The Preciousness of Being Gullible

Ah, my shaved headed little friend, your haughty smile made me giggle. A child playing with an empty box thinking it's the best thing ever, too gullible to realize the toys that belonged inside are being enjoyed by another. A little sad, but precious just the same.

Look around little one...

unguarded ....part 2

I have been unguarded at how I simply can not find the words to finish unguarded part one. But really, it only boils down to only one word...Betrayal. Of course this single word trails into others, infidelity, lies, deceit etc., but one can wrap them all up with a big bow in a box called "Betrayal". A trait beyond  redemption, though the betrayer has even deceived themselves into thinking otherwise.

After returning the u-haul, I opened the door to what I know now, was not the beginnings of betrayal, but the middle of it. It began with the first email two years before....and I fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.

It was a rouse well played. I know now, I should have expected nothing more.

 If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck,  no matter how far it runs, or how much it thinks it's a swan,  and more importantly, no matter how much it claims to be a swan, ...it's still a duck.

And already, it has been proven so....several times over...and will continue on still.

Unguarded...no, not any more.

And that was my lesson.

The upside....I still get to fall in love for the first time! Falling in love with someone who really doesn't exist except in lies and deceit...gets you an automatic reset :-)

Unguarded... part 1

It's been years now...long enough for me not to remember when I actually moved here, but short enough that I should. I'm just not sure if I can still count  the years on one hand, or if I need to enlist a digit from my other.

I don't remember the pictures of just before I came here. I remember the feelings. At 41 (or was it 42), I had fallen in love for the first time and as of yet the only time. I never believed the wishy-washy sing-songy tales of love in books, or movies or as described in first person by friends of acquaintances. As far as I was concerned, love was just an urban legend... like God.

An entire year, maybe a little more, had slipped in and out of my consciousness before I closed the heavy sliding door on that moving van. And two more before that until I was able to even call Her into my realm of possibility.Love doesn't happen quickly. It walks on every breath, every mistake, every dream and every thought you have from the moment you are born until the moment it finds you, unguarded.

Even as I laughed at her request to shove a paving stone she had taken a liking to into the only remaining space in the U-Haul,  I didn't really believe.  I didn't necessarily DIS-believe by that point either, after all, I had asked her to marry me several months before. It just didn't punch me in the stomach until a little while later, that belief that I had un-mythed the myth and that love did exist. 

Before the 1,092 mile drive through Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and southern Idaho, before we finally pulled the U-Haul in front of her Cory Barton home, we courted.  We courted in an unconventional, technology ridden, airport hopping, dinner over the phone  with a candle in each state kind of way; but we courted none-the-less. It was almost worthy of  a Harlequin novel but with the steamy heat more tailored to a behind-counter-magazine. It was being bit by a love-bug on steroids.

There were endless hours of  hellos and talk-about-nothing entwined with 'I want you now' and 'only 9 more days' floating on radio frequency signals that bounced between cell-phone towers and days worth of email messages that traveled in tiny data packets across the internet that were too small to hold what we had to say. As the 'only 9 more days' turned into 8, then 7, then 6 and 5...4...3...2...and finally "one more sleep" our chests collapsed until the plane finally landed and still, until we caught sight of each other amongst weaving travelers and spinning baggage carousels before we could gasp for air.

Time together seemed like Mercury seconds compared to the Pluto hours apart and we quickly learned that love making and story telling took priority over trips to Albertsons for food let alone to the Maverick for gas to get to Albertsons.  We would have eaten bread crumbs and toothpaste if we had to in the short half-times when our minds finally stop hmmm-ing from what our bodies did for hours, but we didn't have to;  the hmmming never stopped.  But it most have stopped intermittently, because sidewalks got shoveled, I built a deck, and She created artwork and brought home tests from school that had been graded, a marriage proposal was given and accepted, and children had stolen my heart. None of that could have been accomplished while hmmmm-ing was going on.

The courtship lasted for so much longer than we wanted it to, or could stand it to. This made clear by her ever more common 'You're not coming are you?' sighs over the phone and 'If you loved me you would come now!' texts. Plans were made, a For Sale sign put in my front yard and a well paying job given two-weeks notice.  No more planetary time zone jet lag.  I was going home with her and staying there.  Right after I unloaded and returned the U-Haul.

Mowing the lawn...

I mowed my neighbor's lawn yesterday, before the day got too hot.  I had forgotten how much I enjoy making those straight lines, mowing down all of those generic sunflowers called dandelions, and all of the other annoying weeds that blemish the lush green carpet.  I had forgotten the feeling of satisfaction I get when the extension cord is wound up and put away with the electric mower, and I can stand at the edge of a cleanly shaven lawn and breathe.


Maybe its just the joy of cleaning away the overgrown-ness of things that are easy to clean away - to give light to what is buried underneath waiting for sun and rain.

Maybe it's the pure joy of the senses that dance with the smell of fresh cut grass, wet dirt, sweat, and iced tea.

OR, maybe it's the touch (or more) of OCD that seeps from my pores as much as the sweat does when I mow the lawn, or shovel snow, or any of the other things that once started DEMAND my focus, but are soooo satisfying when I finally call them finished.

It occurred to me, while I was admiring the results, that I'm standing on the edge of more than just a freshly mowed yard, but perhaps too, I have successfully mowed down the overgrown-ness of other things.

The Book...

 For whatever reason, I had a compulsion to find 'The Book'. The Book is a small journal purchased when I was 14 years old. Inside The Book are my first poem, a few insightful sketches, and pleas of acceptance.

The thoughts in this book rhyme, for they are the sing-song lullabies of a young girl already wanting sleep. Pages toward the back abandon the rhymed stanza for a different pentameter...those more suited for awakenings.  The Book, after page 109 is empty but electronic bits and bytes continue and continue into megabytes on this computer. Text files are small.

My poems and thoughts are of joy and pain...not unlike a clown with his smile drawn upside down.Exactly like me. Sometimes emotion can only be expressed in ink, or on keyboards. And sometimes, no, most times, they are left only for me. They are left for me to remember, to purge, and to admire as I see fit.

Sometimes, if I dare, I let them out on blogs like this hoping someone will hear me, that my words might connect with someone who has a Book of their own. Someone who doesn't count on the 5-7-5 haiku, but instead relishes in free form and all its constraints. Someone who knows how to control the words yet let them play into streams of bits and bytes to be tasted by someone like me.

TIME: Part 2 - It's Spring... Time

As fickle as a puppy's attention, so is spring Time. In one instant, warming streams of sun shine through wintered windows, and in the next snow returns to snarl at budding crocus. I think these sometimes violent mood swings aren't completely unwarranted. Fighting through December, January, February, and March to give warmth... to think you have arrived, only to have your efforts pushed aside by snow; This is betrayal, and this, can make anyone, or in this sense, spring Time, very moody.

Time though, as I've said before, can pass quickly. And before we know it, the streams of warmth get stronger and stronger. Crocus, daffodils and tulips find their strength. Humans too, stretch and yawn away their bear-like hibernations to squint at spring Time. Winter windows thaw. Breezes with the smell of freshly mowed lawns and precocious barbeques rise in triumph, for spring Time has arrived again.

TIME: Part 1 - It's Past... Time

Time is a funny thing, if you think cruel can be funny.  Time can lag on forever, yet at the same time speed past you.  It can stop, it can proceed in slow motion, it can disappear leaving us to "where did the time go" hide-and-seek games we play with it. It can deceive us and elude us. Time has no respect for us wanting more (e.g., "I wish I had more time to spend with you")... or less for that matter (e.g., "How much more time do I have to spend doing this?").  Time taunts and teases, comes and goes, passes and stands still, someTIMEs all at once.

On occasion we get a glimpse of  time present, past or a future past de ja vue, and if we sit quietly, it will sit...just beyond our reach, and allow us to breathe.  And in those moments of breathing, we have opportunity to reflect; to imagine; to propose all of the things we couldn't when time wouldn't stand still.  I stumbled across a picture today. A moment frozen in time itself; cocooned in minutes, hours, days, wishes and memories, i-think-so's, and what if's... all of those things that Time carries in its pocket.

The caption is dated Oct. 2012, E's 10th birthday. It should have said her 11th ... but this is proof how time flies.. and even more so if 11 months have passed before the picture is posted.  Time is liquid and slimy; rarely concrete. Except perhaps in those moments frozen in Time, where we can remember conscientiously commanding time to stop by releasing the shutter. Even then we are teased as the feelings... at that very second... can taunt us again and again; and for that, we are painfully thankful.

It doesn't matter whether it should have been 10 or 11... because soon it will be 12.  What matters is.... that the ball was orange and that E was smiling. Neither of which has anything to do with the arrogance of Time. But has everything to do with missing the 10, 11, almost 12 year old girl young lady.