From here to there, shadows on the water

Things change.

Stores close. Eras end. Dynasties topple. Relationships, good or bad or indifferent, evolve or stay the same. I still live in the same town, same house, still walk the places where we walked. I see changes everywhere, slow, subtle changes, things slipping away, getting softer around the edges, a world filled with grand Etch a Sketch shakes and No. 2 pencil erasures. Things we shared and places we visited are now folded deep into the recesses of our past lives, but their soft, shadow-grey reminders were, for the longest time, still all around us, egging those old emotions on, the way a stick can find old embers deep within the confines of ash. Now our infamous acts and the notorious places we haunted are, thanks to the passing of time and the vagaries of commerce, disappearing fast, being buried by the sands of time. To that end, a list..


The Manette Bridge: closing, to be replaced

Pat's: shuttered

Hiro Sushi: once again closed

China Chef: on it's third or fourth evolution

Paging Department: new look, an old hire of mine now the leader of the pack

The Port Orchard branch: a place my shadow will never cross again. Yours? Highly improbable

Hollywood Video: bankrupt

Corner of Wheaton and Sylvan Way: a defunct meeting place

Summer Reading Club: the kids are grown and there's that decidedly strong lack of parental interest

Conference: Chelan is a place to visit not to travel to

KRL Foundation Gala: "I gave at the office"

Allies, beards and fellow staffers who looked the other way: all ghosts in my past now

The Rodeo Drive-in: still the same but without the chance of a secret rendevous

CalCoPo Forest to the Sea Book Discussion Group: shuttered indefinitely

Northwest Passage Toy Soldiers: mothballed for the duration

92 Honda Accord Wagon: worn out, broke down and sold

Corelli's Mandolin/Time Traveler's Wife/Mama Mia/Love in the Time of Cholera: all movies now

Connells Dahlia Farm: no more walks between the aisles of raging psychedelic dahlias

Rosedales: a weeding/pest removal joint, no more questions to be asked

Cinnamon Twisp: bigger, brighter, far less funky

United Way baskets: hard to say, all I know is that we started them

As for you I catch your shadow when I can. Saw the back of your head in a shot in the Sun. Something to do with graduation. Perked me up but I let it go. Our old long forgotten times are fading fast. Soon there will be nothing left but old photos in the bottom of the satchel, ripped around the edges, colors shifting, fading, with no references tothem other than my old memories. Memories. What else could possibly be keeping them alive? Is a form of CPR for ghost town lovers needed to bump those old hearts back to life?

Nah, let them fade. Let them rest in peace. And live on, in the recesses of my strong and softly beating heart.

Your WHMB

The new "hun", 7/06,06/10

Got a letter today, a short, sweet note from a horse-woman who wants me badly. It's already got the earmarks of a whirlwind romance, from dinners on the fly and evening walks unadorned to sleepheaded Sunday afternoons on the couch watching barely watchable movies. But what set off this note, and what set me on this flight of fancy, was being call "hon" once again. It's an endearment rarely heard outside of a greasy spoon diner, and usually when a woman calls me that she's got her hair up, her spongy soled shoes on and is carrying an order pad, as in "want cottage fries or hash browns with that, hon?"

So, I was surprised, that's all, the way that I was surprised when you called me that in the aisles of Fred Meyer's years ago. It was a hit and miss, you called, I came, kind of shopping moment. How did you find me, considering the Estranged One was back, living in the front house with the brood in tow? How was it we that found each other in that busy store, ended up connecting like two gummy bears in a plastic bag on a hot day at the beach? We gravitated towards the furniture but knew better, found ourselves in the end in the gardening section, wandering between large plants, oogling at yard tools, standing too long in a popular summertime section of the market and ended up being a magnet for friends and acquaintances. We stood there, parrying questions from pals and neighbors until time and common sense ran out. We left it like that, and met again early the next day, a staff meeting respite, a quick burrito shared, mugs of coffee passed around from a hot thermos, as always, on the worn wooden bench at the harbor observation booth down the walkway from the branch.

It was all grand, the start of a grand week that ended in the greatest bust of your life.

Today I woke with two of the kids sleeping in pockets around the house. I padded down and opened my email, looking for news, word of a job, for notes from friends and for friendly notes. Never anything from you, and baby, and believe me, I don't expect it. So when I found that note from my new friend, oh, yes, all too new, almost too new for that kind of endearing word, I was taken aback, pleased, honored and yet worried just a bit. When I was gifted with that sweet endearment by you oh so long ago it stuck like a burr under a saddle blanket, it touched me a like a firey branding iron. I still wear the sonic impact of that word in the deepest recesses of my brain. It comes on like a slight throb, the kind like you get in the back of your head after a long fever or a bad infection. Something akin to malaria, something that just never really goes away.

I wish had a form of quinine for you, M, my dear, something to take whenever that fever comes around, when the slightest of things triggers a remembrance of you. A bit of medicine would be good to have around, something to take when I want to set the record straight instead of reminice, whenever I need to be reminded of your duplicity and the fact that you never left that damned marital bed of yours. I need a draught to quaff whenever I feel that sweet, acute pain coming on. I need something to nip that unhappiness in the bud, something heavy, like a maul, to hit me between the eyes, that will tell me once and for all that, baby, you were no good for me, that you sold me out to God and the Detective and that you, in midst of all your pain and heartache for me and that sweet, sweet freedom I offered you, were, in the end, just self serving and shallow. Yeah, where is that damn quinine, my love? Why can't I ever remember to take it when those painful memories of you make me swell and throb like blister on a hot saddle, like an artery about to explode?

I got a note today in my email box from the horse-woman, and she called me "hun". I will take that as a compliment, as a sweetness, as a touch of something nice in the wind. No heartaches, no fire brands, no tattoos, no drumbeats of a relationship on it's way to the gallows. Just a note, a touch to my heart, a kindness from a woman who seems to want whatever it is I have to give, and baby, right now, that's not much.

But, you know, that's alright, cuz darlin' you rode me hard and put me up wet and I will forever thank you for that.

Your WHMB

And when she was asked "Did you kiss?"..

...she replied "And how!"

Five years and running, M. Never a day goes by...

Your WHMB

Wood winds, Mary Mac Park, 6/10

I sat in the very same spot about six months ago. It was a Sunday, early afternoon, sometime after church got out. The sun was beaming down, the air was cold, the sky crisp blue, crystaline light was shining down and through the trees. The evergreens were the only thing outside of the holly that was really green that day, a stark contrast to the denuded trees all around. But what really stood out was this little tree in front of me, standing all alone as I sat on the end piece of right horseshoe pit. I understood at once why Christmas colors were silver, green and red. The berries on that tree stood out in direct contrast to the stripped silver of the bark, in direct relation to the trees across the street, towering up against that bitter blue sky. It was about as sacred of a moment as I could ever hope for for the holiday season. Beat going to church all to hell.

So I went back there today, to that very same horseshoe pit. Brought two cookies along with me, scrounged from one of my Helpline bags. I sat there cooling down from my walk along the Big Pond trail, well, not so much cooling down as chilling out. I waited for awhile, munching almonds, the back lid of the car up, just sitting there, sipping water, watching all the while, waiting for lightning to strike twice. No such luck. But I didn't need luck to sit and admire the trees in Mary Mac Park, and so I sat and munched and watched the wind blow through the trees.

It was a different experience today. The wind, as opposed the light, was the star of the show today. More, it was just the symphony of sound that made the experience so sublime. First the wind would come up from behind, turning the two stands of evergreens on either side of me into some wild sort of acoustic set of speakers, amplifying every move the breeze would make. Then, across the street, four or five deep and a quarter mile long stood a stand up against the drive, standing up and against the winds that were coming out of west. There was this one moment where suddenly I was back watching Captain Blood, with Mr Korngold directing the massive sun filled clouds over head, providing some sort of special effects for the three part harmony of whispering trees all around me. It was highlighted by a wide variety of migrating chirps and twitters, and only marred by the ominous sound of a lawnmower starting some blocks off. By then the concert was over and it was time to leave. My refreshments were finished and I was done waiting. A man will only wait so long when he knows he has water to boil at home.

Jumping in my car I am always tempted to do the route one more time. And today, as I was leaving, all that thinking and waiting and observing paid off. You and yours headed one way down the road and I, with my mind full of wind song and my heart full of light, was headed in another direction entirely.

Thanks for coming. Your wave was greatly appreciated.

Love, Your WHMB