Post Script

I didn't think I'd miss Jack. 

I mean, I knew that I would feel his absence, but our time together had run it's course, and I was sure things would be fine.  They're not.  I'm not crying, but I just went on a road trip, and Jack may have been one of the best companions I have ever had the pleasure of spending time with.  I just got back from a four day trip to Southern Carolina, and -I hate to say this- my traveling companions were boring.

Think of it: open road for more than two thousand miles, stretching through some of the most beautiful landscapes, cresting mountains in National Forests.  All of it was nothing.  Ten thousand idiots behind the wheels of killing machines, gas stations manned by an army of locals, and there was no response.  The conversation consisted of the sound of my voice and minimal answers.  

Good Lord: what went wrong?

We had a car.  We had a direction.  We had music, caffeine, sugar, camera, and a common goal.  We even had a sharpie to make adolescent signs with sophomoric references to breasts or penises.  Why didn't we have a blast?

Jack and I would have.  He would have been as much conversation, but genuinely entertained by my wit.  He would have taken in the scenery.  He would have entertained other drivers.  These girls didn't do anything of the sort.  One dreamt of her (this is not a lie) goat farmer fiance.  The other seemed to be hypnotized or asleep at any given moment.  While I managed to wake the latter, the former only responded badly and went back to sleep.  I am horrified.

I will take this with a grain of salt.  I am, after all, an adventurer, and very experienced in the art of travel.  I cannot expect these two armatures to compare to me.  I can however be amazed.  Have we gone so far down the toilet that college girls can't figure out how to have a good time? Am I the last of my kind?  Is this the harbinger of days to come where the only aspirations of youth are to remain secure and sedated by their ordered lives?  Have we become so insipid that the geography of our great nation is dull compared to the high definition flashes of corporate controlled television?

It may be.  

I have been asked why I wish to go to Africa.  Why I would go to South America.  Why I withdraw from our society- a recoil of shock and near-disgust.  One need only sit in a car as it crests the smokey mountains, beginning decent, and see a bored young woman:  she is beautiful, facing a new world (today forever), and carrying the promise of untapped possibility.  You will know her: she is looking down into her phone as she types a message to someone equally bored in an equally beautiful place.  Once done, she will flip it closed and go to sleep, and the silence of the car will be complete. 

I hate to end it on a sad note, but there it is.  At least we know someone like Jack is still smiling, and that, at least, can give us hope. 

No end in sight...

This is the last day.   

I do not mean to imply the end, only the passing of a phase, and, the inevitability of a beginning of a new phase: passing on, is after all, the passing into.  This evening, a few hundred miles from my city, Jack will pass from what has been our time into a new time.   It is fitting that a moment from now Alaina will end her time in the desert.    Ah, change: the only constant.

It is hard for me to think of this apart from the rest of my life.  This, for me, is the year of change.  I will be leaving the service in January, turn thirty only days later, graduate college in May, and begin what I suppose should be termed my adult life.  I will need to work, or whatever, and think about how I am not getting any younger.  I will need a good wife, and a place for us to have children.  I will need to think about a decent car and the cost of insurance and property taxes.  I will need to be responsible for someone other than me, imparting unto the future the sum of my experiences and knowledge and how my children will get along once I am not there to guide them.  I will tell the stories of my life as parables and fables....and they will listen....and they will learn of a brief time when I had a partner named Jack.

Jack, I will say, lived with me for a while.  He was a good looking boy who had led a sheltered life and was a little timid.  At the time, I was living like a fugitive college student in a Mexican ghetto.  I will tell of our adventures, and how Jack learned about the ways of a proper adventurer.  About guns, booze, broads, and the pleasures of a bachelor's life.  And I will tell them of what I learned.

About how a little dog can teach you the value of company.  The worth of a trusted friend, even if you see each other for the briefest of moments.  Of comfort, spontaneous play, and the ever-present need to be loved and cared for.  About simple pleasures and forgiveness for wrongs which truly don't matter.  That floors can be cleaned in an instant, but feelings take time to heal.  Mostly, I will tell about how it is important to have someone to care for: that the act of giving care to those who need it will always trump our own needs.  That I suppose is the Tao of Jack: to be loved, you must love.  

Thanks for reading.

like sand through the hourglass

In three weeks (roughly) Jack will be finished with his training, and I will be sending him off to a future of solo adventure.  It's a big day, and important time, and he has no idea it's going to happen.  

Oh, I tried to tell him, but the elections are all he can think about.  Every time we talk, it's about girls and politics.  Needless to say, we disagree.  Our views are just not the same.  He sees everything from the bottom up, and I see it from the top down.  I have had more privileges, and have greater access to the top of society, but I have had to work.  Jack may be limited in access, but he has all of his needs taken care of by benefactors.  

We couldn't be more different.  

Personally, I just want it over.  This is a historical moment in American history, and I am very interested in what happens (I bet Jack $20 that McCain wins, and he has blown it on stupid shirts that say, "the guy on the other end of this leash is an idiot").  However, I am also interested in having discussions about other things.  Recently I was questioned about my take on fatherhood, and that merits some thought.  I have ex-lovers with children, good friends in marriage crisis, and this year has the potential to be the biggest yet.  But everyone wants to talk politics. 

Instead of questions on how my life is, or what is happening, I get conspiracy theory and other people's rhetoric.  Partisan dogma, unoriginal ideas, and a depressing lack of genuine passion seem to be the norm.  Do these people know I'm working on a couple of screenplays, or that I am about to end my tenure with the military?  Do they know my senior thesis is one of the most ambitious possible?  Do they know of my plans to walk across Africa and climb Kilimanjaro?  I think they are missing the important part of human conversation.

Really: for as much as people talk, we don't seem to say much.  Jack and I have an agreement on this.  So, what I am going to spend my time doing now, is enjoying Jack.  He leaves me soon, and while I will be glad I don't have to run home from an exciting time at work, or fear for my stuff, or have my little rubber balls covered in dog slobber every time I want to use them, I will miss the company.  

When I took Jack, it was a beautiful day in Chicago.  I had come down to the Paramount Room to meet Alaina, and pick the little guy up.  I didn't know what to expect, but I would do anything for Alaina, and I was looking for a change anyway.  What I didn't count on was seeing her cry.  

Watching her give me Jack -temporary though it might be - was heartbreaking.  I won't cry when I hand Jack over (at least not where I will be seen) but I understand why Alaina did.  He's a heck of a cool guy to know, and he's welcome at my house any time.     

Less the boy, now see the man

This weekend, Jack found something he didn't know existed (get your minds out of the gutter, he knows that is there- he licks it every five minutes just to show off).  No, I mean he found himself a girlfriend.

Ah, country life.  Is it the closeness to nature, the clean air, or our basic genetic makeup which calls so strongly upon the libido when we finally escape the confines of asphalt, concrete, and steel?  Perhaps it is the freedom of being alone with our thoughts and feeling the blood stir at the seasonal changes.  Who could say?  Yet I will vouch for the effect, if not the affect: I took Jack to the country this last weekend, and he

 transformed.

I had my friend Gary come out to help 

me do a roof.  With this, he brought his wife Nico and two dogs to stay for a couple of days.  No big deal, and actually a good thing to have some company.  I know Jack likes these dogs since he sees them every drill weekend, and I know Gary and Nicole enjoy getting outside with the dogs.  Everybody wins.

Gary and I used all of Saturday to do a roof, but finished it to our pleasant surprise.  That left all of Sunday to fool around: four wheeling, trails, walks, beer, guns, archery... and so on.  The possibilities are limitless.  We took the dogs for a walk over to a near-by pond.  Aries (Gary's big dog) loves the water and was dying to swim.  His other smaller dog -who I will call Anna, since her real name is made up and impossible to spell- is a girl and was having fun wading and playing with Jack.  

I met some of the people from town who use the pond, and we talked briefly.  It was good, since I don't have much contact with the locals since I moved out.  It is good to make sure everybody knows who everybody is when you could run into them at an inconvenient time (read:

 hunters should be aware of other people in the area since we may cross paths with guns in the dusk).

Anyway, Jack enjoyed the swim.

So, we went back home and relaxed a bit on the porch before starting to make some new trails in the back acreage.  And then, well, Jack was overcome with his affection for Anna.  I am proud of him.  Granted, it could have gone better.

Both are fixed, but he didn't seem to care.  She's a bit bigger than him (twice his size, I would say), but attractive.  He didn't quite get it all figured out, but she didn't seem to mind.  In fact, the indifference with which she regarded his advances reminded me of many of my ex-girlfriends, and his indifference to all of this reminded me of me.  

He will see her again this weekend, so let's all wish him well.  I know I'm pulling for him.

fleeting, part 2.

Today is the first day of Autumn.  It is the season of ending, when we reap the harvest, admire the last blaze of summer's foliage, and think about the long hibernation of winter.  

For people in other climates, this is alternately the season of birth, and so I find it fitting that today I am given the ending to Jack and I.  The end was inevitable, but the story which is the ending was always missing.   Today, though, Jack and I came back to the city from a productive-yet-relaxing weekend in the country (I earned enough money to pay rent, went squirrel hunting, and saw my family) and learned that Alaina and Jack would be off to Sydney, Australia.  This is a great moment, and, like all great things, carries a certain amount of sadness with the joy.  To top it off, I type this in my apartment while listening to Peter Gabriel's Salisbury Hill.

A week ago, I wrote a poem about the Fall season:

Autumn has come to the midwest

on the fading brilliance 

of Summer's coattails

Gilding the emerald mosaic

Ushering the harvest.

It is the season

of the hunt

of the rut

of slaughter

the life giving end of life.

Soon the snow will come

vertical strands of wood-smoke

bare trees 

stubble fields

joining the low, gray sky.

The aroma of Earth and dried leaves

quicken my heart

sharpen my senses:

I long for the November wood

the rush of prey.

So, now, we have and ending.  It is the work of the same authors which send me to Africa, and to the challenges of an interesting life.  The dewey-eyed youth will be off to join the World with new found skills, yet unprepared for what will come.  Still: the adventure of what will happen is more than anyone can imagine.  Our dreams are ill-equipped to contend with the joy of true adventure.  Even I could not begin to see a future of such grander. And such is life:

For those who would live life, to {as is written) not find, when they come to die, that they had not truly lived, but instead to have savored all the flavors of our mortal gift: that sorrow had been drunk as deeply as love; suffering with joy; salvation mingled with the sweet wine of the damned.  It is the human condition to walk the edges of razors and to see -should we be aware, vigilant and true- the grandiose scene of creation but for a moment.  And, what is more, to share all that we have been with our friends.  

Jack and I have adventures left, and stories untold, but tonight I raise a glass to Alaina for her courage to pursue the most elusive of prey: her dreams.

fleeting, part 1.

I am writing this entry from my apartment -a small, leaning one bedroom on 18th street, which has become home to Jack and I.  Jack is next to me, acting confused and bewildered by the recent loss of a rubber ball, while I enjoy a can of beer (which I can't afford) and a cigar (which is why I can't afford the beer).  

I have been stood up, and it is raining the rain of a hurricane which reaches us all the way from the Atlantic coast or the gulf (I am not sure which), thinking about Jack.  What a funny thing to have a dog as your friend, but how much more odd to know that he is only on loan.  Perhaps it is the atmosphere of expensive smoke and cheap beer surrounded by books and the artifacts of an interesting life, but I see in Jack a new way of looking at people.  I wouldn't go so far as to put this in the category of philosophy -it is more the idle musing of a man spending a quiet evening immersed in solitude than a well-thought ideology- but I feel free to be honest with Jack, and why not?  He is, after all, my friend as much as anyone.  I invest in him my emotions: looking out for him, taking an interest in his likes (rubber balls, discarded bones from my kitchen, walks around the neighborhood), and simply spending time with him.   He travels with me, meets my friends, spends just as much time with me as I do with him.  But what of our future?

I know that Jack and I are friends, but he will leave eventually.  Thinking about this inevitability, I know that I will miss his company, but I also know that I am fortunate to have had this time.  And so it is with all of us: we are all eventually going to experience loss on some level.  It may be at the same level as Jack and his rubber ball (which has been lost during a game of fetch somewhere in the vicinity of my kitchen table and a mass of shoes), or it may be on a deeper and more permanent level, but it will happen.  What I am remembering -since I am no stranger to loss, or the sadness resulting from- is that the foreknowledge is part of what gives it value.  To use someone else's perspective: the pain then is part of the pleasure now.  If it lasted forever, I think it would become cheap.  That it ends, is the source of it's value.  Such is life, no?  

Homecoming

Well, Jack is back, and sporting a fresh fade.  I think it is supposed to make him look like a lion and cut down on the heat, but I am afraid it does neither.  He is simply a little disjointed looking -no flow over the whole body- and he still pants like me at a women's volleyball tournament.  

Of course I don't tell him this.  I, actually, didn't say anything about it.  I know how sensitive he can be about his looks.  I suppose it stems from his size.  You spend your whole life looking up to people, and it's hard not to think of them as looking down on you.  

All the more reason for me to resume the "man-up" training.  I think hi smother spoils him, so I try to help him get his self esteem up.  Help him learn to do "man things":  

1) shooting

2) drinking

3) auto-mechanics

4) cooking

5) crime fighting

6) drinking  

That is phase one actually.  Phase two is:

1) fighting

2) drinking

3) motorcycles

4) poetry

5) painting

6) hunting  

He is not ready for phase two.

Take last weekend for example.  

I finally got the time and money to put a bicycle together.  My boss/associate/professor/friend Scott gave me a frame and most of the components to a really good road bike in addition to the tools and technical expertise.  So, I went out and spent part of my school grant money (I get grants for being either really cool or really poor) on the missing pieces and a case of beer, and Jack and I went to the shop.

I am worried about Jack.  Not only did he not really dig the bicycle build up, but he complained the entire time about not having any fun.  How could he not have fun?  I offered to let him use the table saw or the lathe, but, no, he didn't want to.  I let him listen to XRT, but nothing good was on.  It was crazy.  In a shop where he could have done anything, he did nothing.  I built a bike.  Thinking back to the earlier list, I think Jack needs to work on his mechanical skills.

Oh, and when my friend broke into my apartment via the kitchen window, all Jack did was look up and then snuggle closer to me.  I'm pretty sure my reaction of simply walking toward the unknown perp. in nothing but a blanket with a confused look on my face was better than going back to sleep.  So much for crime fighting.  Maybe I should take him to some dark alleys around town (last time we just drank with some homeless guy, who was really nice) and try to look vulnerable.  That may work: a six three, two-hundred pound white guy walking a Tibetan Wolfhound through a dark alley saying things like, "Gosh Jack, I hope nobody mugs us and takes the huge roll of bills."

Anyway, I am glad Jack is back, and all of the feed back on the blog has been positive.  Don't hesitate to respond via post.  Adios.