Pouring Music From a Cup

  First published October 22, 2012 Please let my whole life pass always remembering you. May my breath come to an end always remembering you. May nothing stand in the way, May nothing stand in the way To reach my true home again. Lyrics from a beautiful new song by John Adorney. Our twelve-year-old was looking over my shoulder last night as I sat at my roll top desk clicking away at the keyboard, touching up a piece of writing that has been on my mind for the last week or so, and said, quite innocently, "Watcha doin', Pops?" He calls me Pops because I told him once that that's what I want my grandkids to call me when the day comes. I had a picture in my mind of this crazy old coot propped up in the corner of the living room, drooling, smiling vacantly, his head bobbing slowly, and the rest of the family talking about him as if he wasn't there. You know: "So, what do we do with Pops? He can't stay here!" And me, looking for all the world like an addle...

First published   September 15, 2013 Wah Yantee. If I tell you what I have found, you won’t believe me, you’ll think it the strangest thing I have ever said. After all I have said and written and done, you’ll think I’ve finally lost my mind. But the truth is, after so many years it had to happen. Though I was searching, I turned my back on every answer. Maybe I argued too much, maybe I knew the truth was inside me but I sought confirmation. I needed one other soul to understand me, and know what I was knowing. I looked for years, and I found friendship, I found different kinds of love, but the one who could name it, who understood, never appeared, though I sometimes wonder if I met her once, just once, in Ruthann (and may be why I wrote “Cloud Vaporizing” a couple of months ago). I kept looking outside where there’s no meaning, no contact with what matters, and never expected, never thought, to look inside me.  It wasn’t easy, to ask questions of those I trusted, those w...

First publshed March, 2011 I’m walking down the hall, or on the green belt, or maybe even on the sidewalk. I see you coming the other way, a fellow human, a fellow traveler, a soul unit worthy of acknowledgement. I say “Good morning,” or “Hello,” or that old standby, “How are you?” You walk right on by as if I’m invisible. My initial emotional response isn’t hurt or embarrassment or sympathy for whatever might have been weighing so heavily on your mind that you didn’t have the wherewithal to answer back. A smile or a little wave of your hand would have made my day. No, my initial emotional response is that you’re an insensitive, rude shit hole who didn’t deserve to be acknowledged in the first place. Would it have killed you to respond, even if you didn’t mean it? My bad. I won’t do it again. Okay, it’s August, 101 oppressive degrees outside. We’re sitting in a nice air conditioned restaurant for lunch. Every time someone enters or leaves there’s a blast of hot air, like the afterb...

First published October 27, 2013 Seven billion humans . . .                                                                  Seven billion ways to see the sun, understand the sun, explain the sun, experience the sun . . .                                                                 ONE sun, seven billion paths to reach it.

Originally posted:  2016 Majestic, orchestral music, Fleurs du Mal , plays all around me as I struggle, step by agonizing step toward the summit of a mountain that, from ten thousand feet below looked far less foreboding than it does from up here. Perseverance, the second element to stamina, sustains me; the breath of God caresses my face, bringing the elixir of life with the inhalation of spiritus , the power of life filling my lungs. A cloud passes between me and the snow-capped peak, and then the clear blue sky reappears . . . and I see her standing high above me, waiting, watching, a smile on her face. “Wasn’t it you who called me here?” I ask, and my beloved is joined in heavenly chorus, celestial Sirens, and the dream fills me. “Yes,” she sings. “I cannot go on alone.” “Neither can I,” I answer, and I take hold of a the ledge of rock before me and hoist myself one step higher, then a second, and a third. Rest. Study her wispy, transparent face. Wanting only to join her at the...

First published October 2013          True story: at a book show a number of years ago in the Fort Worth Convention Center where I and many other book dealers had booths set up in the hopes of making a few modest sales and trades, there was a bit of a commotion on the third day of the show, Sunday.   Sometime about mid-morning a local television crew swept through the show's labyrinth of aisles with a small, excited coterie trailing behind. At the time I couldn't leave my booth unattended to follow them, but about an hour later, after the entourage had departed, I was able to break free and go to the proprietor's booth to inquire what the all the fuss had been about. As it happened, there were still a few people milling about the counter, including one rather short man, clearly of Mexican heritage. They were all gawking at a very old sepia-toned photograph. I asked the dealer (whose wares were primarily Texana ephemera) who the soldier in the photograph w...

For the one I love. For the one you love. For you. I imagined a house. It was a house so beautiful, so inviting, that it was like seeing a long lost friend. It shimmered under the glory of the golden sun, sparkled in the crisp white moonlight. Almost holy in the warmth and protection it offered. Welcome and curious I entered, not afraid at all because I knew it was safe inside. There was an opulence about the house, and yet its walls were bare, the lighting a very dim tangerine haze. I heard no music, yet my mind was full of song. I was part of this house, consumed by its joy and wearing its sorrows like a winter coat. It was a strange place, and still somehow it seemed familiar, as queer things from our dreams sometimes do. There was much good in its walls, its corridors and rooms. This place had a story to tell, and I had come to hear it. As I stood gazing about the interior and at the staircase in the front hallway, I felt a spirit very close to me. It was a loving spirit that knew...