Look Closely

April 25, 2016

Greetings from the zoom,

I stood in our driveway with my children doing moth imitations around me.  They were demonstrating their own versions of patience, waiting for me to find the moon.  I was peering into the eyepiece of a new telescope, perfectly aimed on its tripod at the white disc in the sky.

I’m sure that somewhere in the box just unpacked there were instructions about how to use the telescope, but it is usually so much more satisfying to figure things out on my own.  Or it is usually so much more maddening.   Someone suggested perhaps the lens cap was still on, to which I blustered a sharp denial, while looking out of the corner of my eye to be sure.  I fiddled and adjusted and continued to look at nothing but grey.

Under another sky; I was riding my bike toward the mountains, hundreds of miles in the distance, a jagged horizon, inspiring me and taunting me.  I worked and sweated over the hot road, dreaming of being in the mountains, surrounded in beauty.  Away from this flat, featureless place, where there were only drainage ditches and lines of wheat or beans or corn stretching away from the white line I followed.

And then I was on a tilted road, working and sweating, panting over my handlebars, no longer able to see the mountains, the majestic intersection of earth and sky.  I was a part of that horizon now, so close to it that I couldn’t see it as I imagined it.  I saw every rock, every crack in the pavement, every fallen tree at the base of towering pines.  But no mountains.

The poet A.R. Ammons said “Anything looked at closely becomes wonderful”.    A simple truth, but also one that excludes other truths. 

Looking at words with your nose pressed against the page you lose the value of what is written.  Yes it could be interesting to see the texture of the paper, if you could focus that well.  You may see patterns between the printed letters, perhaps find the beauty in that unfocused blur.  But all around you, on either side of your nose, is whatever the author created that you can no longer see.

In the cool summer night, cloudless, nearly starless, the moon looked like a mottled dinner plate hung 230,000 miles away.  Until you looked at it through our telescope, which was focused so perfectly at the surface of the moon, so tightly on its center, all you could see was the flannel grey of the Sea of Tranquility.  Enlarged so I could not recognize the moon at all. 

Earlier this week I thought of that night in the driveway, seeing the moon and not seeing it.  I was waiting, my least favorite and most necessary skill, one barely passed on to my children.  I had idly picked up a magnifying glass and was looking at my hand.  The hairs leapt out at me like some foreign things attacking me.  I could see the pores of my skin between them.  There were red blotches, moles, freckles.  I turned my hand over and looked at the roadmap there in my palm.  I said out loud: ‘Yecch.’

If you looked at me across the room you would see a different person, me as a whole, and that image is its own truth.  If you looked at my hand through a magnifying glass you see a different image, a different truth.  And while both truths have me in their recipe, neither is complete on its own.

What’s interesting to me in that contrast is all that changes is context, perspective, what level of focus we apply. 

I ground the pedals around and around in slower and slower revolutions, sometimes teetering on my two wheels, moving so slowly as to barely defy gravity.  Until I reached the pass, the peak where the road would crest the divide between East and West and up and down.  I stopped, leaning on my bike, the sweat drying on me, breathing in the rarified air. And looked back at where I had been. 

The world spread out in a dramatic vista.  The plains stretched away for hundreds of miles, crisscrossed with roads and rows of green growing things, giant circles made by the pivot irrigation.  The horizon arced slightly below me, where blue met green and brown, buffered by the dust and heat waves.  Rivers carved sensuous curves in the broad canvas, vanishing, then reappearing as they wound their way toward some deeper place. Towns clustered where roads crossed, tiny water towers marking their victory over the plain.  I saw the beauty there, the same flat place I had grumbled over for days, as I watched the mountains grow closer until they disappeared.

I move through my day, seeing plain and beautiful in the same thing, depending on how much I lean in, or pull back.  What balance I can get in every day often comes from remembering that I choose which perspective I take.  Knowing that with only a little tweak in my focus that another truth may be revealed. 

Hope this finds you aware,

David

Copyright © 2016 David Smith

Procrastination

April 18, 2016

Greetings from just a little while from now,

If you are like me, even figuratively, (which doesn’t mean we literally have the same figure) you have faced some Mondays with a certain dread.  Perhaps you have work piling up, or a difficult project for which you are completely unprepared for.  Or someone is bugging you AGAIN to finish doing your tax return.

These kinds of pressures can lead to Chronic Deferment Syndrome.  CDS.  You can tell that this is an actual condition because it has a capitalized acronym, unlike those made up sicknesses like “peanut allergy” which you can tell is fake because it has quotes around it. 

According to research which I am currently fabricating, Mondays are the primary cause of procrastination in America.  In the interest of making life easier for you, possibly saving you stressful anxiety and a painful IRS audit, I bring you:

Ten Steps to Dealing with Procrastination.

One:  Understand it. 

If we look at the origin of the word ‘procrastination’, (which I did and found a really amazing recipe for beet salad on the internet, and a cute video of puppies jumping into a basket) we find this breakdown of the root of the word; pro- meaning ‘forward’ and  crastinus- meaning ‘belonging to tomorrow’.  If I understand this properly, there are some things that come to us that belong to tomorrow.  If we are to correctly live out our fate, we should forward them there.  This is not really procrastinating, but embracing what is.

Two: Make a list. 

This is an important exercise to organize your thoughts and prioritize the various responsibilities in front of you.  You will need some lined paper, and a well sharpened pencil.  Do not look in the junk drawer in the kitchen to find the pencil because all that’s in there are crayons, some keys to things I can’t identify, a twist tie, and a phone charger to my Motorola Razr.  In spite of all the innovations in phones, I still really liked that Razr. 

If you don’t have lined paper it would be worth a trip to the store to get some.  It would also be a good time to wash the car, since it’s finally stopped snowing. (check local listings) And perhaps while you’re at the store you should look at belated birthday cards.  Maybe before you go you should make a list so you remember all this.

Three: Prime the pump

Nothing breeds success like success.  If you want to really grind through all the work you need to do, you first need some momentum.  I believe you should begin by doing something you enjoy.  Go for a run, or open up that carton of Moose Tracks you’ve been thinking about.  Teach your dog to jump into a basket.  It’s accomplishments like these that will give you the confidence to attack the challenges you’re most trying to avoid.

Four: Visualization

Imagine actually completing the activity you don’t really want to do.  Think about how satisfying it will be to have that behind you.  In order to make this most impactful, get some crayons and paper and illustrate what it would look like to be finished with whatever it is.  Or, if you can’t find crayons, lie on the couch, close your eyes, and envision your success.  This may take an hour.  Maybe a little longer if the house is really quiet.

Five: Embrace it. 

“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.”  Albert Einstein.
Einstein was so smart he is practically a brand name for geniuses.  So we can trust his perspective.

The idea is clear; we have time now, and we have time later, and it goes against the laws of physics, and possibly karma, to try to force all activity into one time frame.  Whatever you’ve been putting off is probably not good for you anyway.  There is a reason you don’t want to do it, so maybe you should acknowledge that and follow your instincts. 

And, the fact is, sometimes really good ideas happen at the last minute.  Sometimes circumstances evolve that take care of whatever you have been avoiding.  Sometimes if you wait long enough, everyone who matters will forget whatever it is you were supposed to do.  Besides, you have CDS. 

Ten: Adapt.

Life is filled with challenges; if we are going to make the best of our lives it’s up to us to find ways to weave through the difficulties placed before us and create solutions that make sense to our true nature.  This sometimes means being creative, inventive, and when necessary, to stretch the fabric of time and space to accommodate what needed to be done yesterday.

Hope this finds you seizing the moment… later,

David

Copyright © 2016 David Smith

Glad to see you

April 11, 2016

Greetings from the greeting,

Some months ago I was visiting a woman who lived in a cluttered home with only two dogs as company.   From the moment I came into the house the woman was complaining about the dogs being under foot.  I wondered out loud why she kept dogs when they seemed to be such a nuisance to her.  She thought about it for a moment and then finally her face changed.  For the first time I saw her smile, actually laugh a little, as if the thought surprised her.  She said: “When I come home, they are always glad to see me.”

It is a universal need among humans I think.  We want to matter, to be missed, to be liked, to be welcomed in, to be acknowledged, cared for, to be loved.  Even a life filled with all of that can still be made better just by having someone greet you with a smile.

I bent over to rub the top of the baby’s head, sitting on the floor of our church, and he looked up at me and smiled.  There is something irresistible about this.  A visceral connection is made when a baby smiles at you.  No guile, no agenda, no question.  He was glad to see me.

I have read enough about child development to know that this may not be entirely accurate.  Babies smile for a variety of reasons which evolve during their first year.  Regardless, the reflexive effect on me was strong.  I smiled back, content to set aside science and soak in the moment.

I know this is common among all people.  Even the most self-assured, secure person will feel something when another person acknowledges them, or better, expresses a positive response to their presence.  Describing it this way sounds too clinical.

And so there is this. 

Yesterday I was out for a run, weaving through snowflakes, distracted by whatever minor things I had puffed into significance during the night.  The steel colored clouds clung to the horizon, just enough contrast to the barren trees to illustrate the frozen spring.  I muttered to myself about the snow swirling around me and thought of warmer places.

I watched another runner coming my way on the opposite side of the street.  Even from a distance I knew who she was.  She has a distinctive gait; tenuous tip toes, elbows pistoning in and out, weaving just a bit along the white line.  Even under layers of winter gear, from a quarter mile away, I recognize Jenny.

I have run past her a hundred times and she always whoops a good morning at me.  She is a mature woman, a respected judge in our community, but she carries a spirit of childlike exuberance that is infectious.  I had not seen her on the road in a while, which for runners of a certain age can mean a lot of things.  As it happens it was none of what it could have been and the same serendipity that separated us now allowed our paths to cross.

I saw from the change in her that she had spotted me.  I heard her yell my name, and she began to veer into the middle of the road.  As we drew closer her arms opened up, a dramatic wingspan, as if she were victorious again over the winner’s tape. I could hear her voice, not entirely sure of the words, but the tone, the message was clear.

I ran toward her and from ten feet I could see the huge smile on her face, her cheeks red from the cold, her eyes wide under the knit cap pulled down on her forehead.  And then we hugged each other good morning in the middle of the road.  It was a comical sight I am sure, both of us bundled up in winter gear, clapping each other on the backs in the brittle morning air, our breath hung in clouds around us.

Jenny was her usual irrepressible self.  “Isn’t it a BEAUTIFUL morning?” she demanded.  She bubbled over with news, just having run a half marathon with her brother the day before, laughing at herself, asking about me, then veering off to something else.  Less than a minute for the whole thing, and then she was running off, looking back over her shoulder to say: “I’m so glad I got to see you.”

I ran the rest of the way home in a better frame of mind.  Laughing a little at my own grumbling about the weather or my puny problems, reminded by her example of what it’s like to be your best self.  It wasn’t until hours later, when I bent over to touch the baby’s head that I recognized what had happened to me.

I would not be surprised if Jenny does not even know my last name.  We have known each other for years in a certain context and that is an excellent connection.  But even understanding the nature of our friendship, it is still incredibly uplifting to be greeted this way.  Jenny is authentic in her expression, and that I suppose is what makes all the difference.

What occurs to me in all of this is two things.  First, my day holds many moments when someone genuinely is glad to see me.  It is only my dulled senses, and whatever curmudgeon attitude I might have, that causes me to overlook them. 

Second, it seems to me that I might have been missing the opportunity to share what Jenny does so well.  She expresses her joy in living in many ways, but this is something that could be simple to emulate.  To be able to simply tell people in some way “I’m glad I got to see you.”  It’s so easy to do, and as I can attest, easy not to do.  But if a dog can do it for someone, surely I can.

Hope this finds you smiling back,

David

Knowing

April 4, 2016

Greetings from the best results,

What is the capitol of Scotland?

Anything worth knowing, and a vast morass of things not worth knowing, is available to you within seconds.  Assuming you can provide the initiative to type in a few key words in a search engine.

What has developed with this access to information is a change in the way we ‘know’ things.  It is a blessing and a curse.  Seeing the world through search results gives us a limited dimension of what we seek.  Even really good results, with video and gifs and graphs and links to blogs, we will only know so much of what we see in any meaningful way.

Some months ago I went to the library.  It is the same library I studied at when I was in high school, a twenty minute drive from where I am sitting right now.  It is an inconvenient distance if I just wanted to look up the definition of ‘rotogravure’.   

The library has an environment.  It smells of paper and the dust of other paper and of people.  There are worn steps from thousands of seekers, the wood places are shiny from hands, the shelves scratched and scuffed from books removed and replaced and removed.   If you go to get a book, you get more than a result, you get an experience.  If you have a question you get more than an answer, you get a relationship.

I use this as an example of the spectrum available to us.  I believe we are lucky to be in a time when so much of the world is available to us, and at the same time I wonder if it changes us in ways we may not comprehend until it is too hard to change back. 

I can type in an address in my phone and get directions to wherever I want to go.  This is an amazing help to me, saving time and frustration.  But there is value in understanding where you are going; orienting yourself in the world and making your way from where you are to the place you want to be.  You cannot get the same experience looking at your phone.  You often learn more, absorb more, by being lost and then unlost, than you would getting turn by turn directions. 

I know that this is a fundamental way the brain operates.  If you want to know something well, you absorb it through various means; reading, hearing, watching, saying it out loud in your own words.  The more you can add emotion to information the more it registers as a memory.   Layer in an experience with the information, and it changes how you assimilate it.   It is the difference between seeing data versus gaining knowledge.  It is understanding. 

We become accustomed to getting answers in a certain way, and they become empty calories.  We are satisfied for that moment, and then that passes and there is barely a residue of the exchange.  What I am wondering is how much we lose when we stop going to the big dictionary in the musty library to flip through the pages of other words we could know to learn what we sought.

If you want facts, they are there for you, just ask Siri.  If you want more, if you want to be changed by the experience, you will need to invest yourself.  Go, touch, talk, smell, remember, and then tell someone about it.

Edinburgh is really two cities, the old and the new.  If you get up early, before the traffic clogs the streets, and run to a ridge that overlooks the harbor you can see the sun rise on both worlds; the modern metropolis and the thousand year old bastion of early civilization. 

If you were walking to the castle, and wanted to stop for coffee, there is a shop on a narrow street along the way.  It is on a steep hill so the sidewalk is canted, but the shop owner is optimistic about his patrons and puts a table and two chairs outside for the intrepid.  The coffee is rich and nutty, strong and hot.  The chocolate croissant is fresh, still warm from the case where it sat in the stray beam of sunlight. 

Perched in the tilted chair, the cups and plates next to you bravely defying gravity on the café table, you can sense the city around you.  The hint of ocean in the air, the cool cobblestone road, the clamor of traffic at the bottom of the hill, the lyrical brogue of the people passing.  It is an important crossroads in Scotland, rich with history and potential. 

They can’t fit it all on Wikipedia.

Hope this finds you understanding,

David

Copyright © 2016 David Smith

Blank Page

March 28, 2016

Greetings from the printer,

I am often surprised by where inspiration evolves. 

Yesterday I saw a homemade birthday card my daughter sent to Harrison.  It was clever and perfect for him, and that would not have existed if she hadn’t made it herself.  What’s more the drawing was really good.  None of that surprised me completely.  But I was inspired by her inspiration. 

Occasionally I will get some legal document, usually from some large corporation; you will recognize the sort.  Something written with the intent of being absolutely clear, without any potential for misunderstanding or interpretation, and so burdened achieves the exact opposite effect. Individuals would never communicate this way with each other, but for various reasons, particularly where money is involved or where backsides must be covered, corporations must complicate things to the ridiculous. 

I don’t typically read these things, in part because I have no tolerance, but occasionally I will look through out of sense of obligation; I know it’s the grown up thing to do.  I’ll read thru the ‘therefores’ and ‘whereases’ looking for words I recognize, and usually among all of the indecipherable gibberish stuffed between the margins there will be one page that has these words:

‘This page left intentionally blank.’

My first reaction to this sentence is always to laugh, because just by its nature it is ironic and contradictory.   I enjoy myself at the expense of the anonymous author and that ends that interaction.  But, I have to admit I have wondered about the origin of the page left blank, as it is said, ‘intentionally’.

I don’t really need to know, but my intuition tells me it’s something practical or legal or born out of some corporate tradition too arcane for ordinary humans to care about. 

But I like to think the blank page comes from the deeply secretive, rarely spoken of, Department of Whimsy.  I believe that hidden within every large impersonal bank, every law firm with locations in multiple cities, every manufacturer who employs so many people they can’t all know each other’s names, there is a Department of Whimsy.

It is in the DOW that you find the creativity that produces a page left blank, and the humor to title it as such.  I think they leave other tidbits around for us to enjoy too.  It’s possible that they know that the mind-numbing document that you have just opened will not add anything positive to your day.  They know that someone like me would need a break from all of the jargon and doublespeak and obscure legalese.  And so they provide the page left blank.   A palate cleanser for the brain.

Imagine if someone told you that this wall, this envelope, this brain, this moon, this chocolate chip cookie, have been left blank.  Intentionally.  What would you think?

The clue from the Department of Whimsy, the hope for us all, is that word ‘intentionally’.

They are trying to tell us in their subtle ‘get this past the legal department’ way that they want to give us this bit of white space on purpose.  Perhaps the author is suggesting we doodle, or write how we’ve been inspired by the idea of a proxy vote or another class action suit.   The DOW tells us with the word ‘intentionally’ that we have permission to use this space for our own purpose.  And why not make it worthwhile?

My daughter was inspired by a blank page of paper.  She felt the desire to share birthday wishes with her brother in a unique way, one that showed her personality and tipped a hat to his.  She felt a desire to express this artistically.  Enter the blank page.

Here is the message from the Department of Whimsy that you will not see written elsewhere, and so it is my duty to tell you:  This day was intentionally left blank.   It is not an oversight, or an error, it was left that way on purpose so that you would have room to fill it as you wish.

My plan for this Monday is to find the blank places and scribble in them with reckless abandon.  I will have a little fun, create something, and share it.  I also plan to make some blank space for others to fill.  Intentionally.  Starting here.

Hope this finds you filling the margins,

David

Copyright © 2016 David Smith

Spring

March 21, 2016

Greetings from the warming,

“Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems.” Rainer Maria Rilke

To be honest I had lost track of the dates and hadn’t noticed that Spring was due.  I tend to take my cues from nature not the calendar, and where I live that really is foolish. 

It’s like when you are playing cards around a table and the game is progressing and then there is a lapse when nothing happens, everyone looking at their cards and waiting for the next one to be played somehow.  And someone finally says ‘Oh, is it me?’  Such it is with the seasons in Michigan. 

I went for a run on the first day of spring, while only twenty four hours ago might have been December.  It was cold enough for snow, but lacking the exact recipe for that, the air formed winter in my lungs, a little something by which to remember the frost later on in the day.

Bundled up against the chill, hat and gloves, layers scientifically proven to ward off twenty degrees, I ran along a wooded path.  The trees on either side seemed unaware that the season had changed; no calendars to interfere with reality out there.

Between the bare branches I watched the river, muddy and stern, churning along its banks on the way to somewhere, filled with melted snow and the rain that chased it.  Even as the light formed in the woods it seemed dreary, certainly not inspired by the poet’s version of spring. 

I clopped along, ungainly and stiff, some of which was the temperature, some my advanced age.  As it always happens, eventually I warmed up, the muscles relaxed, the joints loosened, and I slowly made my way into the better version of me. 

I skated along a wooden bridge, slippery with frost, and paused to look along the river.  The sun was nearly up, still shy behind a grey curtain.  I felt the earth tilt, almost enough, toward the warmth. 

The philosopher Albert Camus described the human spirit, his own strength against struggle, in one of my favorite quotes.  “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.”  The beauty in this is that the strength does not come from a change in seasons or circumstance; it comes from our choice to be the summer within.

Easy to say in an inspired moment on a wooden bridge, waiting for the sun to turn the world to summer.  And then you feel the cold creep into the places where the sweat has formed, and you remember that nature doesn’t care about calendars or Absurdists or runners.  It can challenge one’s resolve to be in the moment.

 

A few weeks ago, sitting in this same chair in the dark hour before dawn, I heard a barn owl outside my window.  I was entranced by his sound, deep and melodic, chanting at me from a tree just a few feet from my desk.  He was serious and thoughtful, sharing the perspective that owls are famous for.  The message he thought I needed to hear in that morning was; that which we love most often requires the most patience.  It was not up to anyone else to provide that.

Just now as I was writing this, he was there again with his staccato question, made rhetorical since we both know the answer.

Within patience is a resolve that allows us to outlast the fickleness of nature or other randomness of the universe.  That tenacity that doesn’t fail when tested by chill or pain or time or distance.  Where does this come from, this patience?  Who will provide this strength to push past the midst of winter?  Who can give us the will to smile in the moment when we are in the wrong season?

Who indeed?

Hope this finds you moving patiently,

David

Boys Birthday Map

Greetings from the cartographer,

Alexander says to me:  “So this is our map?”

“Yes.” I say.  I sometimes forget what he has not been shown.

He runs his hands over the lines on the paper, and I see him pause at the creases, and he is concentrating for a moment.  He wants to ask if this fold is important.

“Where are we on this?” he asks.  He looks at me.  There is a small furrow between his eyebrows, exactly where it appears on my own face when I am curious. 

The table is littered with things.  Books his brothers have read.  A photo album from his sister’s life before there were brothers.  An old LP record.  A DVD with a movie that Harrison made.  Crayon drawing from grade school.  A folding knife with the Eagle Scout emblem.  A copy of a valedictorian speech.

I place my hand near his on the map and point to where our lines have met and stopped.  He knew, but this is how he draws me closer to him, by asking me about our lives.

He glides his fingertip across the towns and counties and rivers and backroads.

“These two lines, where these cross here,” he asks, “That is where Katherine met Tim?”

I smile.  He loves asking this question because he likes the rest of that story.  We trace our fingers along the two lines running tandem across the map. 

“This is Monarch Pass.”  he says.  “She loved climbing that. Well, she loved having climbed it.”

I refill our mugs with coffee and he sits back to sip his, black and strong.  It is the middle of the night for some people but he is an early riser.  Because that’s when we have time to visit.

He leans back to the table and runs his hands over the maple, the planks scratched and creased from thousands of meals, from homework and tax forms and newspapers and plates with birthday cake.  And maps.

“You made this table for us.” he says.  I nod.  His fingers touch the braille left by his family; finds the edge of the table where his brother dented the wood with something.  He is counting the chairs and I see a shadow cross his face.

“There is room for more chairs.” I tell him.

“I know.” He looks up, the shadow is gone and he is smiling.  “I can feel us in this wood.”

His hands absently move back to the map.  He is not looking at it but I see him tracing the red line.  “He runs a lot of miles.” he says. 

“Yes.”

He follows the line to Montana and Wyoming and back.  The red line spirals in and out, twists up with other lines, zig zags between Detroit and home.  “He’s upstairs sleeping right now.” 

“They sleep a lot, it seems.” I say.

“They fill their days up to the brim, they need the rest.” Not defensive, but protective.

The blue line stops in Ann Arbor.  He moves backwards along the map, to D.C. and Texas and a little town where there was band camp and across the state to Ludington.  There are a lot of stops. 

“I can tell that a lot of thought went into these routes.”  He is shaking his head slightly, amazed.

I say nothing.  He knows more about the routes his brother took than I do.   His forefinger taps the map.

“He is at a fork in the road. Wonder where he is headed?”  He looks at me, still smiling, as if he knows something he’s not telling me.

We sip our coffee, elbows on the table.  He sometimes traces my line back before his was on the map, but we have had those conversations many times, and this morning he is thinking about his brothers. 

The green line has crossed with the blue and red, at home, in Ludington.  Here was our camping trip, just the boys, to Canada.  He laughs, remembering the rain.  The green line runs close parallel to the others, but it is in its own direction, making its own way, stopped at this moment in a small side street near Allendale.  He traced the line backwards a ways, south.

“Why was he in Atlanta?”

I tell him it was a service project he did on spring break. I say: “He took some amazing pictures.” 

“He has an eye for capturing a moment.”  he says, nodding.  “You know, he might be a genius.”

I don’t argue that.

We don’t have to talk about his own line on the map, the black line, a blend of all of the other colors that track his sibling’s paths.  If you looked casually at the map you might not notice it; it looks like an outline or a shadow of the other lines.  But it is there, tracing the same travels taken by Katherine, Harrison, Carson and Sawyer.  He is with them, and me, at every turn.

We fold the map and put it where we always put it.  He leans back and sips his coffee, looking up at me over the brim.  His eyes have the passion, the kindness, the intelligence I have seen in the other children around this table.  We sit in silence, both of us savoring the flavor of the moment.

After a while I ask: “What would you like for your birthday?” 

He doesn’t say anything right away but he already has the answer in his mind. 

I rest my hand on the table.  He was right.  I wait, watching him, looking at my father’s eyes, my son’s eyes.

He answers at last: “A map of the world.”

Hope this finds you exploring,

David

Copyright © 2016 David Smith