The basis of any good folk tale is a story filled with elements of three. Think of any good quester story and the lad or lass in it has to go up against or overcome some combination of challenge or events that add to up to three in order for the quest, the challenge, the story, to be finished successfully. Jack in the Beanstalk is a good example. Up the beanstalk Jack goes, first to grab the bag of gold, then to grab the hen, then once more to bag that singing harp, all in the end to overcome the legacy of the evils that the Giant brought into his family's life. He was successful, but at a cost.
We go out in search of adventure or redemption or grace, and sometimes find that going out once, even twice, is not enough. The third time is the charmer. My dear, I've been going at it in threes...three years, three good friends, three different ways of setting back the clock and three forms of hard lessons learned. I feel like my thousand league boots are getting a bit worn and are needing a rest.
Three things came up today that brought you to mind, Professora. I wasn't looking for them. I never do. They were just there, silent and unobstrusive, waiting to be recognized, just as they always are. I suppose some might say that I obsess, that I force those patterns to appear out of thin air. I suppose if I paid as much attention to the world of finance or the sports pages my life would be completely different, filled with different quests, different symbology, but instead I tend to find things in the world, flitting about, things that lead me back to you. It's not as if I try to find them. It just happens.
I suppose it's not too much different than trying to decern my future while looking at tea leaves. You can't force tea leaves into a pattern any more than I could change the course of that hail that fell and hit my roof this afternoon. I think of chance and know that sometimes you are where you are and things happen. Good, bad, indifferent. My cat probably felt that way this evening when I happened to be in the room when he got that damn collar of his caught in his mouth. Things just come around, things just happen. In the case of the collar I was there to unstrap him. What if it had happened earlier, while I was at work? Or out of town at conference? Sometimes you just have to be there to see how you react, to see what life brings, to make changes, to accept challenges.
Sort of like the way that we happened. We did, you know. Happen, in a big way. A major happenstance. Our year was like a chunk of stone falling out of the sky, dropped hot into our laps. Just like that. "Zowie!" A white hot piece of space junk that penetrated the intrigity of our space suits. We found about out about intregity loss the hard way, the way that astronauts find out the hard way about emergency decompression in space. We took that hit unwittingly, not thinking too much about it at the time, as it was such a small hit but a major life changing force all the same. We heard the "sssssss" of oxygen escaping but went about our lives with a happy smile on our faces and didn't think a thing of it.
I think of the past few years and it seems that every spring has brought new people into my life. People of importance, people who keep trying to change my life by ripping open my suit. I keep trying to find the duct tape, something to keep that decompression they cause at bay. I keep taking hits, walking the same walk as before, thinking that somehow those space walks I take will be different but in the end I keep finding that the moves I make, the words I mouth, the same small dangers I try to avoid are always present. I never seem to learn that to walk "out there" is to leave myself open to hits, to hurt, and in turn, hurt other people, too. Those hits tend to lead to a loss of compression, to a small whistling panic, to small moments filled with dunderheaded wonder. Each encounter that I trip headlong into is yet another rip in my intregity suit. Another big case of "oh my". Or better yet, "damn, here we go again!"
So, today, I talked on the phone with two people who've mattered alot to me and watched a third one pass me by as if I was a column of smoke. It lead me to believe that my life choices, my people choices have been less than sound in recent years. But more, it lead me to believe that I have been trying too hard, since that spring came and you went in '06, to replace you. Instead of laying low, instead of retreating to the safety of the space capsule and building myself up again I've kept up the old ways of doing business . I finally realized that my sense of self, my integrity suit, which has gotten thin to the point of sheer madness, has broken down completely and has left me totally bare assed. I'm to the point where I don't want to waste my time like that anymore. I want to take a break from the dangers of space, leave that whole pursuit and being persued thing alone for awhile. Rather, I want to just lay low, play with my cat. Write my kids, write stories, write in my blog. Strip ivy from the back of the little house. Walk my groceies home. Sweat. Ride my bike. Fly a kite. Paint my walls, cook interesting dishes, entertain without hope of finding love and just love my friends, instead. Wake up alone and sleep tight. All that.
Just like that.
What brought this on? You, wonderful you, delivered to me in the form of a three references, one this evening in a Wes Anderson film..certainly it had to be that relentless Bowie soundtrack and the wistfullness of Hunky Dory. Another came to me in a book titled Music Lust, the reference being just a small note about that lovely Norah Jones album you gave me, mentioning that it was considered one of twenty of the most important recordings of the first part of the 21st century. Then there was this dual Jane reference, one in a Naked Chef cookbook I picked up the other day, the other again in that Life Aquatic film. I don't even have to look for you and there you are, coloring my life.
But you did. Greatly. Gracefully. Like a wicked rainbow or sultry sunset.
I am ready, though, to give it all a break. I need to stop chasing those rainbows and sunsets thinking that I'm going to find you again. I need to sit and watch them, instead. Watch them fade and blend into the scenery and become one with the world, with my heart and with my soul. Let those colors do their thing while I tend to other things, like my garden, my kitchen, my work, my cat, my friends.
You, Jane, you are and will always be my friend, the eternal paintpot of my soul. My neverending font of threes. My quester story without end. But I must say that it's time to hang up that suit, that raggedy integrity suit that we played in, the one that has taken all those hits since you've been gone. Know that it's now washed, cleaned, dried and pressed and hanging up in my closet, waiting for other adventures at some later time and place. In terms of threes the last tale is coming up, then we'll both know how the end of the story goes.
Happily ever after would be nice.
Your WHMB
We go out in search of adventure or redemption or grace, and sometimes find that going out once, even twice, is not enough. The third time is the charmer. My dear, I've been going at it in threes...three years, three good friends, three different ways of setting back the clock and three forms of hard lessons learned. I feel like my thousand league boots are getting a bit worn and are needing a rest.
Three things came up today that brought you to mind, Professora. I wasn't looking for them. I never do. They were just there, silent and unobstrusive, waiting to be recognized, just as they always are. I suppose some might say that I obsess, that I force those patterns to appear out of thin air. I suppose if I paid as much attention to the world of finance or the sports pages my life would be completely different, filled with different quests, different symbology, but instead I tend to find things in the world, flitting about, things that lead me back to you. It's not as if I try to find them. It just happens.
I suppose it's not too much different than trying to decern my future while looking at tea leaves. You can't force tea leaves into a pattern any more than I could change the course of that hail that fell and hit my roof this afternoon. I think of chance and know that sometimes you are where you are and things happen. Good, bad, indifferent. My cat probably felt that way this evening when I happened to be in the room when he got that damn collar of his caught in his mouth. Things just come around, things just happen. In the case of the collar I was there to unstrap him. What if it had happened earlier, while I was at work? Or out of town at conference? Sometimes you just have to be there to see how you react, to see what life brings, to make changes, to accept challenges.
Sort of like the way that we happened. We did, you know. Happen, in a big way. A major happenstance. Our year was like a chunk of stone falling out of the sky, dropped hot into our laps. Just like that. "Zowie!" A white hot piece of space junk that penetrated the intrigity of our space suits. We found about out about intregity loss the hard way, the way that astronauts find out the hard way about emergency decompression in space. We took that hit unwittingly, not thinking too much about it at the time, as it was such a small hit but a major life changing force all the same. We heard the "sssssss" of oxygen escaping but went about our lives with a happy smile on our faces and didn't think a thing of it.
I think of the past few years and it seems that every spring has brought new people into my life. People of importance, people who keep trying to change my life by ripping open my suit. I keep trying to find the duct tape, something to keep that decompression they cause at bay. I keep taking hits, walking the same walk as before, thinking that somehow those space walks I take will be different but in the end I keep finding that the moves I make, the words I mouth, the same small dangers I try to avoid are always present. I never seem to learn that to walk "out there" is to leave myself open to hits, to hurt, and in turn, hurt other people, too. Those hits tend to lead to a loss of compression, to a small whistling panic, to small moments filled with dunderheaded wonder. Each encounter that I trip headlong into is yet another rip in my intregity suit. Another big case of "oh my". Or better yet, "damn, here we go again!"
So, today, I talked on the phone with two people who've mattered alot to me and watched a third one pass me by as if I was a column of smoke. It lead me to believe that my life choices, my people choices have been less than sound in recent years. But more, it lead me to believe that I have been trying too hard, since that spring came and you went in '06, to replace you. Instead of laying low, instead of retreating to the safety of the space capsule and building myself up again I've kept up the old ways of doing business . I finally realized that my sense of self, my integrity suit, which has gotten thin to the point of sheer madness, has broken down completely and has left me totally bare assed. I'm to the point where I don't want to waste my time like that anymore. I want to take a break from the dangers of space, leave that whole pursuit and being persued thing alone for awhile. Rather, I want to just lay low, play with my cat. Write my kids, write stories, write in my blog. Strip ivy from the back of the little house. Walk my groceies home. Sweat. Ride my bike. Fly a kite. Paint my walls, cook interesting dishes, entertain without hope of finding love and just love my friends, instead. Wake up alone and sleep tight. All that.
Just like that.
What brought this on? You, wonderful you, delivered to me in the form of a three references, one this evening in a Wes Anderson film..certainly it had to be that relentless Bowie soundtrack and the wistfullness of Hunky Dory. Another came to me in a book titled Music Lust, the reference being just a small note about that lovely Norah Jones album you gave me, mentioning that it was considered one of twenty of the most important recordings of the first part of the 21st century. Then there was this dual Jane reference, one in a Naked Chef cookbook I picked up the other day, the other again in that Life Aquatic film. I don't even have to look for you and there you are, coloring my life.
But you did. Greatly. Gracefully. Like a wicked rainbow or sultry sunset.
I am ready, though, to give it all a break. I need to stop chasing those rainbows and sunsets thinking that I'm going to find you again. I need to sit and watch them, instead. Watch them fade and blend into the scenery and become one with the world, with my heart and with my soul. Let those colors do their thing while I tend to other things, like my garden, my kitchen, my work, my cat, my friends.
You, Jane, you are and will always be my friend, the eternal paintpot of my soul. My neverending font of threes. My quester story without end. But I must say that it's time to hang up that suit, that raggedy integrity suit that we played in, the one that has taken all those hits since you've been gone. Know that it's now washed, cleaned, dried and pressed and hanging up in my closet, waiting for other adventures at some later time and place. In terms of threes the last tale is coming up, then we'll both know how the end of the story goes.
Happily ever after would be nice.
Your WHMB
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