This morning is cold and foggy. I slept in (for some values of “sleeping in”), and still arrived at my selected trailhead well before dawn. This trail is lit for much of the distance I walk, but beyond the vineyard, near the river, I still needed my headlamp. I’ve been, and returned, and it is still quite dark, though there is a hint of daybreak on the horizon. It’s not yet visible from the lit area of the trail, or the parking lot. The new artificial lights are much too bright.
A walk through winter fog.
The morning is foggier than I expected, and somewhat warmer (still quite cold, near freezing). The fog makes everything seem quieter and more mysterious in the darkness. I see the headlights of workers arriving to a nearby construction sight, filtered through the fog, before I hear the sounds of their pick-up trucks. I’m okay with that. The dance of the lights over irregular pavement is fascinating, and I don’t care for the noise at all. I walked and watched with wonder, alone with my thoughts.
The Author arrives later this morning. 10:30 or so, though I’m not certain whether that means to the house or at the airport. I didn’t ask for clarification – I guess I’ll know soon enough. lol I’m excited about this visit from a dear long-time friend. It happens too rarely. I think of other far away friends and wonder whether to plan a trip to see some of them in the summer? I wonder whether my Traveling Partner will be up to being without me for a week…or in shape to go with me?
I sit quietly with my thoughts. The sky is beginning to be a hue of deep gray-blue, visibly no longer “night”. A new day. There are things to do, and a visit with a friend to look forward to. I consider getting a coffee somewhere nearby, but I am just as content to sit here, watching the sky slowly lighten as dawn unfolds. G’damn, sometimes I am such a simple and easily satisfied creature. I chuckle quietly to myself. I’m okay with it.
I’m sipping my coffee reflecting on love, life, and how incredibly fortunate I feel, how grateful I am, for the partnership I share with my beloved Traveling Partner. Fuck, this has been a hard year (and then some) since his injury back in – was it November? December? – of 2023. Learning to be a caregiver, not just a partner, friend, and lover, definitely showed off some of my unpreparedness in the vast world of adulting skillfully. I had (have) a lot to learn. I’m glad things are improving (every day) now. I feel relieved. Did I say already? I feel grateful. Fortunate. G’damn it could have been so much worse.
We become what we practice. Once we are adults, our quality of life is largely in our own hands. Not entirely, to be sure, because we don’t all face the same circumstances, and just keeping it real – “the playing field” is not level. No one is in this alone, but we’re each having our own experience, and there is no question that some people are dealt a far more valuable hand of cards in the game than others. So…yeah. There’s that. Beyond that, though, we each have (and make) choices. Those choices really matter. Giving up on that is an unfortunately common mistake, but it’s an easy one to make. I think about that, and times that I’ve abdicated my responsibility to myself, yielded to cynicism, bitterness, or feelings of futility, and made things so much worse than they could have been, if I had chosen differently. Worth reflecting on, but as with so many such things – the lessons we learn after-the-fact can’t help us in the moment. I breathe, exhale, and relax. Sip my coffee. Listen to the woosh of the ventilation in the office – and feel grateful. Love has made a huge difference in how I make choices, and what matters most. I would not be the woman I am without the love I share with my Traveling Partner. Grateful barely describes my feelings.
“Communion” 2010
I feel so loved. My Traveling Partner can (and does) come to me openly and talk about his feelings and his worries. I can go to him when I am feeling feelings, and share my experience and feel supported and heard. Do we have challenges? Sure. We’re human beings, being human. This love, though… g’damn, am I wrapped in love. I woke this morning feeling loved. I’ll work through the day feeling it, too. It’s reciprocal. I love this man with a love that I don’t even know how to contain. Is it reasonable, practical, or even “sane”? Hell if I know – I don’t even care about that. I just love him. He loves me back. That’s worth something in this fairly scary world of chaos, violence, and human suffering. It’s something to “come home to”. I sip my coffee thinking of the moments we shared last night, talking and connecting, and loving each other. I hope every time I’m ever annoyed or angry over something trivial or stupid that my memory will carry me back to last night, and remind me that I am loved, and that love matters most. I hope the same for him – I can be damned frustrating to deal with sometimes – I hope he always feels loved, in spite of that. I sigh quietly and smile.
Is love a journey or a destination? Or… is love a verb?
…To experience an uncompromising, enduring love for so very long is a rare thing. For me, there’s only been this one, and all other relationships and moments of affection are dim lights compared to this roaring blaze. Love is always uniquely special, as feelings go, and I can only say again how fortunate I feel, and how grateful, to experience this one. This moment, here, now, wrapped in love – and all the others that my Traveling Partner and I have shared. I hope the journey goes on “forever” (or some close approximation of that idea), it’s been a journey worth sharing with this singular human being who loves me so…
“Cherry Blossoms” 14″ x 20″ acrylic on canvas. 2011
I sit quietly, smiling. Nothing else, really, just sipping my coffee and thinking about love. Work can wait on lovers, surely…?
So much of life is about love and loving.
My Traveling Partner is more than my spouse – so much more – he is my best friend. My muse. The inspiration behind so much of my artistic work over the past 15 years. The maker of so many delightful moments, and thoughtful things I use every day. I’d be pretty fucking lost without him – and very alone.
An alternate spelling of “I love you”.
I think about writing my beloved a love note, and realize as I sit here that I sort of already have. It never feels like enough; the love we share is so huge in the experience of a single moment. lol Filled with quiet joy, and wrapped in love, I begin again.
I’m awake. No point in it. I hear my beloved Traveling Partner sleeping in the adjacent room. I hope not to wake him. I tried just going back to sleep. Tonight, that doesn’t work. I’m awake. It’s been an hour of quiet sleeplessness.
I get up. Take a Benadryl (sometimes that helps). I make some Calm and drink that. Sometimes that helps. I put Capsaicin on painful places. Sometimes that helps. I meditate. Stretch. Breathe quietly and calmly in the darkness. I read for a little while.
… Still awake…
Well, shit. I sigh and shrug, unseen in the quiet darkness. I try “changing the channel” on the little noise generator the VA sent me. Huh. I feel sleepy…a bit, at least. I write a few words, let that feeling of sleepiness catch up to my busy mind.
I am sitting quietly, listening to the woosh of the ventilation and the zing and buzz of my tinnitus. Just that, nothing more. Some minutes pass before I consider my keyboard or my thoughts. I just sit awhile, with this infinite seeming moment. It’s isn’t though; it’s quite finite and mortal and limited by this space and whatever time and attention I give it. Just a moment. Sometimes a moment seems so fragile and fleeting. A metaphorical drop in the bucket of a lifetime of moments…but…how big is that bucket, anyway?
I breathe, exhale, and relax. I sip my coffee. I give a bit of attention to the pain in my neck, my back, my headache, and then move on; my thoughts are elsewhere. Here. Now. Just being. I’m not doing anything right now – other than making a point of noticing the stillness, and this moment, and writing a few words before letting stillness and quiet overtake me again. I exhale slowly, hearing my breath and noticing that the sounds of the ventilation, my breath, and my tinnitus all seem quite “the same volume”. I’m not certain they are, particularly considering the “sound” of my tinnitus isn’t a “real” sound at all – no one hears that but me.
I stretch, and sigh, and adjust the way I’m sitting in this rather uncomfortable office chair. It’ll be a day of it, though a short one. I see a new doctor today. For a moment I wonder how that will go, and whether I’ve chosen well or poorly. I put all that aside, again; the time is not now. “Now” is just this moment, here. Quiet. Still. Alone. It’s quite pleasant and… something else. Fulfilling? Satisfying? Peaceful. For a moment (this moment) there is no chaos. This is a chosen, deliberate, willful thing. I am choosing peace and order in this solitary moment. It isn’t much, as peace and order goes, and it surely does nothing noteworthy to improve the state of our messy chaotic terrifying world – but it is here, and now, and it is real. (No one is dying in this moment, in this place. Real peace. I’m choosing it. You can too. So can “they” – and by “they” I mean all those beyond these walls who are choosing to kill, or to send others to fight and kill and die. Those are most definitely choices and could be handled quite differently.)
I sigh quietly, annoyed to have let my thoughts slip from this moment to other moments, other places – other intentions. I pull my mind back, and begin again. Here. Now. This moment. This place. This feeling of peace and contentment and stillness.
Later this week The Author will visit me and my Traveling Partner, and I am eager to see him – it’s been too long. 2016? 2017? Something like that, I think. I remember his visit to help me move into #59… or was it the duplex? Was it both? He’s a good friend – willing to help with a move. Hell, he helped me move to Portland from Fresno, both of us driving vehicles not ideally up for that challenge. That’s friendship, right there. This has been an enduring friendship since we first met… 1996? I think so. He has visited me. I have visited him (though less often). I think about making a trip down his way maybe this Spring – if my Traveling Partner is up to being without me for a few days when that time comes. Could be fun. A chance to see many old friends, and renew those with shared moments and new memories. A worthwhile endeavor.
I smile and my thoughts move on. I look at the time, reluctantly. The work day calls for my attention. My coffee is almost gone. Daybreak is visible on the horizon, beyond the windows. It’s time to begin again.
I woke abruptly shortly before my silent alarm lit the room. I lay still and quiet, wondering what woke me, and still sensing the lingering remnants of my dreams. There was, rather oddly, an old Juice Newton song stuck in my head – not music I listen to, nor have I heard it recently. Peculiar, especially knowing I have not heard it recently (on background music in the grocery store or something of that sort). 1981 – I was finishing high school and preparing to head to basic training that year. It was a year of a lot of change. I was 17.
By the time I reached the office, the music in my head had shifted. 1975 – 10cc. Weird way to time travel, eh? I’d have been… 11? 12? Not long after my (most significant) TBI. It was a strange time, and I still lived at home, with my family of origin. I guess I could just say “with my family” – but that means different things to different people these days, and I’m specifically referencing my mother, father, and my two sisters, in this case. As I settled in to work, the music in my head moved on with the years… Alice Cooper… Van Halen… AC/DC… I listen to songs from other times, still loving them, still moved by them, and just a little astonished by how much my tastes have changed over the years, with moods, with moments, with circumstances, and with relationships. I shake off a moment of soft sorrow, and choose a playlist from a more recent time, more upbeat, associated with happier memories and easier times. “A better groove“. Music is almost a kind of magic, I sometimes think – a way of casting a spell over ourselves, and carrying our heart back to another time, a different place.
I grin to myself and think of my beloved Traveling Partner and his exceptional gift for creating an emotional moment using music. He has inspired me so often, and moved me to laughter, to tears, to passion, so many times. I remember that I don’t have to sit with my pain just because a song plays… I can change the music.
It doesn’t do to dwell on sorrow and pain, and it’s very much a choice I can make – to let that go, to control the mood in the moment, to grab the wheel and drive. It’s my journey, after all.
I breathe, exhale, and relax. There’s a horizon in the distance, and a journey to make between here and there. It’s time to begin again.
Evening Light 