The First Draft Was Too Much to Take.

Time has streamed on enough through me that, some moments, I can no longer recall how they began...or even ended; I try to remember as much as I can, but at this dimming distance from youth I just treasure know they happened.
One moment here: sitting at the north shore of the island where we lived; sitting in the warmth of summer. A moment there, crosslegged on the grass together by the cyclone fence smoking shared clove cigarrettes.
And tonight, some thirty-two years past, we sit in your basement with the TV on as an excuse to be there alone. Maybe there was music, was it beautiful? Did my emotions shape it beautiful, even if it was just a show? There was a chair. We were in a chair...a round, warm, beanbag chair on the floor in a quiet corner of a so happily alone and empty room...with an excuse granting television, and quiet, and you, and I, together.  And this much I'll say: we were kissing, so slowly, so wrapt, we were kissing; and do you remember how it felt and how we felt and all that happened in that brief elysian? I remember just that part, just that briefness. And I know that you do too. So, what matter to put it down here for outsiders to read? The moment that happened then. Just imagine if I wrote it, what stirrings the next passage would bring...

Midnight Dancing

I didn't see too much that was beautiful in the Army. Mostly, it was being away from home, working till I collapsed, and doing things I still think about at night when the house is quiet. On occaission though, I was in just the right place at the right time.
There was a night I pulled advance scout duty on an air-dropped resupply. We were in a forest clearing far from any roads. It was my job to watch the lead edge of the field while we waited for a food drop that, when it came, burned into the ground when the parachute failed.   So here I was at the center of the lead edge of an open grassland. I felt exposed and not ready to be found.  Crawling on my hands and knees I worked my way beneath a scrub bush no more than two feet high. The air was warm but still that night and stars shown through the miniature gnarled branches that had themselves seen better days. 
I laid there waiting for the plane.  I was hungry and willing it to come.  As the night quietened I noticed strange patterns in the sand. Tiny prints had been laid down upon the earth between my hands. The prints curved and curled around, no bigger than a match heard.  They dissappeared down a tiny burrow no bigger than the cylendar of a ciggarrette. As I watched, a beetle slowly climbed out and on to the silvery ground. It scuttered up the branches of the shrub soon was joined by it's mate, slowly creeping in line from the tiny underground lair.  They buzzed as they climbed and soon were up to the plants highest surmountings. In a flash they lept into the air to ballet around the shrub in softly buzzing, circular slow motion. The dark stars overhead flowed slowly on with the beetle's circle dance in queue beneath for all the night to enjoy.

A Year Later

So almost a year later to the day, I'm finally getting ready to rise to college.  I was the last guest to leave an all nighter for me and had gotten good and drunk so I'd look and feel my best for the first day at university. I remember spending the rest of the night packing my belongings, talking quietly about the future and change with my friend Brian Warner as he passed out in a chair. As daylight dragged I was dragging my bags up to the driveway to wait for Ann.
Ann, my friend whom I had met on my way to the jungles of Honduras.  We were inseperable in those days and when it came time to travel away to school, there she was, in the infamous 60's Dodge Dart, pulling into my driveway for us to head to Bellingham together.  I can remember at some point she decided that it was my turn to drive. I had never bothered to get a license then, or learn to drive for that matter. Never needed one; never needed to. But, if Ann wanted me to drive then drive I would. She pulled over and we switched places and I drove us all the to our new home.  I remember her being so excited to sit in the passenger seat for once. We laughed and talked all the way up. 
Finally, at the end of the trip, we pulled into my parking lot where Brian Warner's older brother Jay and I would be sharing a flat. I saw Ann almost every day that year and was frieds with her for years after that; but, the moment I always remember was the laughter on the drive.

Happy Talk

My first best friend was Jimmy Spence.  We were only six years old, in the first grade, and lived in the same neighborhood of Oakland, just by College and Clairmont.  Now six, six is a long way off when you're staring down a very short barrel at fifty. But from what I remember we were the best of friends.  At school Jimmy was first to get to class because his mother dropped him off so early to make it on time to her job at the Opportunity shop. The two of them lived by themselves in a stucco rented house on Agamemnon Court; just past Baskin-Robbins and the bank. 
One day in my back yard Jimmy gave me a big button that said Happy Talk, in half-green, half-purple psychedelic colors. Somehow I managed to hold on to it all these years. It sticks out proudly amidst my collage of family/friend artifacts I keep on my wall as I learned from Jenny Jo. But that's another moment. This moment is the surprise secret Jimmy had in his basement. We went down there once to see what he and his mother kept. Two ancient cement sinks for washing lanundry still stood against the wall down there; the type you may remember if you had grown up in a home from before the age of washing machines. When we got up close I leaned over, looked in, and to my six year old happy surprise, saw with a smile the two grey mice Jimmy and his mom had caught in the house and made a soft home for there. Beautiful little house mice...

Night Lights

Rocky and I snuck out of the dorms and off campus every chance we got. Boarding School worked on the hornor system and security consisted of a clipboard hanging on the wall where we'd sign in and out with towns as destinations, as long as we were back by ten.  After ten was another situation entirely.  Since noone ever checked the beds after lights out we'd just wait a few moments and slip out the door into the night. On one such night, we borrowed the Moto-men's bikes and rode across Spyglass and down to the edge of the Sea.  We had several adventures and run-ins that night; but the part I like best was the furthest distance we got.  Just before turning back for the night we stopped at an abandoned Carmel Beach. Not even the surfers were up and we could walk all the way until we stood in the shallow crest of waves with blackness above us, below us, and far out to sea.
Except for the lights.  In the waves as they died and dried into the sand, here and there were cold little fainting stars of bright blue. Phosphorescence it must have been. And though we searched the sand we brought back in a bag to find the little sources we never did.  All there was to prove they had been there at all was the memory of the moment of silent blue stars on the beach.

While I Was Out

Some moments you don't plan on happening: learning old secrets, losing a friend, falling in love. Some times they pass you by unnoticed, waiting years to be uncovered by your contemplating mind. And, when they finally come to bear upon you with the clarity of personal wisdom...there you are, enlightened.
   That's was the shape of things when I first realized that I could never fall out of love. You think there would be an end to it. Feeling strongly about the broken, twinned, connection. You think someone would eventually drift out of mind; emotions wash into corners too dim in consciousness to be relit or rekindled.
So there you have it. By the time I knew the wisdom of this moment, the time had passed years on back, in the twilight edge of memory, between a sunrise and a fall.

Model Behavior

I was thirteen, when I modeled for Tia Claussen.  Tia, to rhyme with Compassion; she was an artist, photographer and older sister to the Whiting brothers in the old neighborhood.  She lived on Mystic street in a room in her mother's house, in a room over the garage where she painted, took photographs and otherwise lived while going to artist's college. She was mellow, had Hippie Wisdom and listened to Rod Stewart from his Trans-Atlantic Crossing, an import one can barely find nowadays.  Magie May was her favorite song and since then has been my favorite song as well. At first, and when I wasn't looking, she took pictures of me while I was hanging out with her brothers.  Later I'd see them, matted and showing qualities of myself I had never noticed before.
I was drawn to her compassion, her consideration, her ability to let me know, for the very first time in my awareness, that I mattered, that I was important. Tia asked me one day if I would model for her. 'Will you model for a pastel for me?'  to rhyme with: you're a beautiful person whom people want know. She told me I should hold something in my hands to describe myself. I brought my lacrosse stick and there, in the basement where she sketched, I sat for hours feeling important, feeling cared about as she recorded who I was in her own eyes.
Each day we'd resume I'd find the exact position I had held the day before. She'd look to me with happy surprise and say 'Wow, that's exactly right!' to rhyme with: you're special for who you are. It was the first moment I knew; I was worth believing in. Thank you Tia. Thank you for my future.