Love against all odds

I’m in love with my LePen. I have two in my writing folder because they often get tired and lay down right in the middle of a line. I am beyond fussy over my choice of pens. The LePens give up the ghost if you write too fast, after a worthless endeavor into aspects of worthlessness. And I really wanted to get away from the sacred profane paradigm and so I chose worthless. Go figure. 

Neil calls at sunset from the beach on Ventura Highway. He’s persevering alone against significant odds. His love of performing, of singing takes center stage, and so I packed him off this morning with a larder and with bedding. He'd forgot his head if it wasn’t attached. It is an odd love affair, if it is indeed love. I do question it often. When the gods of dailiness chew through us, and the continued affections of the beloved is a slippery slope of sand. For every step forward, you slide a half step backward and so on. 

I remember driving through Nevada with my uncle and grandmother, we were returning from a pilgrimage to Austin to Home Ranch where a familial love of land, against all odds, bloomed in the desert, and turned sage into oats and barley. We sat a while amongst the dead, the headstones of the Walshes that I’ve never known except through story. My grandmother was lost among the memories of flesh and blood. She was soon to join them, one foot nearer to the grave. She told stories of Wild Bill, Julia and the crazy twin who sewed imaginary cloth with imaginary thread and needle. Cloth and weft of memory. 

I struggled up that slippery slope of Sand Mountain, on the ancient shores of Lake Lahontan, shaped by the perfect geometry of sand and wind. With each step I was like Lawrence of Arabia scaling that heights, hiking towards the sun line, listening to the singing sand. My uncle and grandmother were the size of ants in the parking lot, but before I got to the top, they were beckoning me back. 

I had underestimated the slope and the height and the durability of that massive mountain of sand. I was so close to the summit I could almost reach it, but then I turned back against all odds, and headed back down. Each step I descended was an entire body length. It was the closest I would ever come to flying, flying down that dune, nearly weightless with each step—like being in love against all odds.

10/13/06 Writers' Group