Lyle Lovett and his Large Band, 06,09

"There was a time dear
That once you did love me
and there was a time
You loved me no more"

There is a point to all this, there has to be. There has to be a reason why, for the moment, anyway, that I'm waking up in the morning with just the cat sleeping next to me. Why I am thinking of renting out my back house instead of filling it with my family's stuff. Why, out of a whole calendar year's worth of time, I am only getting to see my kids for two weeks this summer. There has to be a reason for all this.

There has to be a reason why I sit up late at night and type long stories of times that are long past. There are reasons, sometimes unfathomable, why I continue to find signs of you all around me while I make my way through this world. There have to be reasons why the corner of my bedroom and my library are full of cookbooks, why I bought a copy of Shakespeare in Love for a sake of a line you once quoted, why I played Lyle Lovett's first album this morning, and then, in the middle of "If You Were to Wake Up", stopped everything I was doing to sit and listen and shed a few tears.

There has to be a good reason why that that torch for you still burns brightly in the face of all that has transpired between us. By all rights and reason all of this should have shut down long time ago. There has to be a reason why it hasn't.

Is it due to the fact that the rampant symbology of our times is always in my face? Is it because I have chosen to stay in the same town where we once roamed? Because I chose to stay in this house of ghosts? Is it because I still wander the streets of this county, of this state, of this whole Northwest region and know that everywhere I go that somehow we have touched on it? Living here in the same place we walked now has some sort of Midas-like curse attached to it, it has endured some sort of ethereal piercing by Cupid's arrow. I wander about and touch on our times and it colors my life, wounds my heart, fills my with mind with glee and completely and totally inflames my soul.

There must be a reason why I haven't yet moved to Australia or New York or Canada but I'm not too sure why. There has to be a reason why I haven't gone off to cooking school or joined a commune or stepped off into the void but nothing comes to mind right off the bat. I think I'll stay on and continue to figure it all out.

There are reasons why we do things even if they aren't too clear at the time.

There is a reason why I come back here to talk to you. There is a reason why I wake up in the dead of night and turn on the lamp next to my bed to look for a book or a bottle of water and say hello to your photograph. There is a reason why in my Mexican heart of hearts I should be running from my past, or stopping this witless behaviour, or turning away from you but I don't.

I won't say why because it sounds sappy but I think you know why. And as you might say, ditto.

That Lyle Lovett album is part of our soundtrack. When I ran into you last year in that Silverdale Starbucks parking lot I handed off a few books and movies and pieces of music to you. One of the albums was our old standard, Lyle Lovett's Large Band. You passed on it and I think I know why. To hear that album again would have you asking questions of yourself, asking for answers to those silent soundings that crop up whenever you hear the right song, feel the weight of those latent symbols of our times that show before your eyes that are buried deep, or maybe lightly, under the surface of your skin.

You may still wake in the morning and ask yourself why you chose the path that you did. Maybe you still wonder about what it was that passed between us when you go to places that we once haunted. But I am willing to bet that when you finish looking at all those reasons why you stayed on in that life of yours that you turn away from your husband, turn up the volume of those songs that still play in your heart, and dance alone in the silence of your memories.

Your WHMB