Simple Things

Amount spent on fancy puppy toys to keep Sunny from eating the sofa:  $397

Amount of interest in said toys:  Less than 10 minutes and that was for the $9 "Hurl a Squirrel".

New Favorite Toy:  Abandoned Rubbermaid trash can.

The Weights of the Journey

It’s common human behavior, the need for validation, be it through action, written word, or selfie sent to the masses.  No age is immune to it, which I witnessed recently in the local doctor’s office. One person states, “I had a double bypass!” to which someone else chimes in, “Well, I had a quadruple bypass,” and so it went, some of the seniors comparing ailments as if whoever had the most artificial stems and valves and joints will win. I could not help but think back to a story of the Christian Desert Fathers who tried to outdo one another in self-mortification to die unto oneself, and a monk boasted, “I’m deader than you!”

We all have those moments when someone says, “Oh, I did this, or I did that,” and we immediately jump in with our story. I’ve been as guilty of that as much as anyone; the whole “been there, done that” was probably invented by a type A personality. 

Then you had those moments where what you see and witness were so beyond the pale of anything man could dream up in his personal darkness that trying to compare was impossible. It’s chaos and blood. It was the sound of screaming until the voice was spent, and nothing was left but the ghost of that scream. It’s fate, history, man, machinery, and microbes, and sometimes it’s simply a losing battle with physics. It could be a steep slope that you tumbled down in a flurry of words, or it could be a precarious balance, that moment where you came up abruptly to the precipice, only to stop and find you have no speech.

At that moment, you understood what faith was made of, its severity, its saving grace, and the power of its secular right to your fidelity.

Sometimes it’s the smallest of things, that person on the corner with the sign who may well be a con artist in beggar’s clothes, or someone genuinely sleeping on the streets, their broken bearing sometimes only visible in the eyes, which you would see if yours were not half-averted. It’s shouting at the bathroom door that was sticking as it opened, making a sound wood just should not make, and then walking outside to see someone’s home at the end of the block burned to the ground. It’s complaining to a freezer full of food that there’s nothing good to eat when elderly people who served their country and worked most of their lives go to bed hungry. It’s whining that your welfare check doesn’t allow you to have an even bigger TV and a new car when across the world, where some people who know neither Christ nor comfort sleep on dirt floors among the vermin and the predators, with no handouts and even less hope because that’s what being poor truly is.

Sometimes it’s those big moments. It’s getting up before dawn to grab the bag and head for the flashing red and blue lights when you’d rather sleep in, get in a vehicle, and transverse miles that might as well be days to do what you are expected to do. It’s standing there under a weeping sky that amplifies what now lies beyond your power to heal; it’s accepting that which you have not elected. It’s broken skies and broken limbs as if bent by an invisible hand. It’s harnessing without hesitation the armored heart that lies within a web of flesh and bone, in which you walk, search, and fight the raging fire with little more than your eyes and mind. 

There is no badge in the world, Scouting or otherwise, that could be granted for this experience and the understanding of what it means. If there were, it would be much like the badge we call Faith. Such times make one more fully aware of just how precious this humanity we bear and how easily it is lost (and not just by outside forces). You become aware and grow stronger, like lotuses blooming in a fire.

When such a day is over, it’s hard to turn the mind off; the visuals are imprinted on the brain, a sudden wheel running downhill, a lantern dashed against the wall, the rending of a sheet of paper. It’s hard to get to that quiet place, and when you do, invariably, someone asks how your day was. You didn’t even want to make eye contact, as you have no words for what your day was, what you have witnessed, how you have hurt, and what you have learned from it. There is little to offer up by way of comparison to any other act of Man, God, or Fate that could go against what one heart could witness.

“So, how was your day?”

I remained silent. If someone wanted to go on about their day, illness, money issues, fears, or whatever in my silence, I would resist the urge to speak. For to them, what they were dealing with in their world that day was as important to them as anything that Fate and Earth could proffer elsewhere. Their fear was not unfounded, for it is their fear, and by telling their story, they are seeking hope as well as safety.

Let them have the last word, for there is never enough time to say the last words of our love and desire, of our faith and regret, of our submission or our revolt. To speak them is to shake both Heaven and Earth.

As I drove back from a trip into the city, I saw a man in tattered clothing standing at the corner with a cardboard sign under a sky that had lost its vivid hue, fading from blue to a grayish-green, the color of old glass. As I grabbed a bite at our local diner tonight, I looked at the crucifix worn around the neck of the waitress, laying sharp against her skin as she moved, leaving in her wake the scent of spent flowers. I looked to the people around me in my little community, all carrying their own joys and burdens, which to them were as real as the bruises that remained on my heart. My journey, however difficult, was no more difficult than theirs, our burdens all of different colors but carrying the same weight.

I raised my head to listen. On this day, perhaps, I could give that much to them.

 - Brigid

 

Views From a Deer Stand

The rain hangs like sheets, whipped by the wind, the air as sodden as fabric. I can't see 100 yards, but I don't need to. I might be treading water today but won't be hunting.

Deer camp in a rain storm. The deer aren't moving now. and neither will I. It came up quickly, things in the high country don't meander in slowly. One minute the sky was a pale grey blue, a tuft of cotton building up against the peak. The next, all if that water just emptied out of that gentle hue, sluicing from the sky as I rushed for shelter, too far from the camp to get under real cover.

So I sat and waited. It's easier when you're not alone.

Last year the deer hunt weather was perfect, clear, and cold in the morning. We'd crawl out of our sleeping bags in the dark and didn't get in again until almost dark, putting together the evening's libations. There wasn't a TV in sight, no computer, no cell phones. We played board games and told stories of a hunt in Africa, of love and children, and just how many bowls of venison chili we could eat without exploding.

Waiting out the wet and the dark is easier when you have friends. You can play cards or always do that shadow puppet thing on the tent wall ("Hey, that looks like a Grizzly head - Holy *&#* grab the rifle!). You can laugh and hoist those small, thick glasses of heavy amber that you never appreciated when you were 20, but hunters sip with reverent communion.
 

But when you're alone, it is different. Time drapes across your senses, the water and the wind drowning out more than the hunt, but that heightened state of awareness that is the first kiss of perception. Then comes the rain, and you settle back, knowing nothing is going to happen soon, no matter how much you wish for it. Anticipation is the best part of anything and the rain only wets the desire to see that which waits for you.

Stay put or leave, the decision quivers there as I sit under a poncho, trying to look more like a rock and less like a lightning rod. The water washes the landscape bright, trembling with heat, and the branches lie like gifts on the forest floor, a place both pagan and serene. With a splash of light, the late afternoon sun breaks free, warming me. Sun rays dance on that small piece of skin peeking beneath the camo, such a small space of flesh, evocative of all lost nights and transcended delights, flowing there like honey in sunlight.

 

Should I stay or should I go?

Despite the tales to the contrary, deer do move in the rain. Not the torrential downpour, but in that quiet trickle that is the end of a violent argument between cloud and sky, the deer will move, sometimes becoming less wary, figuring you are in someplace near the fire instead of creeping on sodden leaves to spring. Like men, deer seek comfort, seeking out cool havens in the hot weather and snug shelter when the cold is brutal. They don't like blustery winds, but in this gentle rain on the storm's backside, they will be out if only I am patient.

 

But it won't be an easy hunt, for their reluctance to come out and play in the rain is not about discomfort. The deer's most effective defense mechanisms, the ears, and the nose, are less than effective in the rain. Your movements are muffled when everything is wet, the scent is washed out, and you are not carrying well. They will be in the thickest cover they can find, that big buck relying on his eyesight to see you hunting him. But the playing field is more leveled, as you aren't going to hear him unless he is equipped with a Brinks alarm that will go off as he bolts.

There's a reason many hunters just chose to wait it out in camp. You're not going to climb into a blind and wait for him to come out to see what the rain brought; you will seek what you want. You're going to stalk, in slow, methodical, and deliberate movement, that which you desire. I think about these things as I wait.

Still I hesitate, waiting for some sign, waiting for a sound from the woods, like music moving, the sound of deer creeping past my camp, the cry of a jay startled by their presence, the sound a cloistered bell in the woods. The others had already gone home as I waited, pacing their fleeing shadows because to not wait was to admit that I had made the wrong choice in being here in the first place.

Just a few more minutes, as the sky clears. I will wait, but not too long, knowing that to wait is often to lose. Time and tide wait for no man or woman; sometimes, as you sit in quiet comfort of what you think is yours to keep, it slips away from you. One moment, you're just sitting, listening to the voice of the woods, the Cicada sound of the earth spinning in space, thinking that although you have no wish to change things, all is right in the world. But someone else is watching you, contemplating that moment when you must act or remain forever silent, and you don't. You don't even notice they're gone, only the fading smell of sweet musk in the air, writhing like cold smoke in their wake.

In that hesitation of inattention, you're left with nothing but the breathing of darkness and the cold surrounding it. Nothing behind or ahead of you but the heavy heartbeat of silence you never conceived of there in the systole of a summer night. A moment in which, as the song by Hinder says, you "shoulda woulda coulda," but it's too late to act.

As a raindrop drips from a tree branch, I touch my tongue to my lips, tasting sweet salt. I've waited long enough, and I gather my things, creeping from my sheltered spot, firearm in hand, out into the drawn green shades of approaching sunset. The air has gone cold, the wind stroking with a touch that's neither caress nor dismissal. Under my gear, a murmur of silk, breath a panting whisper. If I stay here, I'll have nothing but cold and empty hands.

I stand slowly, walking out gingerly, looking and stopping. Which way is the wind coming from? How would they have gone? I move steadily out into the shadows, a slow release of silence like protracted desire. Look. Stop. Take a deep breath. Decide. A whole forest is in front of me, and no one is holding me back. The whitetail is out there, and soon, in those woods, the sound of our need will move toward a black powder crescendo, released like a held breath.

I see a fresh scrape. I light a match and blow it out to test the wind. It blazes like a dying star, drowning in the shadow of my passing as I disappear into the trees.
 - Brigid

Sweat, Words, and Truth - Autumn Days.

It never fails—I take my "use or lose" vacation each fall, which has built up since I'm no longer flying to the West Coast constantly now that Dad is gone.  Partner in Grime will be working, so I can use that time to relax and maybe write.  Each year, inevitably,  a roofer comes along, and one of the neighbors is getting a new roof. Last week, the house was literally next door, so there was no ignoring that. Today, it's a few doors down. I'll have some more time off in late October, and hopefully, then the Village won't be repaving my street.

But living in the upper Midwest, getting ready for winter is as much a part of the season as changing the color of the leaves. We had our roof redone already. There's stain on the wooden steps front and back that Partner built to touch up and seal, and flower beds to clean out one last time. Although it's 85 today, it will likely be snowing by Halloween. These are the days of the false conceit of autumn, where the warmth is still a whisper, a promise, a touch that goes suddenly slack as winter pulls all the promise away. 

Too soon, we will have those days when the AC kicks on in the afternoon, and by dinner, you are contemplating turning the heat on before searching for that sweater you put away last May. On those days, the days seem born, already bored, not wishing to stay long, as the darkness descends earlier and earlier each night. I do love those days, though, walking along paths at the edge of the city, where the city becomes the countryside in a sharp demarcation that's as abrupt as a shuttered door.  People fought, struggled, and died to settle these areas, pushing back the wildness to find a safe shelter where they could grow and prosper, only generations later finding the wildness coming back at them from the very civilization they once fought to join.  

I'm in the city for better or worse, but I've brought my "country" mentality to it, living much of my life in a rural setting, including a working farm.  I still recall my last days there - the glare of the headlights that illuminated the front room. A cattle truck came that night to reach the stockyards in the morning. I had woken alone to the rattle coming up the road. Trying to get a little nap before they arrived, springing like a bow from my bed, aware of my responsibilities. As I donned work clothes and boots, the orange running lights and diesel growl outside the window reminded me of Martians landing, searching the house for signs of human life, and the first smile in a long time passed my lips.

All they would find was a lone woman with boots, a shotgun I knew how to use, and a kitchen that once had smelled of cinnamon.

The driver backed around, turning the trailer with a gentle sigh of air brakes up to the wooden chute at the barn. Within came the muffled grunt of the cattle that were being sold. Besides the lumbering truck and its driver and the cattle, I was alone. No cars, no help, the earth hanging suspended in space, cooling, wearing only a thin veil of wood smoke. The wind cut my face, a blade that only stroked the skin, not cutting it, my hands aching as I rubbed them on my thighs, trying to stir warmth back into dormant skin.

Oh, how I longed to just go back to bed that night, the rustle of cotton, the panting whisper of breath, the predation of the night assuming a hundred avatars of dreams. No cows, no work, simply the house still and quiet as if marooned in space by the dwindling of day. The truck was long gone, and the sounds outside fell to a low fragmentary pitch. A coyote howled at the indignation of clouds that covered the moon; no other sound was made. Prey went into hiding, insects died with cold, and everything else assumed their own mantle of hibernation or hunting. But there was still work to be done.

Thirty years later, there's still work to be done.  The other night, it was in the 40s, reminding me that it's best to be prepared early, bringing out the blankets for a wash and line dry. I'm looking forward to snuggling under them soon enough, the scent of woodsmoke clinging to the fabric. Then, the last of any canning to do, the neighbor had brought over some of their tomato crop - a thank you for occasional loaves of warm bread.

However, I've conceded the fieldwork to the young, no longer wishing to leave my bed at 3 a.m. to flash the badge to get past the crime scene tape to a place of my future nightmares. I've got my own team now, and though I will join them as needed, I'm not on 24-hour call any longer; I'm called upon to provide direction, consult, and expert testimony.

I still take pride in putting up a whiteboard of evidence and diagrams of the wreckage of a life, like some demented game of Pictionary when my expertise is needed to solve the puzzle.  I still find great fascination in the miracle of the workings of the human body and the incredibly messy ways in which it can come undone.  But some things don't change, I think, as I look at yet another cold form laid out on an ever colder surface. No matter how strong I think I am, how tough, I've seen too many times that even in unexpected and sometimes violent death, how strong the will of those bones was, to remain alive, was and how futile that sometimes was.  It doesn't matter if you are strong as an ox or go through life as inconspicuously as possible; Fate will find you.  

It just seems to find the unprepared, the ignorant, and the "let me finish this beer and take a selfie on the edge of a cliff" much sooner.

So call me old-fashioned or simply old. I didn't get to this age by living any other way. I know the merit of hard work, the beauty of quietness, and the wonder of turning that phone off and wandering in empty places, the ski lit by the stars of an eternal heaven, fearful only of the mysteries that I won't have time to explore before I, too, leave this place. 

I'm grateful that I learned about hard work early on in life, facing it like a battle to which you carry ancient wounds. You can’t live on a farm or a ranch without learning that.  I know the signs of impending birth in a heifer. I know how to cut a single longhorn from a herd of fifty with only an ATV and a dog while avoiding the pointy ends. I didn’t compare nail polish colors with my girlfriends because long fingernails get in the way when you might have to grease a cupped hand and naked arm with Betadine and lubricant to help a breached calf make its way into the world. I’ve fallen face first in stuff you don’t want to know about and cried like a child to find a calf still and cold after I spent two days nursing her after her mama died.

It wasn’t Green Acres, though I think we had their house. It had nothing to do with Norman Rockwell and everything to do with the hundreds of different ways a heart can freeze. 

It was a valuable life lesson. Hard work and hard decisions are made on evenings like that, where there are still tomatoes to can, bread to bake, and tools to sharpen, as winter will be here soon enough.  I keep my hands busy, my eyes on the sun, turning my back to the rain, not as sheep and cattle do, but as man will, after getting drenched one too many times.  Even as the rain grows steady, I'll soldier on as the sky and the day itself eventually dissolve without grieving for the warmth soon gone.

Fate may still play with me when I give it a chance, a playful paw stroke, a tentative trifling before the final pounce. But until then, I have my hands, my sweat, my words, and the truths that lie in the quiet. - Brigid

Please Don't Eat the Daisies. . .

Sunny has always loved her sticks, from the day we picked her up from her foster Mom's. . .

to her discovering our Lilac bush, which she was intent on killing.

 So a fence went up around the bush, and a sign.

I don't think she can read, though. . .

Nope. . .

Gotcha Days

Another Weekend at BiteyTime Play Center and Arcade. Partner in Grime still has his opposable thumbs

Sunny D (dog) is adapting to her new home well, considering she spent 10 months penned up in a barn. Spending her days in a too-small crate and likely malnourishment left her with bowed front legs, abandoned by the "breeder" because no one would buy her as a Purebred dog because "she isn't perfect". 

I'm thankful she was given up to a shelter rather than just killed, but it breaks my heart what she went through.  She'll never be a "working" dog, but she's happy and runs and plays with abandon; the Vet said there's no fixing it, but it doesn't cause her any pain (and if she needs it for arthritis in those joints as she ages we still have a doggie escalator).  She is our third rescue since Barkley, after Abby and Lorelei. He'd be pleased we didn't get  "perfect" dogs, but rather, ones that needed some tender hearts that knew of hurt themselves.  

The first night home after the "freedom ride," we woke a little after five a.m. to a plaintive whine from her crate.  It was a barely audible sound as if she had learned that there was no need to raise her voice, the brooding silence of her former world insensitive to her cries in the night.  The only voice she would hear would be her own. At night, that singular sound had to echo alone in the rafters.  But not that first night home - Partner in Grime was sleeping on the futon beside her crate and talking to her until she fell asleep again.

The first few weeks were rough. EJ was on an extended travel schedule, and I had my hands full, to say the least, as Lorelei needed palliative care at home.  At one point, I went three days without a shower, promising never to roll my eyes again at someone complaining about losing sleep with a baby. But with the help of some boxed hippie granola, Greek yogurt (OK, I'll share), and coffee, Sunny and I survived.  

Even terminally ill with an aggressive sarcoma, Lorelei doted on her like one of her own pups. She was forgiving and patient, and the short weeks they spent together were full of comfort. Still, one couch is worse for wear, and one small area rug threw itself on the pyre which is the flaming energy of a puppy.  

I wonder if Sunny remembers her past life.  We discovered that she didn't like telephones, sudden bright lights, or the sounds of cars and only reacted to commands in German, which gave us some history of what community her "breeder' came from. So I gently eased her into city life, sitting out in a lawn chair in the backyard on my lunch break and after work as she sat beside me, taking in the sounds of the city, realizing she was safe.  The words she knew from us at the time were few, but they stirred something in her heart on their hearing that quelled her fears and made her realize she was finally home.

A dog's perception of memory is not like ours. We tend to make painful things loom large because strong emotions stand out, isolated from the mundane daily thoughts that naturally diminish over time in one's mind. So, just as I can vividly recall, as if yesterday, moments of heartbreak, abandonment, and loss  - to Sunny, they are just shadows that haunt the edges of what she knows now, soon to be forgotten.

The brief expressions of loneliness and fear you see when you first bring a "rescue" home are hard to bear. But they were so short, soon to turn to looks of "I'm not sorry at all" when caught with a slipper, looks delivered with a goofy grin and the wag of the tail that even the hardest of hearts is not immune to.  Even after being neglected by others, they look at us with love, and whether that's simply the temper of a dog's soul or their eternally forgiving nature, I wonder how we are even worthy of their undying regard.

She knows only joy now, afraid of nothing except the bread machine, which she still will bark at. The backyard is her kingdom, to be defended against squirrels, rogue tomatoes from the neighbor's garden, and the cat that lives down the alley.  She doesn't understand why the people who walk past in the morning on their way to the train at the end of our block, burdened by life and propelled only by a timetable, don't want to stop and pet the dog.  She embraces the power of a slice of cheese.

She greets the morning yard joyfully, the grass covered with dew, like jewels strewn under her feet.  You don't notice anything wrong with her legs unless you are looking at her head-on when she comes at you slowly with a gait like Festus from Gunsmoke, taking your measure slowly, then doing a zoomie around you, a dust devil of motion, fueled by a complete lack of fear.  

She'd stay out there all day if she could, coming in only to nap beside me by my desk as I work.  Nights, she goes out one last time before bed since I don't walk her after dark in Chicago, as my husband will do.  After doing her business, we'll just lay in the grass in the center of the yard as above, the stars fill the skies, flickering down on us like eyes, as alive and enigmatic as the hearts of men.  

Training is ongoing, but she learns quickly when she wants to, having the doggie equivalent of a teenager's brain right now. She still will play a version of "Bite Mom's butt!" (no tooth pressure, but it will get your attention if you're not expecting it), and we've had to hide the smaller throw rugs.  But I can't get angry at her for enjoying being free to be a puppy, if only for these short months as she emerges into adulthood. (Though I'm still finding sticky spots in the kitchen where she bit into a can of Sprite and sprayed it around the room like a Nascar driver after winning a race).

This will be her sixth-month "Gotcha Day" and though she has had her "puppy moments," she's grown into a barrel-chested, muscular 84-pound English Lab of high intelligence. I told my husband that if I ever mention adopting another puppy, please talk me off the ledge. Still, I wouldn't trade these initial memories for anything, all the times we laughed at her antics through the tears as we said goodbye to her big "sis" Lorelei.  As I look at my remaining years, however long the Lord sees fit, I can't imagine not having a dog in them.

She's the 4th dog we've had in the 14 years we've been together.  But like any relationship of abiding love, there are always moments of trepidation, the fears of the unknown, the learning and the knowing, and, eventually, the loss, as we are all mortal.  Yet we embrace it, holding up that love like a match held aloft, grasping it until the flame burns our fingers, never wanting to let it go. - Brigid

From Russia With Love - Travel Memories

Little Prince lived alone on a tiny planet no larger than a house. . 

The suitcase is empty, but it is not. At the bottom, there is a small piece of paper with some writing on it.  I read it, and I smile.

The bag is opened, and some toiletries are spread around the hotel bathroom.  Another day on the road. The wandering spirit runs in my blood; passed on from my Air Force father to me. It seems like ever since I got a control yoke in my hand, I've been wandering across miles of land, across rivers and towns in whatever way I can, be it a dromedary-like transport plane, raggedly land rover, or sway-back mule.

I have an anchor, over time it's been a large house, a small house, it's been simply a suitcase and someone I love.  But when I'm there, I am thoroughly happy, for that anchor, instead of being a confinement, is simply the base from which I move, a fulcrum that amplifies the effects of my motion, the beat of my heart.

St. Expurey said, "He who would travel happily must travel light". And so I did, the earliest memories little more than the remembered feel of the starched uniform shirt I wore, the dense, oily smell of jet fuel lingering on the tongue like smoke. It seems as if all my early years were reflected in those moving airplanes' windows. I see my reflection, my past, through bug splayed glass that tinted the world bright.

The airplane, the destination, and the years changed, as did the landscape of my career, but something things never changed. Days in an aircraft traveling far. Miles and hours spent watching the landscape, silver grain elevators, red-winged birds, mountains formed of ice and fluid need, and rivers without borders, blending into a bright diorama of life racing past. The world looks different from above, clouds massive and dark, looming up like a target in a gun sight, looking twice the size of an ordinary man.

I have spent half of my life, it seems, on the way to somewhere. I have watched a hundred cumulus clouds erupt, the mass assassination of mayflies, and the disappearance of a slice of cherry pie at a tiny airport diner, and the journey was only beginning.

In each day comes another opportunity for adventure. The ride to the hotel was something to remember in and of itself. A shuttle service, stopping at several hotels on the way. The driver was sullen and demonstrated why driving was his second language. You know how when most people drive, certainly professional drivers, they brake using an increase in pressure on the brake pedal to come to a smooth stop. Not Mr. Shuttle. The only brake technique he used was to stomp on the brake, let up, let the car roll, and stomp again. It would take four or five of these stomps to equal one normal braking action. No traffic, heavy traffic, it made no difference.

I started to feel like a bobblehead doll, and the 25 dollars I saved over a taxi was starting to look like one of those small decisions with great, oversized repercussions. But I should have been more patient. Concentrating on braking while texting while driving in heavy traffic was hard.

I simply made sure my seatbelt was fastened and then bent down as if into a stiff wind, horns of the impatient exploding into the rain-split asphalt that opened and closed with opportunity. Like all traffic in big cities, we carried on, sharp with speed, then trickling to a standstill, the road dipping into the fog like a hand cleaving water, the headlights showing the gray bulk of streams of cars coming down the hill like rain.

When the last guest got off, and it was just me, he quit texting and had a series of increasingly heated exchanges in his mother tongue with his dispatcher about how he only got  the equivalent of 47 US dollars in fares for this trip, and he wanted to get a number one spot when he got back to the airport. (Actually, sir, you got 68 dollars in fares, one you did not log and pocketed. I notice things like that.)

The arguing got more heated. I am not fluent in languages. I can listen and relate small things in several languages that come in handy, Russian, Chinese, and Farsi, just enough to know when it's a good time to get out of Dodge or when happy hour is almost over. It comes in handy, the knowing, the looking, as I catch quick glimpses of other drivers in the failing sunlight, faces fixed and grim as they fight to get upstream.

The van driver, still yelling into the phone while almost whacking several people on bicycles,  finally stopped in front of my hotel. I paid him the fare plus a 15 percent tip. He did NOT look happy, expecting much more from the American Redhead in nice clothes.

He muttered something under his breath about what he had to do to get a big tip, and I replied -

"Вам надо научиться использовать торможения." (you need to learn how to use braking)

He was still standing there, mouth agape, when I went to my suite.

But I had arrived. The hotel bulked long and dark against the city sky, but inside was golden warmth, a bite of a fresh apple, and a much-needed bottle of water. Sitting still for a minute, taking care of the aching neck, and soon it was time to meet my partner for this assignment while we went over notes for tomorrow's business over a light meal.

After a short walk back to the hotel, my partner ensured I got to my room safely. I made a couple of phone calls to loved ones to let them know I was in and safe. EJ always worries when I travel, even when I can't tell him where I'm going.  So do friends, and I try and keep in touch. Then I took a long bath in a tub so deep you could hide a Mastodon in it and slept until 6:30 in the morning. Unfortunately, it was 6:30 in the morning where I wanted to be, not where I was at.

So I got up, made coffee, and watched a stain of light snare itself between steel and rain, spreading until the stain grew light and the light became morning.

By choice or not, travel is part of my life.  But travel brings something to you that people who live in the insular world of their hometown their whole lives may miss. It pushes your boundaries. When you travel, you can become invisible if that is what you choose. I like that. I like to be a quiet observer. Walking alone along the edge of another ocean, as it stretches away into space with its illusion of freedom. Strolling through the celestial hush of a square that has seen generation after generation, the sun glinting off marble where the monotonous rain has washed it bright. What stories would that old building tell? What makes these people who they are?

You don't have to understand the language spoken, only the language of the streets, the scents, the stone. Without understanding a word around you, the language becomes a musical background for watching the water flow onto the shore or a leaf blowing in the wind, calling nothing from you.

You may have work that takes much of your time, yet still, in this strange place, there are hours open to you.  You don't have a lawn to mow or bills to pay.  There is only life, simple and inescapable as an empty hallway, where you can leave behind for a moment the burdens that you freely assume and carry as bright and ambitiously as brass. For this moment, you are simply a creature of choice, free to visit stately buildings, savor a cup of coffee, or merely go watch the trains.  If only for this moment, you're open as a child to receive all of the world, not just your own.

It is all there for the taking, multicolored flowers in bright density, the smell of fresh bread baking, laid out like fabric on the ground, which you pick up and wrap around you, drawing in a breath through the scented cloth. This fabric, this essence of a place, contains both the dead and the living, the blooms of lush flowers, the decay of a building, and the smells that are both the death and the birth of a city. You are a historian, you are a hunter free to explore and seek and find and then return home bringing memories to lay on your doorstep.

From the memories come words.  They may be only in your head; they may be on paper.  But they tell a story composed of past journeys on ancient rails washed clean by wind and rain and tempered by time, written to the mournful sound of a train whistle echoing through ancient memories and newfound dreams.  The words strung out like cars, beyond which wait the world and life, hope unrestrained and incontrovertible.  They recall the memory of it all, moving fast now, wind rushing past like flood, leaving you breathless.

The suitcase is open on a simple wooden stand. It is empty, but in it, there is so much, the smell of crushed sage as I bounced across the desert in a jeep, the wood-smoked burnt woods of autumn, the smell of untouched ground after a rain, the rich earthy scent of something being lit that had for so long been cold.