Love a short story

Love
Troubles left behind swirl, blessed, released, among images of family far from Burkina Faso. Slowly these vanish with a growing sense of morning. Somewhere between dreaming and waking, Mary has a sense of the healing vitality underlying existence, in the improbable corners of states of being. She meant to grasp something from its hold, even while she had little idea what that state is. Something inside that held her cue to being alive...
From her viewpoint beside a few weary-looking stocks of wheat atop the maison soukala, the flat terrace roof connected to the compound below by a ladder, Mary orients herself to the birds She rises from her bedding---she is still trying to achieve restfulness, such as she encountered her very first day here as a reaction to the sheer exhaustion of her one way journey to the place her mother visited before ("when I was near her, in spirit?"): a village lying about one hour away from the one airstrip in this part of the country Burkina Faso, former Upper Volta. Like every village for miles around, they call it "Dano."
The radio---a Panasonic, two decades vintage---plays out of the neighboring hut, African pop music from a station in Ougaoudao. In French---a little attention in high school has taken her a long way---a disc jockey excitedly extols a coming film festival. The golden stallions, she'd deduced, were the awards. There was more talk of horses out here than she'd ever associated with Africa, so at first she couldn't be sure. She'd tuned out commercials before, but tucked away in this village, they seemed to present a fantasy of the city, far down the flat dirt roads past the gum tree grove.
With the relief of curving her torso down to her knees in the darkness of the earthen hut, Mary's heart energies flow over her head, blood enriching her tissue with a warm sense of being. Before long, everyone will rise and share greetings; for now, those who gather water, risen early in the well, must walk with earthen pots, to questions of sweet dreams and stories riverside to tell.
Her mind drifts back to the fleet leopards in the W Nazinga Park, spotted out of her periphery during her visit there with Aaron and Wobogo. "It's strange, how there's no place for romantic love, in the usual 'boy meets girl' sense. But Aaron is so different from the villagers in many ways---and his Dagara people in the Ivory Coast might be more Westernized, and he's been a journalist. Who's to say there's not a spiritual connection everyone will recognize, anyway? At least I've had a strong connection! " She realizes she's gotten very identified with the village ways in this new life; already she anticipates having their opinions, help and acceptance should this become a love.
In light of this being her last hurrah, the very idea of loving someone intimately suggests a faith for days to come. What do you know? I've built confidence for a hope in this life.
She imagines, miles distant, the lions sleeping away the day long, except for these mornings, the time of the hunt. Once, she'd watched a wildlife program, cautioning of their possible extinction; yet before her eyes a pride had emerged, evoking singing within her wild self---the very life force that kept her living. No longer was she here to only die in peace. She gazes upon a green mask with stripes of tiger-like energy, Kourgi Kambire's creation, upon the compound wall of the maison soukala, on the side of his closest male kin. She knows that mask is a call towards understanding, a gentleness, acceptance, and ancestral wisdom concerning friendship. Every piece of art has several meanings, a lesson that evolves with the viewer's immediate situation, the sharing of inner selves—a point of rituals.
In the early morning's faint embers, Kulinah passes a cart of yams, fresh from the labors of the day before. Yams, two feet long! The rains, now patiently awaited in these hottest days, had been kind, swelling the plant life with nourishment. As she and Sapla and two dozen others had tended the harvesting together, Desiree had come outside with the newly finished dress for Osun's wedding. The dress, too, had meaning, in the renewal of her relationship. Aside from the opportunity every five days to freshen their commitment in ash circles, the wedding holds a broader celebration of one another. "Every wedding is a chance for the whole tribe to marry," Sapla had said, many times. "Everyone's spirits are wedded!"
At the moment, she sees Sapla, whose sight makes her as happy as cartoons of childhood.
"What sweet thing came to your dreams, Sapla?" she asks with a broadening smile.
"The comfort of a happy friend," she replies, "who's come to join the beginning of the day." Sapla sometimes wakens a little slowly, remembers Mary, who notes sluggishness in her demeanor.
"And Sisquekwo---all ready, gagner petit?" she says, putting a soothing hand to each of Sapla's sides. "Before the ancestors on the other side, baby Thurisaz parle, 'je demande la route' (I'm on my way home!) She immediately realizes a connection in her question and Sapla's state of mind.
"C'est caillon, "she replies, shaking her head. "Yesterday, we thought the child was coming, as well as many times in the night. But she is having trouble breathing and her dilations are not wide enough." Sapla tears up, looks off to nowhere particular above Mary's strong shoulder. "We are trying to keep hope, be wise and strong…but we were not yet sure what type of ritual we'll need, after all."
They embrace a long moment, eyes closed, sensing the touch and the wafting smell of shea butter.
"Mary Kulinah, you are welcome to pray in our thilde when you get time in your chores."
"Je suis en bouill"---I'll go wherever you like. Sapla loads up her lovely red calabash of water and shambles away, as Mary completes filling her calabashes and pots as well.
"Oh, God, no," says Mary, weeping. "Oh, no, please, no, you can't"---the word pours forth from her quivering lips, dissolving into an impassioned sob. "Oh, please, oh, please," she cries pleadingly, to the source of the world inside herself. She pictures some hazy figure, clad in a kaftans robe, standing over Sisqekwo, holding her baby, for whom she's waited since the day the Dano villagers greeted her, acknowledging her, welcoming her, enfolding her into the embrace of the tribe. "Thur-i-za," Mary would sing, joined in the work of daily life, "little Thuriza…" so happily as a child's heart, when gentleness settles therein. At this moment, many of her fellows come along to collect water as well.
The kindness of people of all ages made Mary celebrate her decision to be here. When she arrived, fresh from the crossroads that took her from incarceration to this village, she'd only sought some way to fill her remaining days with hope. She left behind the betrayal which painted her the "ringleader" of the Robin Hood ploy to cyber swipe money already stolen inside the company---but she could not erase the Crohn's Disease, discovered in her last prison physical. With the 'honeymoon' of culture shock and a friendliness that she considered "down home," she'd begun the great mental distance from fear, captivity.
At first, she'd resisted. Then she watched what belief was doing, how free of unnecessary cares one could become, face to face with cooperation. The fear became her possession through ritual; she began to live from a part of herself beyond disease, beyond death.
Now, at least, she feels better, and someone else feels good. And if sadness is to be, between them all, the separation may not feel so painfully lonesome. In fact, the conditions for a spirit to visit---to be treated as a presence, felt beyond mortal fear---could they be any finer? Everyone would understand. An entire community knows. The character of fear, the bereavement, could be transmuted---is that the word? Still, she watches the visiting Mossi trader parking his motorcycle, detached, with a bubble of sorrow inflating now, and takes a deeper breath with heavier eyes...
Thurisa, she thinks, willing a thread of power between herself and the baby she wishes to comfort. Here is my life. Take my warmth---please don't be afraid.
In the tension, Mary's bowels trouble her. Mary believed she'd quietly side-stepped her death sentence; the diarrhea she feared would dehydrate her body has been absent so long. Wasn't I the fool, believing some place is beyond harm---as though we can be good and wish it away!
She crouches, remaining concealed for privacy as she watches more of the new arrivals fleeing the Congo, passing here in Dano. Their wretchedness state of clothing marks the refugees. If only our neighboring countries weren't so torn with greed and killing, there wouldn't be so many still born children. Or refugees. Sick to her stomach with anger, she realizes she must calm herself, ashamed at her unwelcome towards those proceeding to the water, life preserving, without which the tribe passes away.
So that is what it is like to fear the downtrodden.
An image of her friend Thomas---my gay magician buddy---eases her mind, brings an awareness of the fear itself, like the joy, childlike in equal measure. She blinks back tears, resolving to see him after delivering water to her hut.
Unless someone asks, I'll keep this to myself, I can't spread this feeling! How can I greet everyone 'good morning'? Happy things can be said, even when days begin in unhappy things. What of the birds, singing in the baobob tree on the left hand side of the path? Her evaluations shrink quietly, like one of many obstacles an ant might notice upon the ground.
She continues vacillating between sorrow and solace until she reaches the hut, tears welling in eyes lit by dawn as she kneels with the pots and calabashes. By night only, she shares this earthen hut, always safe, hearing, feeling the breathing of the women and children, even when she'd first arrived, when the thilduu, the hearth shrine, was still enfolded in mystery, brightly colored carvings. In a way, knowing of the ancestors, the closeness of their world, its place in the hearts and imaginations of her precious Dagara only deepens the mystery, though all her alarm over the supernatural---she'd avoided thinking about it 'too much' at first---faded as she saw it naturally incorporated. Life was less sophisticated by a material standard here, yes; did she find, in sophistication's place, an honesty nonpareil, based on love and appreciation? Isn't that worth the hardships we bear?, she implores, to some witness self within. Is it?
She starts the fire for the largest kettle. I can take Sisquekwo warm water. Maybe Wobogo or someone can help me get it there. That's what I love---no one has to do anything alone.
There's a soft tug at her sleeve as she stares into the fire, lofting some hopeful part of her from the ashes, hope that slowly descends, mist-like, her presence comforting Sisqekwo and all her house. She turns from this inner sanctity to find it reflected without, in the face of little Naylan, watching her, awakened by the shoveling of ashes, stirred from dream to hug her unconditionally.
"Mam nanga feom," Naylan Da says.
"Mam nanga feom (I love you!)" replies Mary, stroking his head, shaven for summer.
They speak of their dreams, as Sankanthu Da, who remembers no dreams, arises to play with Naylan and aid in morning chores. They take great delight in Naylan's tale of reptile giants, like crocodiles, shaping the world with new mountains and oceans.
"Maybe you dreamt of the creation of the world," says Sakanthu. "I've never heard it that way!"
Mary dismisses herself from their company and the warming water, departing for Thomas Sankara's hut.
"I think we will go welcome Thurisa today," Naylan says, provoking cooing from Sakanthu. "When she comes, we will all know happiness."
Still sometimes I hurry, Kulinah thinks, grateful to head straightaway to her objective. Early on, she'd beg excuse for the embarrassing irregularities of her condition, only to find no one was particularly bothered, even offering ritualistic health. Her resistance to ritual lessened, and then in time, she found the rituals had replaced the anxieties, even most of the effects!
A quick dismissal doesn't seem appropriate in the presence of Osun, one third of the Hienbe wedding party planned for the next day. They'd first met, chasing the elephants out of the strained rivulets of the cracked riverbed; the elephants tended to keep a trail near water. She'd introduced Mary to "monkey bread," the sweetly, slightly acidic enormous oval sacs, picked off the trees for a delicious jolt.
"Kibari, Kulinah!" says the topless, stately young woman, with the Yoruban first name and Fulani looks. She'd attained baskets of leaves for shea butter from a kerlite tree, doubtlessly to prepare cooking. She puts them down for a hug. Something in Osun's love, thinks Mary, is full of every one's love! She wonders about her, the wedded life ahead. She replies, squeezing Osun tightly as she speaks:
"What joy you must feel, making your vows open to all!" She finds, in the strange language, an eloquence here, after the burdensome clichés piled unthinkingly into most of her life, erased by new talk in this ancient land.
"And you are most welcome, too, my far-away bird!"
"Are you nervous?"
"Oh! Unafraid, but yes, so much attention! What did I ever do to deserve so much, besides follow my path?"
Something deep within Mary-Kulinah stirs, a point of view open between dream and waking, an idea that titillates and comforts simultaneously. Perhaps, she thinks to herself, of something so irrational, yet possibly magical, so long denied.
"Osun, come with me if you want to share conversation. We are going to see our thildar friend."
Osun pauses thoughtfully. "The gateway Thomas?"
"That's the perfect way to say it, yes!" she replies, taking the hand offered, with its aloe scent wafting in the breeze-born rustling.
"Na an bi baro ke (let's hang out)!" Osun says. "Nib'I fe (I like you!) Ed looge (let's go!)"
*Mary listens to Osun's joyous chirping , as she caresses a gaa tree reaching out of sight into the sky. They pad the cool, red earth; a kerlite tree rustles nearby, as Osun hums before speaking.
"Oh, the yolon! My wedding will have a balaphon player! You know, like 'tinka tinka tink-tink'," she says, pantomiming a xylophone, hammering its bars to some danceable rhythm. "I'm sure you didn't know at first how many people have taken on the name Thomas Sankara. That was one rare president! No air conditioner and one refrigerator; an honest, four hundred-fifty dollar a month salary, an all-woman motorcycle honor guard, a guitar, and a mind full of compassion for what all the tribes need."
"He sounds like one of us," says Kulinah. Us.
"He still is one of us," says Osun with cheer. Mary Kulinah contemplates how happiness marks Burkina Faso, is part of its identity as surely as poverty and the danger of malaria. But why doesn't that joy survive the education process more often? Why couldn't a few more tribes people acquire Western-style skills for improving the quality of life? What could anyone now do for Thurisa? Who could save Sisquewo?
"You have a furrow in your brow," says Osun. "With that place to plant your millet, you are already for the rains!"
"Ha ha! You darling," says Kulinah. "Tell me of your wedding some more. I like your thinking."
"You know, Kulinah, the wedding is a happy occasion, but the exciting part is soon, when we gather at the caves, and the three seeds and the four seeds, girl and boy, will be rubbed across my skin, and I will call to the baby we will have!" Osun squeezes Mary's hand as they come to the gnarled little tree beside Thomas' door. "Maybe you will be there, praying with me. All these people, their loves and cares, chose to be here, to do all wrongs and sometimes, in spite of themselves, do right. So much goes right, I suppose we must stay all right with whatever comes our way, so that we may continue receiving also the good that is our due, and continue to attract that, also!"
Did you read my mind? You read my heart.
"If you were fishing and caught an old shoe," Mary responds aloud, "you'd remember there's still fish to be had."
"And if the shoe's still useful," says Osun, vibrantly, "perhaps you'll catch the mate!"
They laugh, they touch each others' arms; each shares energy, as they stand before the antechamber of Thomas Gateway's, the small enclave added to a larger compound, a place to hold a few useful things.
“I wonder if he’s home,” Mary says, “Thomas gads about the village at any time.” Since the entire village is a good place to think, Thomas chooses not to confine himself for his mystical traveling. The village helped him quite incidentally make time for others. He suddenly appears without a knock.
“Osun! Mary Kulinah! Won’t you come inside?” He embraces them, exchanging a few rapid-fire phrases in Fulani with Osun before pear-shaped Maura arrives, excitedly beckoning her elsewhere.
“Yell ka ye’ (no problems)!” says Osun. Behind her retreating figure, Mary observes Raoul and Johmay nearby, closing a conversation for a casual moment of silence, as though the inspiration has quickly occurred to them both to acknowledge a pervasive, quieting force, momentarily exposing the simplicity of being. The silences in being together are an everyday sight throughout the village, indubitably respecting the need for something like solitude without loneliness. Here, I felt, fit to burst, to spill sorrows to a completely receptive friend. Could it just be enough to know I could, and not add to the burdens others carry?
But what I want to ask---about this life, with the chance to catch that other shoe---it’s been---“
“Ooo, come inside, I need you if you please!” says Thomas, already pulling at her wrist.
The horror of what was done to her---the betrayal she felt she’d always feel from the justice system, the terminal reputation of the disease inhabiting her body---none of the things without redress could haunt this shared life for long, and memories of pain became too small and selfish a shell to contain the growth of her new form. If this village could not shelter her from further disappointment, was not proof against all irresolution, still she could not find the fault within herself. She wonders, in the balance of things, if her life doesn’t belong to Thurisa---belong to the dream. In what way?
“I have much to prepare today,” says Thomas, simultaneously plopping on the floor before his handmade wicker chair, suggesting Mary take it. “So if you please, take this shea butter and rub my feet! It is all in the world I need. I will be so very strong for everyone, but I need to be served, too, thank you, that’s soo good! I’m recuperating rapidly! But not too rapidly,” he adds with a cocked grin, “I want you to get all you need from my feet!”
If ever there was a man who was in this world but not of it, my friend qualifies. And where I grew up, you’d only laugh at the idea of a bisexual witch doctor---yet here is the most natural person I know. She reapplies lotion, awakening nerve endings in Thomas’ toes, thinking of these feet, their steps putting his wisdom and healthiness in the ways of those his soul intended. He had showed her how not to keep the raging storms of emotions pinned, nor to allow them to rove the subconscious unacknowledged. When she sat in the ash circle and vented her bitterness---however undeserving she felt about embracing her hurt initially---she lived a new way, open minded and open hearted, as she had been before the Robinhood scam, but with greater self-respect, for choosing to bear the trials with meaning and grace.
“The ancestors share our concerns over beings flowing into their new forms,” says Thomas, returning the favor now on her feet. “Mary Kulinah, dear, take time to love the red clay with your hands as you do with your feet. With each step is a kiss, an agreement to make a way for you, your own. Before you went inside your mother, before you became a part of this world, without earthly expectations, you selected a life of your needs and your service. You decided on this foot rub, and the breakfast you’ve forgotten about, and every friend and every word, even if you didn’t quite know them yet as they are! My namesake was executed at the hands of his best friend, whose justice was taking over the presidency.”
“I never knew that!”
“Yes! But in a fundamental way, they both made that choice—because of a lesson, an example towards which neither realized they were working in life---and then, there it was! And these lessons are worth our lives---even very good lives of forgiveness are laid down---because these choices are for borrowed things.”
“All our time is borrowed,” she replies quietly.
“All time is made for borrowing,” he says, draping his right arm around her shoulders, he, a few inches shorter than she. “All the experience is your own. Well, your water’s ready to share when you arrive home.” Did he mean the water boiling at the compound? A metaphor? He meant to send her on her way, gently, so signified with a kiss atop her head and a light squeeze on her shoulder.
“I’ve borrowed your time enough, Thomas,” she says, “but I’ll repay it everywhere.”
“I’m the one who’s borrowed you,” he replies, as she makes for the doorway. “See you!”

Much of her caar---her matrilineal clan---already had arrived. Many neighbors at rest outside the banco walls of the hut sing or pray or handle stones or light the candle way.
I am that child. I feel as though I am that life.
Gather around me---we’re going to top ourselves!
Traveller, dear---chiekuo or whatever you are, we’re all travelers here---If you find it unnecessary to cause this pain to your mother by leaving, please don’t. You’ve got to understand---you are where all understanding begins, and you know, as you begin your life, you will mean so much to these people. We’re here for you, wherever in the universe you go. With you, I understand how everyone thinks and feels, and love them like Thagba, like Christ loves them. From where you stand, in infinite mercy---from grace---everyone’s someone who is understood, who creates themselve s.


This is a sample of ch. 8 of my novel
Current mood: blissful
Category: Writing and Poetry

The Head is a place you must learn to make your friend (also, "No Wasted Time")

The head is a place you must learn to make your friend.

From the beginning of this blog, I had two original ideas: one, give my personal history to my friend who I haven’t seen or heard from after two decades, and second, for the writing to energize his efforts to heal himself.

Now in my friend’s case, tackling a wildebeest would be more fun than his headaches---don’t know the cause, can’t cut the medication---it’s a defining distraction, let’s say. So whatever problems you face, be thankful if you’re head is a physically comfortable place. But don’t feel sorry for T.J. If you’re an expert on chronic pain, I’ll gladly put you in contact with him!

My friend Tammy Brewster is cleaning her house today in Georgia, wondering how she managed to find things this way this fine spring day. For this writing, I go to a room in my head I’ve been meaning to straighten for some time, kind of picking up this and that so you can get in but mostly just peeking in and smiling and saying, “that’s something I’m going to get to on such-and-such a day,” meaning you’ve just made peace with the fact that you are simply not going to get to it now, however much you sincerely may care!

You can work with yourself and your surroundings to create the state of your mind. It’s one reason silence is such an excellent starting point for finding a useful thought. As soon as you are able to stop your thinking and glide for two seconds, you are living!

"no wasted time"

So I’ve set out to be the peace I seek in others, the laughter I seek in others, the wonder I seek in others. I got a crash course in the nature of such things when I married a girl I’d met six weeks before.

The insight that’s come to me is that I should always remember the day we drove across Kansas, because we had not planned to be there four days before, just as we were then completing a trip to Colorado that I had not planned to take with her, since we had previously never met.

There is a feeling running through the beginning of things, a greatly inspired sense of assimilating one’s purpose, summoning one’s strength, and joy, set into whatever relief the situation provides. The joy can simply be turning away from panic or fear, or the joy can be an apotheosis of emotional treasures, for joy is what it is not---but more.

When you like the companionship in your life, you choose it as a goal unto itself. I tend to relate to people as an individual, dealing with existence in the ways an individual does, but the cultivation of my individuality shares in the product of one person, sharing the sacrifices of her life and time while I devote all my life to awakening the work I dreamed I would make, with moment-to-moment bits of clarity assuring me that I have found a way to be myself.
Everything that pours out of my connection to the love that makes creations finds some way into the light of my closest human companionship. Already my privately cultivated world, which I’d so recently learned to successfully treat as my own faithful companion, poured forth in its excited, primal bits, as the novelty of sharing every communication possible spurred me to talk through much of that four days’ ride. We chose to go it without one hotel stay, making our car our home, our love our substance, our journey, our purpose. Somehow we could discover in the elements of some new place a life set to support our dreams, our discussions, the pursuit of a better life.

You begin to know a better life as you find it, and without a doubt, there are healthy activities we’ve learned to pursue that promote well being, with many more we’d like to try; we have the feeling now about our bodies that we were beginning to have about our lives that day, when we stopped in Cloudland, Kansas, music and miles our only companions just days after a hastily-called wedding at her family’s house, the same family from whom she’d never spent a full day. They are people we think of fondly even now, as events would eventually tie me to the pleasure of better knowing them.

There are roads we cannot find when we fear we are lost, and calls that super cede many things that contribute to what is called the pursuit of happiness. Yet there are transitory possessions, and there is the one chance to begin seizing the enduring and critical opportunity to find some place in the siblings of humanity that you make. Fortunately, that chance drifts by the side of the living every second of the day, and its existence is the pillar of my optimism.

That day on the road, started when a state trooper rapped on our window to make sure we hadn't frozen, represents innocence. Later that day I was moved to buy a comic book during a fill-up. I gave it to her to read, and she did so, aloud, to pass the hours of that day that varied between cloud and sun. The Fantastic Four were all normal people in this story, living lives orchestrated to consist of the simple pleasures of pursuing non-super-heroic lives. Well before the Matrix, this story from 1981 or so featured the discoveries of their present existence within tiny androids alive in a constructed setting, set in motion by the man who hates them and links with them throughout their serialized (and fictional ) careers, Victor Von Doom. He's an angry, vain fellow who dresses like an armored stand-in for Death, jealously trying to destroy someone who'd pointed out a mistake to him, which pride would not countenance, leading to his own personal disgrace. But the things you think about, the choices that make your life real or happy, those are the creative inspiration you take away as the fantasy resolves over the course of carefully drawn pictures that lead into purely imaginary abilities and obstacles.

The difficulty of the choice to deny a false yet benevolent seeming reality resonates in the character's reactions, leaving us questioning what sort of denial will we accept if, on the surface of things, some side of ourselves is truly satsified. The surprising exercise of inventing one's own sound, motion and sense of time from the pages, which represent the creative nexus of drawing and writing, stimulated my new bride happily, and she began to glimpse the hidden power of contemporary comics in motivating my academic success and undoubtably the nature of my listening ability, which tended to explode with resonant images carrying emotional content associated with the symbols of each person's words. She did, incidentally, put it some other way, but her observations continue to challenge and delight, as well as aid, her blushing spouse.

This seemed to keep away her nausea; it had not been but since I met her that she’d regained interest in her food. This was final part of a decision to, without outward drama, give up on the wonderful woman she could create and give to the world. I could see she was deeply sincere, truthful to a fault, concerned for people and the consequences of her own actions, and carried an understanding of the wide-eyed dream of the life we all might know, but for the misunderstanding of its possibilities amongst the wide cast of humanity’s participants.
I have never had sorrow more than over what I discovered wasted. But such is one tree down the long path of life. Still, somehow my friendship with this girl evoked everything so warm and generous and humorous about her, provided her with happiness she’d grown afraid for which to hope, if I may phrase it so awkwardly. Truth without guile, beauty without style: if only I could tell you how glad it made me to get her interested in eating, something I could make her do by example of my own faithful appetite, an appetite for a simple life and a common touch while not truly understanding overly much about status or fame. However, an innate sense of guitar playing as the bridge to extemporaneous theater had led me to quixotic illusions that I might assemble from my confused psyche songs and a life of making music for people in concert and do all that position, done successfully, could give me opportunity to do, in terms of promoting, thoughtfully, the causes of the week. The weak.

I have auditioned for many roles to continue my survival, all predicated on honest, no-hassle dedication to freeing an inner muse, while occasionally fearing the outer man would age beyond the successful recognition of those dreams. No one’s dreams should ever be used against them, but sometimes you are simply afraid of death because you cannot deal with wasting your life. Yet you think of how others live with their own dreams, and only in time does it become simple again that life in the broader sense traffics in conflict, since some dreams violate the notions of others, or even the viability of bringing anything from those dreams to light. That is very personal business within everyone.

I’d hoped to pursue the muse, literally return to the mountains I’d climbed the summer before, become a very healthy person with a bright and generous life. Now there was someone there when I showered, there in some park in Tennessee while I’m using the bathroom, even---another person, a female, just as I’d always wanted, beside me in every meal, usually based on some meal we bought just for the purpose of splitting together. All these things I now share with you, I gave them to her, first on the promise that we would decide, in the course of every single day, if we belonged in this relationship, based on the idea that every love requires freedom, though that is hardly the only element one thinks about. I did not want to live a life I dreaded fulfilling, I did not want to live a life with my choice erased. What I found in time, is that once you are accepted for all that you are, in the vision of knowing all that you consider right and motivating and all you would become, you are likely to reconsider every day and conclude without doubt that if you are so happy to see a person smile, if you are so moved by their sharing nature, if you are so enamored of the way they enjoy things and understanding of what causes them distress, you will likely find that you do not need to waste time on reviewing the
quality of your choice, but will probably relish its wisdom.

When you mess with your lover’s hair, when you rub their sore spots, when you get some little thing from the fridge or help them find something or tell them more about something you know they find personally interesting---when you think about who they love and what they’ve learned, when you consider what they’ve done for you, when you wonder what activity might be a terrific fit for the two of you, you are having something that preserves memory, increases the values of one’s personal experience, something that brings peace to the willing and composure to new pictures in life. It is no wonder that much grief is born of its absence.

When she called her parents that spring day to tell them she was half a country away, that her first honeymoon plan didn’t make sense but with enough of everything we owned packed busily into our car, she would not be needing her old job, her old room, nor any worry for her concern, but she had decided we should try my original plan, to leave the hometown and search for a fresh start. The fact they trusted and loved her meant the choice of the help was only a phone call away, but she took this leap without more than a phone number to an apartment manager---actually, purposed to house mostly elderly residents, by my dear friend David’s mother, my host the summer before one week. I’d had a taste of adventure out there, and I found a satisfying way of mixing with total strangers.

Sometimes you long to get away and sometime you yearn to fall in love. Imagine the feeling of one day finding yourself in the process of both. That’s something you can check for perspective whenever you’re working along the flow of Who is going to become What!