Gloves from My Father

Walking by the river, ice patches looking like odd shaped belugas floating down stream, the only thing revealing that the river is fluid, snow blowing, heavy, wet, southwest at my back, I walk towards the woods for sanctuary, for solace on the sixth anniversary of my father's death.

I've missed him more this year than in recent years, the realization of loss heavier than years past for no reason that I can easily explain.

I walk along with earbuds whispering dreamlike downbeat rhythm, it's cold, but I'm warm, a good feeling as I make fresh steps in the powder that suspends reality, geese honk over the music in my ears, I am at once at peace and longing...

I look down at my hands, new gloves, gloves from my father-in-law to replace
the gloves of my father, worn leather, finally comfortable, thumb starting to split, stolen from my coat downtown Rosebud, I guess someone's hands were colder than mine, a brief aggravation, now a gift, a passing on of something very practical from my father and father-in-law to keep my hands warm, fingers protected and heart connected...




Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Pulled back from Paganism

I’ve pulled back from paganism, the last ism I’d lean to on a foggy day, to contextualize the world in which I step, shop and play and pray and wish and hope, but these later activities take me out of this world and all the pain of my existential head and heart ache is about longing to belong to some line some circle some culture some tribal story of creation, of struggle of staying warm on a rain soaked night, of finding food deep in the bleak midwinter, pine inside, candles everywhere to lift the spirit on the shortest day, the darkest night, that light will return, food will be easier to acquire and the probability of continuing living better and better each day, a little dance, a little drink a little contact to hold back the night and fear that darkness and final silence will claim me too soon. All of this drives the cultural story with in which I want to be held, comforted, steered towards good times and joy, an evolution of a full stomach, warm cave and the instinct for continuance, permanence through DNA, the afterlife becomes a part of the story that our brains once awake must weave beyond the grave, and back the other way beyond birth into the cosmos, the great mystery, the not here which demands definition from our brain that categorizes, searches for lines and form even where there is none.

My father’s dying encouraged me; I was sure he saw friends many years dead, visitors came to the house, angelic, beast like, all fantastic as the seam on the hem of our reality was thin for him, for me. In Aspen, CO I was haunted by a presence, by a chief, by black spots,dreams or not dreams in between dreams, strange things in the awake and the asleep, things I saw, others experienced, what was it? My mind weaving the story of soul, of ghosts of something more permanent than my flesh promises? Did my mind convince myself and others to hear, see and believe things that are not? Does my mind dissolve the moment my flesh begins to rot?

Oddly, the one thing that stands out, keeping me agnostic and not atheist, is the night a woman from California ran back into the bar across from Resurrection Cemetery, pale, shaking, lighting a cigarette and looking down, around anxiously unsure. I knew the urban legend and back then I didn’t really question ghosts, the extension of the soul into the unknown, when I asked her what had happened she told me of a very earthly fight with her boyfriend and a stroll outside to clear her head, just then at 3:00 a.m. She noticed a girl walking inside the cemetery, she though it odd, but was not alarmed, the girl got closer and closer to the fence, the woman watched her and walked on through the summer night, wondering why a teenage girls was out so late, in the cemetery of all places, but she was not afraid. When the girl reached the fence she was even with the woman from California and they both paused, the girl reached to grab her arm, her hand, the woman told me went right through the fence and grabbed her, at the exact moment the woman grabbed my arm, “she was so cold, so cold… so cold”. The woman broke into tears and shook and smoked, so cold, so cold…

Was this woman the best actress I’d ever seen? Did this woman know the urban legend of Resurrection Mary and tell me otherwise? The bartender acted as if she didn’t know the woman telling the story, she watched her, seemingly not sure if she believed her…

This experience stands out more than my own direct experience with what I thought was "other", as I have become suspicious of the possibility for biological need to weave a creation and salvation story to distance ourselves from our own death of which, brain awake, we are now aware.

If someone were to read this and tell me they knew the woman, they were a part of this elaborate hoax, I wouldn’t be fully surprised. But there are pieces to the story I do not tell here, that leave me believing at the very least, the woman from California believed what she saw, believed the cold hand that grabbed her own arm was real, yet able to pass through a fence.

I joke that an agnostic is a polite atheist, but still the story of life pulls at me from before my first breath and from the time and place where my breath is no more.

I feel less need than ever for there to be a story, a code, a context to explain why I’m here, where I came from and what’s next. Yet I still look for this story to take me and if not explain things, to at least allow me to celebrate each day.