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?