Dog Days Wet

Our new buddy Brando fell into the fish pool this afternoon. As far as I recall, he is the first person, dog or cat to do so. The raccoons are afraid to go in there. Brando apparently mistook the green plants coating the top of the pond as evidence that it was a solid surface, not a watery hole.

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Is That You I See?

Note: I first published this a year ago today. It remains as true now as it was then, for me.



We've got lots of cliches about the passing of time in English. Some relate to how we forget.

We can forget how someone looks. We can forget how it felt to be with them. We quite easily, it seems, forget the good along with the bad.

It all goes away, somewhere far from here.

After a while, trying to recall, the only image we can summon is fuzzy. No matter how hard we try, nothing comes back into focus.

Maybe it's just as well, maybe the person and experiences we were trying to recall were never anything but illusions anyway.

So what's left to he who would try to see is -- nothing. Once you've been written out of the story, the story itself ceases to exist.

Stories are like plants, they can easily wither and die once no one is taking care of them any longer.

In time, the story may return in some sort of romanticized version or as a cautionary tale about the dangers of giving away too much to others. Or maybe it will just stay gone, which might be just as well.

What's left? That may be an empty field you see, a place to build a new beginning. Or it may be a truck barreling down on you to flatten you once and for all.

You can't tell. Most likely it is nothing at all, just an out of focus void. There is no field, there is no truck, there is no other, there only is you and you are alone.

So, you see, you better get used to it. That's what the world is trying to tell you now. You're on your own.

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Early Days of August

Lunch in our cafe.

Drawings by my youngest (3).

"Squidward."

Uncle and nephew.

Smiler.

Sibs.

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How the Light Strikes Us

"Grandpa, these binoculars are empty."

"I'm curious about your weapons."

"I have humoungus feet now I'm three."

Those were just three of my buddy's comments yesterday afternoon. He knows which edible plants in the garden to harvest when he visits, starting with butter lettuce this time through.

Family is the center of my life and has become the center of my identity. Once, like many successful men pursuing high-pressure careers, it would have been accurate to describe work as the center of my life, at least if you consider the amount of time spent at work as a determinative factor.

Fact is, though I loved some of my jobs, and became deeply engaged in all of them, work was never the central focus for me. Proportionality enters the picture here; where was my mind focused, at work or home or in-between?

Yet by "work," I do not mean writing. This may seem contradictory, as I am a writer, and have earned much of my keep for four decades by whatever skill at writing I may possess -- for better or worse.

For a long time now, that would be for worse.

But writing is not work to me; writing is an expression of being alive. It's how I continue to assert that I am still here, regardless of exterior circumstances, distractions, hopes, dreams, disappointments, and failures. And, as I age, increasingly what I choose to write about is my family.

So we have convergence of a sort. As his 16-year-old uncle towered over him and his Mom yesterday in the doorway of my apartment, I saw three generations backlit, as well as a vision of my life, framed by their love, each for the other.

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Young Friends

We have lots of friends in our family. One of those is a young woman from Tennessee. She's been visiting our city for many years now. Tonight, she came once again.

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Boys, Girls, Men, Women, Old Times, New Times...

Back from a 2.5 hour commute getting the boys to their sleepover out in Marin. Fog drapes over this city; now I get to relax a bit and watch the Giants game, which is an extra-inning affair back in Cincinnati.

Lunch here and there all over the city with the boys this week -- Noe Valley, the Mission, the Haight -- as we ate Thai, American, and Chinese.

Meanwhile, an everyday mid-day pickup of three 12-year-old girls at the rock-climbing facility near my house. Yesterday, I brought along somebody special from my daughter's past -- our friend J, visiting from New Orleans.

My youngest remembers how this friend helped her gain confidence as a beginning reader back when she was in first grade and having trouble. J bought her several books that were perfect for a kid at that stage of development, and it worked.

Ever since, she has been a big reader and a very good student as well.

My kids all are a lot like me in one respect. None of us ever forgets the key details of the people who enter our lives, even long after they leave us. We remember -- and appreciate -- what they add into this big robust family of ours.

J looks great. Long-time, early readers will recall the seminal role my relationship with her played in the origin of this blog. In many ways, she has turned out to be the most constant, truthful and caring friend anyone could have had these past seven years.

As I write these words, the Giants remain locked in one of those strange extra-inning baseball games that only true fans can appreciate. It's like a soccer game or a hockey game in sudden-death overtime.

Stressful but somehow, for the true athlete and the true fan, quite satisfying indeed, no matter how it turns out. Just like relationships; they're never completely over until they are over, and in a just world, not even then, because they never do really end, they just move into what we call the sweetness of memory.

The place where stories get told.

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Musical Comforts