letter to an old friend

i loaded up a while back and went back to colorado, where i am now. the days are quiet and beautiful. afternoons spent walking between trees on hillsides. the sun is always shining. the snow sparkles. the moonrises are spectacular. there is a sense that every action is, in some way, taking a nap. i'm getting a great deal of writing done. i seem to have fallen in with the local newspaper crew, which always makes for interesting yarns. a few months ago, bob dylan played the town park. he was standing at the base of a mountain raging reworked songs out through the rain that was barely nipping at everyone. a little breeze was chasing us. i kept thinking about Muhammad coming to the mountain, even though i'd have brought the mountain to him.

so here, i get an email from an old friend and wonder: what fills your days? are there trees in your yard? how often do you watch the stars? what color is your sofa? what music is getting at you nowadays? where are those pesky winds taking you?

and me?

oh, i picked up this collection of van morrison oddities, which has been the soundtrack of my mornings. it's full of these darling little songs that sound like they were chunked out in some guy's basement on a half-busted four track. almost none of the songs are longer than a minute and a half and they have these wonderful lyrics that were clearly not written in advance. wonderful lines like: "i'm sorry my friend, but you've got ringworm." and "i've got the royalty check blues. it's been a year now and no royalty checks. maybe it's coming from the great royalty center in the sky." or "i keep seeing this person driving a red sportscar. they drive too fast. who's driving that damn red sportscar?" i'm madly in love with it. but then, maybe i'm just mad.

the clouds are moving around the mountains and dipping between them right now, lending the notion that the earth and sky are locked in some sort of hide-and-seek game. i'm not sure who's winning. those rascally forces of nature. who's in charge here?

[insert entirely random and trivial subject here to go with the others.]

there is a park nearby where the neighborhood children play. they put in a climbing wall and i often find myself spending hours sitting in the grass watching parents try to teach their children to climb. there is a great deal of laughing and confusion over the matter, apparently.

everyone here is smiling all the time. i am smiling all the time. i hope you are as well.

life is days as always and i find myself fascinated by the movements of birds and the sound of wind through canyons. the geese returned early and now they float through afternoons on a nearby golf course, playing on the ice and snow gathered there. it really is a thing to see. hundreds of them. it's like joy's answer to hitchcock films.

everything is funny.

this morning i woke and wandered off up into the nearby dunes to watch the light come over the hilltops. i caught myself making animal shapes out of the shadows on the hills. i had a very strange conversation with a groundhog family, let me tell you. i don't know what they're teaching their kids these days, but damn.

i also seem to have come down with a case of "the rants". sorry about that. what was it twain said? "if i had more time, i'd have written a shorter letter." maybe that's not true. maybe i just let it go however far it goes and then stop. who knows about these things?

anyway, easy evenings are the way of it now. i am the march of the morning. every sunset seems to be aimed at me. people keep asking me what i'm always laughing about, but i don't know how to answer. i guess i'm laughing at how seriously people take this whirley-gig of a rock. i mean, we're just spinning in circles in the middle of nothing anyway, right?

so weeks run off while i am here, dancing in the front yard like some kind of crazy person. it's better that way, isn't it?

just now, i'm listening to neil young play "helpless" with joni mitchell on background vocals. it's breathtaking. it's like listening to the sea expand and contract all at once. i find myself leaning back in my chair with a funny looking grin and letting a few long sighs break loose.

these are days, alright.

robert

2008-03-14 | 11:37 a.m.
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