I was scryin' when I met you

The day I first kissed my true love, I was looking for a sign. The MOMENT we kissed, I was looking for a sign. We'd been on our very first walk alone. I knew I liked her, but also that I'd just quit my modest job and planned to catch a Greyhound out of town for Colorado. I didn't know why my bags weren't yet packed to go! So I'm hanging out where my sister, roommate, and their friends, two sisters, worked, along with other pretty cool people (and one or two who are stories for another time, at that). After a fun walk under the moonlight by the river bank over to the new gazebo, we crossed back over to Broad Street, then passed down Opera Alley on our way back to her car. In the middle of that unglorious path, we stopped and stood a moment, hands held, and I looked to the sky above, to the moon above, longing for some certainty: should I follow my feelings and kiss her, when I knew nothing about my future except that I planned to leave for the unknown? I was going to a state where I'd finally felt free for a while, on a vacation trip I took with my friends David and Paul. We'd climbed the mountains one day, without any equipment, just to enjoy the majesty of Red Rocks, and that won my heart and gave me hope, so I thought I'd go back there, do manual labor, keeping learning guitar and writing and practicing with whatever time my landscaping work left.

She looks at me, looking up for about two breaths, my gaze unbroken, fixed on...what? What are you looking for, she asks. "A sign," I say. She looks up too---what sign? She's never been down this way before. I look at her upturned, searching face, and I can not help myself. She is all the sign I need. I pull that face close and feel my whole world change: I kiss her, for the first of a million times to this day.

About twelve today, I popped over to the Island Inn, where she was doing a guest spot at their hotel desk while the managers met for lunch at Nicky Rotten's on 5th and almost Market---across the street from my open window! I was imitating the children I saw playing in the park beside Heritage House, on our way back over to her usual job. I tried to grab her and gently shake her around a bit, demonstrating how kids playing is mostly chasing and doing this! She got me to cool it: here came her boss, and she is still on the clock! He just says hey how are y'all doing. I had my drawing book and the Bridgman's Life Drawing book my buddy in Virginia sent us. I didn't know what I didn't have anymore at that point.


She came to visit at lunch, as she always does: she only works across the street! I'd been calling her "the best ever" in my mind on the way to visit her, and had the urge to tell her that "the Best One Ev-ah!" should be the title to the last section of a very naughty story we're writing for another book collection. I reach for my phone, don't see it, so I rush out to tell her this as she goes down the staircase of our hundred year-old hotel. When I return, it dawns on me: where is my phone? I consider it may be necessary, to get me to concentrate on my work, like I'd promised myself I'd do for six straight days without a lot of texting, e-mails, or Facebook scrolling, as I like to sit and read at least thirty or so updates sometimes on my Home Page, and sometimes go down the rabbit hole looking up songs, videos, and articles posted, not to mention the occasional status thread carrying a good debate. But I still wanted my phone! I wondered if I took for granted all the cool pictures, support and hilarity that phone has brought me in the past two years.


So I picked up Mannikin, the poseable drawing figure my friend had also sent us, in a wonderful second package full of books with lessons, whose progress I'll share this fall, between here and Integr8d Fictions. I'd taken it with me in my pocket to the Island Inn earlier. I was going to use the figure to do a little dowsing, if you will. Holding the figure allowed "him" to help me, basically, to focus my mind on unraveling its location.

I cleared every thought except: where's my phone. I want "here's my phone" to be the result. I looked around a bit, but I was sure it wasn't here, already. I drew a rune, Mannaz reversed, from a bag, when I considered going across the street to wait and see my girl. That means, "look within yourself for whatever's blocking progress."

Then I considered taking off for the Island, or CVS, where, as I told Kisha today, I just came by for a friendly face (and a discounted drink, why not). I got another reversed rune, suggesting "no." Does Angela have it? That really seemed true---though she doesn't leave with my phone and hers both in her pockets, because she can feel she has her own. So, I rustled up my shoes, but now with the idea, maybe I should take something with me to stay busy while I sit in the lobby and wait for her to come down eventually. I don't even turn the knob before she walks in with my phone: manager Chris had seen it and my little ruler and knew it belonged to one of us. She went over to pick it up, and it was in my hand now.


I probably got this phone back about twenty five minutes after she left our room from lunch. I noticed it gone within about five minutes, then tried not to bother with thinking about the phone, but didn't like the idea of her trying to text me and getting no reply for no other reason than that I didn't know where my phone was!


So, I stopped and used a figure--a figurine made for the purpose of an artist, finding perspective---as a focus for clearing my mind and "figuring out" just where my misplaced phone was.

I picked Manikin up to help me feel I knew where the phone could be found. Quickly, my thoughts had turned to the phone being with Angela. It wasn't by accident that she had it; in fact, since she was walking back from the Island Inn with it in her hand, she had it the last five minutes I was looking, which was about the amount of time I was holding my artistic helper. The idea that she had it in her hand and could look at it was an accurate assessment of where the phone really was; now all I needed to know was where Angela was. In the meantime, there was a point where I decided to put on my shoes and go, and that's when she walked in with the phone.

I think you can use any focal point to help you clearly remember the path for a thing you've lost. When I use it to help me find something I've never seen before---I'll be sure to let you know!

Follow this blog