You are gone and I
walk in a country I have never
seen before. I never thought
it could hurt so much
or be so beautiful.

I am so sorry for what’s happened in this storm. It’s just terrible. I’m watching CNN, and they’re using highway ramps as boat ramps, bringing to safety in little boats. No way to know how many are still out there, or how many are dead. God help them. And their pets.

What did I do today? I chewed out a possibly retarded, non-English-speaking man for very deliberately leaf-blowering dirt all over my just washed pickup truck. I had a chance to take a deep breath and practice a little tolerance and kindness, and I didn’t. I went off on him. I’d just picked up Tasha’s ashes at the vet’s, and I was in no particular mood to be fudged around with by life. Or whatever cynically comical force sends such people out into the universe with leaf blowers.

What am I thinking about? Taking the doggie – themed poetry magnets off my fridge.

What else? Dinner’s almost ready.

What else? I’m going to church in the morning. Hope I don’t get zapped into a pile of Kingsford BBQ briquets when I get to the door.

First of all, my state of mind.  I’m doing alright I suppose.  Except that it’s floor time.  It’s been my habit in the last few years to get up from the computer or TV in the evening, lay down on the floor next to Tasha and pet her.  I do this a few times in the course of each evening.  Tonight, I keep starting to push away from the desk, only to remember that there’s no particular reason to do so.

Happy spent last night with me, and today I took her to the park and to the groomer’s for her bath. I went swimming. Then I went to the local car wash and got the Classic treatment for my pickup.  Which means they clean the dash board, dress the tires, clean the insides of the windows, etc.  I couldn’t do those things.  Nose prints, see?  Nose prints all over the dash board, windows…. I wasn’t going to clean them myself.  So a recent immigrant gentleman got six bucks an hour plus tip, and vacuumed the dog hair from the carpets and seats for good measure.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

It was a brilliant, warm summer day here in paradise. The kind of day that makes the Santa Barbara area a resort destination. The tourists were out in force, moving up and down the sidewalks in little gaggles, looking for that angle of light and time that makes reality go all Magic Kingdom.  I’ve seen it a million times.  Their eyes are a little glazed over, and they seem not to understand that the traffic is real people, with someplace to go. See, they’re expecting to stumble into a candy store or an antique shop that will transport them into a dream to be remembered at their office or school, after Labor Day. I always hope they find it, though I think you can’t beat the real deal.  It’s a cool town to visit on vacation. It’s just that, having lived here my whole life, there’s no pixie dust in the air.

Hey, I just had a cool idea!  We need characters – people in big costumes, walking around getting their picture taken with The Visitors.  What would the characters be?  We can’t use Mickey Mouse or Goofy.  And this town is famous for nothing but avocados and a good beach.  A giant fuzzy avocado with big white cartoon hands and shiny black shoes?  Hmmm. 

… how sharp one’s senses become after a week away from suburban stimuli. Last night, I was very aware of the crickets around my bro’s house up north, and the occasional pop of the big wooden house as it cooled during the night. Tonight, as I climbed the steps to my condo, I could hear someone’s clothes tumbling in the dryer, in the building across the driveway from mine. It’s all good. The fact that I could hear the dryer means that everyone has settled in for the night and gotten quiet.

Yep, I’m home from my trip to the rural Sierra Nevada foothills. I miss J & L & little T, their kitties and all the fun we had. Last night, we went to an arcade in Roseville and played miniature golf. That was good; hadn’t played in years.

It’ll be sad and lonesome here, of course. I miss my little fuzzy one. But the pall of unremitting grief has lifted. I have depressurized, and I’m grateful for it.

I’m tired. I slept like crapity crap last night, and got maybe three poor hours of sleep. Don’t know why. Then I drove eight hours, downing two Red Bulls along the way. So I’m going to watch TV. If I owe you an e-mail or a call, hang in there. All good things in God’s good time.

Just before midnight, the automatic sprinklers cut off and left the lawn well satisfied, but drying towards another long summer day, and dreading the thirst of the afternoon. He sat in his office on the second floor, and marveled at how much noise the world still made despite her absence. Even without her movements, her breathing, the light clink and jangle of her jewelry, there was still the clock, the fan, the refrigerator down the hall. But despite the coolness left by the sprinklers, the weak breath of traffic farther off, and the bored half moon, he couldn’t seriously call any of it life.

He was inspired to do nothing but sit there, turning a pen over and over in his hand, waiting for an understanding to arrive unbidden and irrelevant. After all, it wasn’t his fault that she was gone. And beyond that, what was the help of it? No calling her back, no following after. There are acts without antidote, words unforgivable. No way in all the weeping world for a bell to be unrung.

He got up to make himself a drink, to ease the edge, to make the damp night bearable. Cuervo Gold. Wasn’t there a song? Then sat at the desk and sifted through photos of her face. Bright and elegant, with dark eyes and an easy grace that made men look twice and women stop dead, just to watch her sit and look around. She was never in a room but at the center of it.

Tequila never solved anything but maybe the torment of consciousness, and that’s rarely worth the price or the cost. So after a shot or two warmed his reins and the fog began to gather and descend, he went out. Down the stairs and into the yard, where he held his hands palm up and lifted his face to feel the sickly sky hanging like a slow intravenous drip. The grass was dark and dreaming, overjoyed.

There were crickets under the hedge and frogs in the ditch along the road. Beyond the troubled whispers of the house, everybody had good news. If only procreation in the damp, untroubled brush. They ignored him, as did the neighbors and their dogs, all dozing in front of TV sets, which cast a blue glow on all their window shades.

There was no anger in her leaving, don’t you see? Just a soft and pallid August afternoon, and the prospect of a night unbearable in the long sequence of nights that passed between them with this culmination in mysterious pain. So she left. And he was out walking, well beyond the farthest light of home, ruining his shoes in the cold and predictable rain.

© 2005 by Kyle Kimberlin

all rights reserved

2^nd Draft, August 16, 2005