street, the car had become a bus. Good thing, as there were so many of them in the vehicle. The bus door was open, so I climbed in and sat in the first seat. Paul waved. And then I realized that the driver, in uniform, was actually Arnold Schwartznegger, the governor of California. Apparently he was showing the Beatles around. Politics.
“Hello, Arnold,” I said, as I struggled to take off my hat, but the hat’s chin cord was caught and I had to fight with it, and then realized Arnold was scowling at me. Maybe I’d been too familiar. “I mean, hello, Mr. Schwartzenegger,” I said, “Is that better?”
His expression told me it was better. Apparently, despite his behavior when he was Conan the Barbarian, Arnold is a guy who really appreciates proper manners.
And then as I mused on this, I found myself sitting at a table in a dim cafe, almost deserted. A cup of coffee sat cooling, I had the funny papers from the newspaper, and the late-afternoon light slanted in through the window across the room. I glanced up to see that at the next table, the Beatles, and everybody who had been sitting there, were all gone.
The light from the window had faded, it was hard to see clearly, and the comics were not very interesting.
Wichita Falls, Texas. Fall 1971 —
Today she told me lies
like ravens standing
on the brink of winter.
