Leaving the Alarm Clock Behind

I was well on my way to the Happily Ever After land of conformers, contented to express their individuality in marketing terms such as genres, styles and demography for easy sorting by their treat/threat wielding handlers on K Street, Wall Street and Madison avenue. I’d checked off all the requirements for passage on the good ship USS American Dream: College Degree, Wife, Children, House, Two Cars and Career IBM Engineer halfway to retirement. A firm grip on the carrot stick.

The metaphysically absurd act of a Dad"giving Junior everything he never had"

 The hairline cracks in this fine porcelain perfection came in barely recognizable forms. A conversation around the coffee machine, repeating the same routine of retelling every moment on last night’s edition of Johnny Carson since I’d worked there, may have been the first.

My eldest daughter, retelling a her dream one morning, prompted me to ask a silly question, to which she replied, “You know Daddy, you were there.” Before the last word fell silent, I remembered having that very dream my self … also … with her.  Such yet realized potential being sent to public school (from which I’d quit in disgust before I’d found a bit and bridle more to my liking) seemed like sheep to slaughter.

The American Coma

Following the adventures of young Robin Graham, whose parents trusted him enough to allow his solo, five year circumnavigation of the planet in a twenty-four footer before he was 21 stirred deeply buried yearnings and speculative pillow talk that started those same sort of cracks in my wife’s commitment to “…for better or worse”. My curiosity about marijuana was her worst last straw and the rest, as they say, is hysterical.

Here, forty years after our stake in the golden dream was melted down and divided, the golden Sun rises to light the rapid rattle of a woodpecker’s breakfast above me in a tree answered by the throaty throb of toad call rippling across the pond behind me. The air is aflutter with tiny petals departing the star of its flower to float down to drown in the pond or cover last seasons chinaberry fruit already littering the ground all around. Doves soothe the air with their cooing calling to one and all. The dogs and the rooster next field over contribute their part in this never to be repeated concert on the theme of now.

The stable dynamic of natural opposites

I could not have imagined or planned this moment and I may very well have missed it if I had.

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A man is rich by the amount of things

 he can afford to live without.