27th of always

March here in the Treasure Valley goes back and forth from a sort of delayed winter to a hyper spring to a peek and taste of summer then back again, all within the span of an hour or a day. Lately we have been treated to early morning frosts, grauple in the afternoon and deep golden sunshine around sunset, all the while frolicking about in the sublime warmth and cool sweetness of a sort of dream like early spring that I haven't ever really experienced anywhere else.

My childhood springs went on forever and those Washington springs, while delicate and blessed with tulips and cherry blossoms, always seemed to be a softer extention of winter, a winter that seemed to roll right up the edge of summer, usually until the 4th of July. I can see that the seasons will be different here and I am glad.

Yesterday seemed to be a taste of what I can expect here, or least ways, what I can hope for, for the rest of spring this year. I know that we parted ages ago but whenever the 27th hits I always pay attention and see if anything might come out of the blue, either from you or the merry gods that seem to rule my life these days. I think that those cherubic faced immortals were smiling down on me yesterday as they gave a chance to play with a good new friend and helped expand my knowledge of this new city the I love so much.

The 27th was always our day, regardless if we were together or apart. Somehow we felt that it was the basis of some sort of national, not personal, holiday, as we always turned it into a reason to be out and about ourselves. It was our unofficial official CalCoPo Forest to the Sea bookclub day, it was our super secret designated field trip day, it was our reason to be in the kitchen making whatevers or to be out in the living room knocking out some acey ducey or some other laugh inducing parlor game. These days I mark the day in my heart and move on, light a sort of mental candle to the day, to the 27th of August 2005, and then find something else to do with my time.

Yesterday I did just that.

Yesterday I hung out with a fellow California expat, a mountain gal, a forest service use to be, a modern day federal number cruncher. She is my newest pal, yet another one from another place, here in a place that is worthy of our time, a time filled with exploration and discovery. Yesterday was a long walk along the Greenbelt with a bouncy Border Collie in tow. Yesterday was a bowl of pho in a cool little Vietnamese joint with no bookstores in sight, a quick trip to the market for pasta makings and other things.

Yesterday was filled with plenty of conversation, music and a bit too much wine and until I filled in a major gap of a papasan chair late in the day on the sunporch, goblet in hand, candles burning, it was mostly an anniversary day that was spent without you in mind. But as always you turn up, and for a moment it was all about you. But, as these things go, just like that day of ours came and went, our happy memory took a stroll and I, well, I went on with my evening, cat in lap, movies unspooling before me and cooking assignments put off for another day, another time. It was good enough for me that I shared my day with someone who finds me enchanting or at least interesting. A good thing all the way around.

So the 27th moved along and I have to wonder if you marked it at all, if the moment, which used to be such a big deal for the two of us, was even on your radar for a moment. For me it always shines, even after all else about us has tarnished and faded away. The 27th was and will always be our day. You may have an anniversary over there once a year to mark your sacred event, but here, in this new place and in this old heart, we continue to be celebrated once a month every month, and sometimes, if the sun and moon and the stars are alligned just so, every time my heart beats..

The 27th of always, indeed.

Love always

Your Wild Half Mexican Boy

Tatami mats

"Ah, Japan..."

It was one of the first letters you shared with me, when we were both still plugged into the KRL system. I have no idea what it was there between us that allowed for that first series of letters to continue there on company email. I have to think it was our time before the moon, the tasting of raspberry pops, the wandering through the berry thickets, that time shared working on your stories going round and round the J high track that did it, that allowed for those first peeks into your world, at first camera shutter fast, then longer, lenghtier glimpses into your thoroughly land locked, culture bound life.

In a lot of ways our worlds were both similar at the time, both dictated by the whims of family, activities and church. Both of us led fairly insular island like lives, sheltered away like those ancient Japanese before the arrival of Perry. We had our daily routines mapped out and programmed. Our lives were scheduled, our days planned, our psyches wrapped up tight. But maybe we weren't as tightly wrapped as we thought. After that sit before the rising moon we came apart like a kimono obi, unraveled the more we shared, and then, in the course of a conversation or two, realized that we both shared a love of all things Japanese, a love for the land, a common taste for the food. Somehow we took that mutual affection for a far away land as a chance to form yet another bridgehead and turned our separate but mutually insightful times in Japan into one of the nicest series of letters you ever shared with me.

Funny to think that those letters, the only ones that managed to survive the big purge of 9/27, has the ones that helped to hand me my head in a handbasket. Ah, the seemingly innocent things we retain, the swords that we lay down on that cut both ways!

But, no matter, that's all long gone and life is being lived in a new and better place. What mattered then and what matters now is that connection we both have to Japan. I think of my time there in the military and long for a return to that lovely land as a civilian, to see those wonderful people again without the stigma of US NAVY attached to my being. Somehow I always thought that Tokyo, even more than Oaxaca or Paris, as the city I would have loved to have expereinced with you overseas. Springtime, with cherry blossums falling from the trees. The mad hustling along the streets of the Rupongi district. The sun setting on the slopes of Fugi. The Buddha statues in Kamakura. Kabuki in Kyoto. It was there for awhile, and for a bit it wasn't hard to imagine it happening.

Japan was the game changer for me, a fundamental shift of my conciousness occured there when I was a lad and a big part of my heart lingers there to this day.

So, when I read the papers, skim the newslinks online, listen to NPR, all I hear is sorrow attached to those horrific tales of earthquak, tsunami and nuclear meltdown that Japan has suffered through this last week. I think of that beloved land and all I can feel is a deep and profound sadness.

But even more than that I am reminded that life is short, sweet, yea, even bittersweet. Through photographs, videos and first hand accounts I can see very plainly and graphically how all those things we hold dear can be wisked away in an instant. Now is the time to let those folks who matter to us how much we care, how important they are to us, how our lives have been made so much better, that life has been made oh that much sweeter for their being in it.

It is more than tatami mats, Sumo wrestlers, New Years nights in the Akihabra district, functional subways or moonlight on Tokyo Bay that we missed or wish we could experience again. It was a time and a place that struck a mutual chord in both of us, a land that was our common touchstone, a special place in our hearts and lives that has been hurt and has been bled out that makes this note, sent to you from a far, from a place far back in our personal space and time, important.

Life is short, M. Know that you matter to me, still. Nothing on earth can ever change that.

Be safe, happy, all that,

Your Wild Half Mexican Boy

View from the cockpit

The rain is hitting hard and heavy. There has been the threat of rain all day, but it wasn't Puget Sound heavy skies but one large, alien spacecraft looking kind of cloud, lingering, foreboding, hovering locally, keeping all of us guessing as to when it would break. Well, the wind came up, the trees starting blowing sideways and like a good cloudburst will do, it let loose, cancelling the boy's lacross practice for the day and causing a run on our meager supply of grocery bags. No wet books, please.

I sit at the back of the bus, bus being apt for the Thomas product, bus not so much in bench seats but we have the aisle up the middle. No students on board for the moment, as the wind is blowing even sober minded drivers on down the road and away from us. No, we have a mobile library here, stocked with primarily best sellers, childrens picture books, a handful of large type, a smidgeon of audio and a movie collection that is the rival of any Netflix line up in the land. We hear how wonderful our movie collection is all the time. Well, we pad it now with a few more classics and foreign but that is a better take on our mission: to spread the word about all that good and great to see, read and hear, not just what Oprah or the Idaho Statesman has previewed that week.

The back of the bookmobile is my territory. I sort of made it happen by default. I like the way I can spread out back here, lay my backpack, lunch bag and jacket out and know that no one will care about the mess. Sure, it's a public space but we have no coat closet, rest room, break area or locker arrangement. Folks know to look for me in the back, my colleague J up front.

From the back I can look out over snowfields, parking lots and playgrounds. I can see class loads of children arriving, give a holler when car loads of patrons pull up. From my seat I can perform crowd control during those heavy after school sessions, keep an eye on the lay of land when the shiftless arrive, do an inventory in my head of what we need and when we need it and then, when things get slow, send my colleague along to branch to fetch it.

The colors are contemporary library hues of blond wood and rugged tan/turquoise/burgundy indoor/outdoor carpeting. We keep the soundsystem going most of the time, lower when J is a the helm, a bit louder when I am on my own. Jazz, world beat, classical, a bit of Windham Hill. Good background sounds, no lyrics, mostly pink noise and generally the same album throughout the day. Sometimes that's a good thing, that plain wrap anonymous sound but then again with some jazz albums you gain new insight the more you listen. And listen we do even if it's a volume that's a bit lower than I'd like.

The winter is passing and spring is on the horizon. As the days get longer and warmer we tend to burn the heater less and the lights less frequently. It's been a good post so far, quiet some days, rambunctious and rowdy on others. We are piloting a shut-in program in one retirement home and hope to expand that service to other places soon. I am hoping to start a new movie appreciation group back at the branch and have asked the collection development person to look into licensing real soon.

And while it's not quite what I envisioned I find that it's a sweet little good job. Good staff, great leadership, a solid bus to do my good work out of. And that, my dear, is almost more than I can ask for on some days.

So I stare out the window at traffic making it's way into town, most keeping a blind eye to me, doing their best to make the signals, everyone thinking of home, replenishment, libations. I know that will be my story soon.

The cockpit at the back of the bus is now a home away from home. One more home of many that I have made here in the Treasure Valley. It's not the Port Orchard branch but then again Port Orchard is no longer my home, either. One more place to say I hung my hat.

Now that's a thought..a hat rack!

Thoughts fly your way, Professora.

Your Wild Half Mexican Boy

Shelter from the storm

It's funny to think that dreams, sleep, that one safe harbor, that sweet place where those precious minutes spent away from the mundane, from daily realities of work, bills, sick kids, sketchy cats, all that, would end up being a way station to you, to your all too familiar face, to your phantom touch and to that the distant life where you live, deep into and over the mountain ranges that separate us.

I didn't really think to find you there in that harbor of dreams so early this morning but there you were. Maybe it was the Klimnt print of the lovers hanging in the vanity room that paid your passage to that late night voyage. I never know for certain what will trigger those visitations let alone those random daytime waking dreams of you I regularly see, those oh so brief flashes of light, those quick guerilla strikes against my open and curious about you heart, but there they are.

Never mind that life is busy, or, at the very least, caught up in wild and unbridled curiosity. I am like a restless and roaming cat here in Boise, wandering from place to place, sampling this, trying out that, taking in new adventures and adding more new ones to my pile every day. I have this sneaky suspicion that I will be able to play here for years and not wear out this sand box, that I will constantly find new rocks to turn over, all the while finding those old rocks ever more interesting the more I get to know them and understand their value and their simple, exquisite joy.

To that end, in order to better explore this place, to fully appreciate it's play value I have already put two tennis racquets, two frisbees and a basketball in the boot of the car. I took my bike out of the shop and now have readied it for riding along the Greenbelt once the weather improves. I found and laid in a pair of stout boots and a nice hearty daypack in order to better take on the local hills later on this spring. I haven't yet made my way back to our old hometown yet but when I do I will be grabbing camping gear and additional bikes. I look forward to friends coming by, to bike rides along the trail, to walks near and far, all to be better able to know and appreciate this new found love of mine.

Is it too strange to say that I love a town? To be mad about a city? I know how I am, how I can be about new things but baby this place is hard core underneath my skin now and I never want the thrill to end. It has everthing I could ever want..crisp sunny days and brown and green speckled hills, a wide variety of wonderous second hands and delightfully seedy dive bars, magnificent tree laden streets and street after street of stately old homes, endless vistas and long country roads and when the skies are clear, mind blowing sunsets. After living in such a small and quaint burg for so long this medium sized city seems to me to be a metropolis, with numerous library systems, a university, outdoor activties, cultural events, enormous well maintained parks, endless new eateries to try out and always something grand and interesting to see, visit, explore off over the horizon.

It has damn near everything a man could want, M. The kids are close by, my new old place is quaint, the rent cheap and now that I have a nice selection of small but essential recreational toys bought and paid for, entertainment of the outdoor kind should be inexpensive and close at hand. Making friends, well, I do that more slowly than before but that's alright, too, as those friends and acquaintances introduce me to or tell me about places I need to see, to go to, to try out, in order to be a better, more informed and well rounded citizen of Boise. I am happy for all that, too. Simple, easy, no heart ache or heartbreak.

I stay busy running the kids to and fro school and various activities. Dance recitals are coming up as are lacross games. Soccer is looming as is confirmatio, prom and graduation for my oldest. Life is settling in and it's good here, yet, when I go to sleep and come out on the the other end with thoughts and visions of you so blatantly unsettling I have to wonder why I wandered so far away from the land of sea and forest I so openly and fervently loved once upon a time.

And then, once I settle down and look over my thoughts clearly, I know why.

It's all for the good of the order, in order for us to live better lives. Sure, MyLife let me know this morning that you were out there and that I could see your photo for a price. Were you looking for me on that site as well, I have to wonder? The internet brings you and yours close at hand so I can stay connected without too much of a fuss. But baby, let me tell you, all it takes is a stray Colorado license plate and here you are in the forefront of my mind all over again. Ford Focuses are everywhere, faces with your shape are common and then there are those songs, the ones you introduced me to long ago, blaring out of every store speaker.

It's a part of the grand master plan to keep you there on the edge of my vision plane, to have you visit periodially the new landscape of my heart. I am happy and pleased when you drop in because I know that you'll never linger for long. You are a good, ney, excellent guest. Your baggage is always packed, the room in my heart that you occupy always squared away. Come and sit whenever you please as you know that you are always welcome. And know that when you leave that you're always welcome back anytime, to share in the all joy that I am burgeoing with these days. It's a glorious time and it's all good and I am more than happy to share.

Yes, come take safe harbor in my dreams, my old friend, my one true love. It was good then and it's all good now. Welcome now and always and please weight anchor whenever you wish.

In the meantime, let's go play in that fieldsof dreams, shall we, Professora? Goodness gracious, yes! See you there!

Sweet dreams,

Your Wild Half Mexican Boy

Oh, and as for that Winslow Homer Storm painting up above? I see every day as it hangs on the wall across from my bed...