David Bowie 1947-2016
R.I.P.
Source: this isn’t happiness
Tag: heaven
Running With Anguilla. On Christmas Day.
“What are the winter months?”
The cab driver chuckled. “You’ve not been to Anguilla Sir?” He paused and continued. “There are no winter months, Sir.”
Who you callin’ Sir? Aha. Old and stupid. 18° 15′ North – standing on the Equator. No seasons.
That was a week ago. It’s 6:10 am. 52° F. We’re trudging up a severe incline at Mianus River Park in Connecticut, back to reality. It’s Christmas Day. 391 acres. No humans, no superficial chit chat – ISTJ magic. Squirrels, Zeke and me. He’s at my heels, the clanking of his steel tags breaking the morning silence. He’s panting. I’m heaving.
It was a week ago. It was 82° F, gusty, the fronds on the palm trees slapping. Anguilla’s beach, fine white sand sifting through your toes, walking on cotton. The sea is warm, clear, the white sand carpets the ocean floor. I’m floating on a thick foam mattress, the tropical winds sashay the hammock. Wispy clouds, paintings, lazily pass overhead. If there was heaven….
That was a week ago. It’s a muddy track from the rains. Footing is sloppy. The Sun is working to burn through the clouds. Mist is rising from the earth. I’m over layered, overdressed and overheating during this December heat wave. And there’s Anguilla. Ever present. But, could you live there? Continue reading “Running With Anguilla. On Christmas Day.”
Riding Uptown. Saving the Best For Last.
The memory was triggered by a tune played on the car radio on a balmy December day last week. A tune I’ve played hundred’s of times since it was released in 1991. A tune that sits on top of the same playlist that has been transferred from iPod to iPod to iPod to various iPhone upgrades for almost 25 years. It’s Marc Cohn’s hit “Saving the Best for Last.”
Got into a cab in New York City
Was an Oriental man behind the wheel
It wasn’t an Oriental man behind the wheel. It was a cab in New York City. He was in his 60’s. He didn’t do much talking, and certainly not about mansions in heaven.
Started talking about heaven
Like it was real
Said “They got mansions in heaven”
Yeah the angels are building one for me right now…
It was July. The midday heat exploded, and like a desert mirage, the waves were radiating off the Manhattan asphalt. All four windows in the cab were down, hot air was gushing in. I took my jacket off, and loosened my tie.
I couldn’t get the words out: “Can you please turn on the A/C?” It was as if my tongue was jacked with Novocain. A/C Broken or conserving petrol?
We’d lock eyes in his rear view mirror. A Suit staring into the deep dark eye of an elephant, with its leg chained to steel spike.
And I know…
They’re saving the best for last
Look around this town
And tell me that it ain’t so
They’re saving the best for last
Don’t ask me how I know
‘Cause it must be
Saving the best for last for me
There was a 34 oz plastic bottle resting in the console, the Polish Spring label worn from the refilling, the hundreds of grips and re-grips, and the punishing heat magnified through the front window.
Classified ads sit on the passenger seat, folded neatly. A black Bic is clipped to the top left, the plastic cap marked with deep chew marks. Continue reading “Riding Uptown. Saving the Best For Last.”
I wonder what she prays for, and if you hear her.
[…]
When I got to the waiting room I saw your mother perched there with her incurable stare. She was in that place where the high probability of failure intersects with a two percent chance of success. Hope at its most corrosive. […]
How is your boy
She didn’t move or look at me, but there was graciousness in her tone when she said
He’s just not so good
When I returned the next day I peeked in to see my dad and then I darted over to look for those feet of yours. When I didn’t see them I stopped a nurse and said, the boy, the tall one, where is he? It was a nurse I didn’t recognize and she clearly didn’t know that you were supposed to be a big basketball star and live to be eighty, she clearly knew none of that because she did not look up and said flatly that they had taken your body away.
That day was over twenty years ago. I’ve been witness to great tragedy since but I’ve never forgotten you. I created different details to your narrative to go along with what I knew and it never seems like what I assume is inaccurate. I feel like by having some understanding of your latitude I can deduce your center, like quantum gravity, which I can comprehend about as much as I can a mother burying her son, but if certain scientists are correct and it becomes possible to bend time, then I’ll be able to ask you if any of my assumptions were correct. I don’t need answers until then, unless the idea of God becomes willing to explain itself, in which case I am up for that Q& A. Where your story intersects mine is at my refusal to accept things too sad for me to process; my reimagining endings that haunt me. It’s hard to reconcile that God is either entirely too secretive or has a totally deficient ability to prioritize. I hear people say, “It happened for a reason,” or “It’s part of God’s plan,” and I wish that made sense to me but it doesn’t. I carry you around still and who knows why. Perhaps there are no answers for us poor humans, but we know a handful of things. We know there exists a planet with four thousand versions of songbirds. Because that is possible and because on that same planet can exist sentient beings made up almost entirely of stardust, and because bonafide poetry erupts mightily from some of those beings, and there is music, sex, and babies that laugh in their sleep; because we are roaming a universe that may be a hologram, with another dimension consecutively projecting itself outside this construct of relativity and gravity; because of all that, there is no reason why my prayers shouldn’t be able to reach your mother whose name I didn’t even know. There is no reason why not, when nothing is completely harmonious with its description, not really, and there is a flaw in every theory of time and space.
From time to time I picture it. I see her watching while you go flying down that court. I see her shoulders moving almost imperceptibly to mimic your bobs and weaves around the other players. She is going where you go without thinking about it, tied to you, following and winning when you win, until you turn to wave and that puts her on her feet and beaming. I do know that if your mother is alive today she is thinking of you right this minute. I wonder what she prays for, and if you hear her.
~ Mary-Louise Parker, “Dear Mr. Big Feet” from Dear You
Photo: derrosenkavalier titled Feet part ten
Running. With Rain.
56° F. Rain spitting on the windshield.
The convoy rolls out to Mianus River for a trail run.
Zeke sighs as he curls in the backseat. Anya settles in the trunk.
The Wolfpack is draggin’.
Their leader rides the slow lane on I-95 thinking about the benefits of a long walk on his joints.
99 days. 3 months + since your last trail run. What a lazy a**.
Rain stops. Clouds hang low.
We pass through the gate.
The Park is empty but for a fisherman making his way upstream.
Both dogs pull on the leashes. A sharp tug gets them to heal.
Wait! I’m not ready for this yet.
I look up.
A gold leaf canopy.
I look down.
A solid gold leaf carpet.
Someone is laying tracks.
Continue reading “Running. With Rain.”