Kite

 

August 29, 2022

 Greetings from an earth-bound misfit,

 The horizon joins a pale blue to the rich green, the universe fastened to the world by a rim of trees, so it won’t blow away.  An impossibly thin line of white joins the effort, connected to a piece of fabric dancing above the world.  I am holding the sky.

 This swatch of wonder was hand-made by a friend of mine, Craig, a Renaissance genius to whom I am forever grateful.  It is an intricate and simple design that amazes me, inspires me.  I lifted it to feel the air, and it lept out of my hands, a living thing.

 It is a rare thing to discover something so delightful that waited to be had right there in front of me.  A simple thing, echoes of childhood, of gliding on air.  Flying a kite may be more complicated than this, I suppose, if you want to do it really well.  But I don’t have those aspirations.

 You have to pay attention to fly, but the act invites dreaming and philosophizing and wondering. Alan Cohen said: “You will find truth more quickly through delight than gravity.  Let out a little more string out on your kite.” 

 The wind wants change.  It will chase the wispy clouds in this way, make room for rain, or something else.  It wants to matter to the temperature, to the leaves, it wants to shape rain against the sunset.  I interrupt it for a moment, and offer this slip of color into its path, and the wind is elated.  It whirls around to play with the kite, to see it flutter, to dance with it.

 I feel like I am fishing for wind.  I put this colorful bait in the sky and feel the wind rush to it, I pull the line, I move my hand, twitch my wrist, feel the wind nibble at the kite, and then take it and run.  I let out more string, and feel the surge of living.

 The line forms a graceful curve to meet the kite, this tiny twist of white, itself played by the rush of air, creating the reason the kite can fly.  The image on the fabric is Jake, my favorite optimist, the same face that graces my best-loved coffee mug, urging me to do what I like, to like what I do.  I smile into the sky, knowing the message from Jake has connected again. 

 Above me the kite dances and whirls, its tails fluttering with unabashed joy.  It runs in one direction and then back, like a fawn swept up in the fun.  I sense its happy vibration, carried down to me in the grass.  The kite performs because it is connected to the line, the only thing that restricts it, and the only thing that allows the beauty in it, the possibility in it, is the tension between me and it and the wind. 

 The unique thing about a man of a certain age embraced by something so innocent and playful and so connected to childhood, is that it invites thoughts that could not be available in other circumstances.  When I went to bed last night, I watched the kite fly above me and tried to capture what I felt.

 I feel the spirit of my sister floating above me.  I feel the witness of everyone who has gone on to what’s next.  I feel my children growing up, connected but now lifted on their own wind.  I feel the beauty of an unseen part of nature, connecting to me in this new way.   I feel the whirl of passion and joy in my chest, that surge you get when you are surprised by something you didn’t know you loved.  I feel like I am soaring on the air.

 I am more aware of the wind again.  This morning when I went out to smell the morning, the wind was there, asking if we were going to play.  I feel like I have met a childhood friend and despite all the years that blew by, neither of us has changed.

 

Hope this finds you learning to fly,

 

David

 

 Copyright © 2022  David Smith

Car Guy

 

 

August 22, 2022

 

Greetings from between the bumpers,

 

My first thought was: “Dad would love this.”

 The streets of downtown were blocked off, and every flat space along the curb was lined with cars.  Some were works of art, some were relics from another era, chrome and steel, and others cutting edge technology fresh from the showroom. 

 It’s a car town, Flint is.  People who like cars know this and half a million of them walk down the brick lined streets to admire the collection.  Hundreds of cars, from Corvairs to Corvettes, from Studebakers to Teslas. MG’s and Triumphs and Austin Healeys.  Tricked out Impalas, modified Cobras, decaled VW Beetles and mint, original Buicks.

 They call it ‘Back to the Bricks’, an Olympic caliber car cruise.  The people who bring their cars enjoy showing off their collection and being a part of the party, but mostly they want to talk to other car people.  Dad would love it.  Especially the models from the years that mattered most to him, from Eisenhower to Reagan, back when we both could identify a car as it drove past us on the road.

 My Dad was a ‘car guy’.  Not a gear head, not the kind that restored cars or fixed cars or collected cars, but they were in his daily life for most of his life.  If he was still with us, he would have gone down the bricks with me to admire the cars and talk to the people who showed them.

When he came to this country, still a teenager, one of his first jobs was detailing cars at Downtown Buick, in Flint.  I don’t know the particulars of the trajectory after that, except by the time I could remember things, he was the Sales Manager at East Side Buick. 

 He was around cars all the time.  We lived a few blocks from the dealership, so the division between our life and his work was a porous one.  We kids wandered among the desks, explored the service bays, walked among the cars in the showroom.  We knew when the new models were coming out.  We knew their names.  The cars and our father were almost synonymous.

 East Side Buick was a company owned dealership, in the town where the Buicks were built, and the lot behind the showroom held thousands of cars.  It was a mecca in the sixties, the place where people went to buy a car right from the factory store.  Dad put on a suit and tie, drove a few minutes, and then ran cars out of there by the truckload.

 Across the street from the dealership was the used car lot, and occasionally Dad would find something interesting and drive it home.  One of the strongest memories I have was him pulling up in a Jaguar XKE, and then taking my sister and I for a screaming ride through the city.  I can still feel the G’s from doing donuts in the parking lot of the Junior College.

 But for the most part, the cars in our driveways were Buick badges.  LeSabre.  Electra 225.  Skylark.  The Estate station wagon.  My Dad had his hands on these cars, washed them, changed their oil, tweaked the timing, wrenched a few things.  But I feel like that was simply what people did while they listened to the Tigers game.  He brought home different models, always wanted to enjoy what he was driving.

 When they closed the dealership, he locked the door and then sat at Buick headquarters a few miles away and figured out how to sell cars across the nation. And that’s what he did until he couldn’t do that anymore. 

 Cars, and all the people associated with cars, were what Dad did, nearly all of his life.  So, I know he would have loved walking between the bumpers, talking to the car owners, listening to their stories, hearing about how they got this car, or the one before, or the one they have their eye on.

 After he retired, Dad told me he would love to own a Buick Reatta, a two-seater convertible that was only made for a few years, over thirty years ago.  Even now as I write this, I can’t imagine what would have prevented him from it, but he never owned one. 

 Even with the enormous variety of cars at the show, it surprised me when I saw a Reatta parked on the bricks, top down, the perfect red, looking like it just came out of the showroom.  My tears took me by surprise too. 

 Dad was a car guy in an era when cars were what made the city thrive.  When the factories ran three shifts and built cars as fast as Dad could sell them, and everyone seemed connected to that culture.  He lived long enough to be a part of all of that, made cars the career that raised his family, bought his home, made vacations, some gifts on Christmas, a newspaper subscription.  He lived to see the end of that era too. 

 It’s a small thing, but I wish he’d lived long enough to have a Reatta in his driveway.  I think he would have loved to drive it to the bricks, hang out with the other car people.  I would have loved to see him there.

  

Hope this finds you driving something you enjoy,

 

David

 

 

 

Copyright © 2022  David Smith

Rain Explains

 

 

August 15, 2022

 

Greetings from the wet one,

 Some weeks ago, I was sitting outside having coffee, in that magic hour when the day arrives.  It was warm and then there was a little breeze which made it perfect.  I sat there after the coffee was gone and just felt the summer. 

 I heard a noise, not harsh, but loud, and while I thought about what it was, it explained itself.  It was the rain.  The wind freshened and a gust of hard rain hit the trees near me, and the grass, and made this rushing sigh, nearly a gasp.

 The rain explained in huge drops, making slapping noises on the wooden planks around me.  It poured into the open space above me in beads so large I could make out each one.  In a moment it was running over my skin, down my neck, soaking my shirt, my legs.  I didn't move, other than take my glasses off and set them on the table next to me. 

 I let the rain explain, and it told me about where it had been, how it had arrived in the clouds and rushed across the fields, barely able to contain itself. How the urge to be in the world again, to be in the trees, in the soil, to be connected with itself in the rivers, was so strong it felt like a passion, a desire, a sensual need, an intention born before all of us.

And then how it finally released, in voluptuous, ripe drops of wet, tumbling into the warm air, seeking, but recklessly, wildly, to meet its destiny.  It coated my skin with its need, its want, and made me feel all of it.  The coolness, the history of the water, the sound of each drop splashing onto me, and all around the rich earthy smell of rain.

 The rain didn’t invite questions, but somehow understood what I wondered.  It spoke of the loneliness of one drop and the overwhelming joy of the whirling, wheeling murmuration of wet, of life. It knew of my love for summer and felt like I needed to understand better what rain means to me.

 Rain knows it sends us inside, changes plans, dampens picnics, creates havoc in arroyos, invites sad songs, creates somber poetry.  It has a temper, which it regrets, but even so.  It told me that it is our companion, not an interloper, not a spoiler. 

 In those moments where I sat absorbing this, the rain connected me with our common life.  It led me to other stories.  To the soft sigh of rain that soothes me to sleep.  To the perfect staccato of drops on the roof of a tent.  To the brilliant sound of rain dancing between leaves, gurgling in the eves, splashing in puddles as it makes its way.

 The water closed my eyes and showed me the wall of rain coming across the prairie.  It led me to the waterfalls and brooks and the sound of water dancing on rocks, and leaping over things, full of life and fun and power. It showed me the patterns it made in rocks, the art it created on glass.  It reminded me of the soft mist showers, and of its cousins, the wisps of white that float just above the grass, longing to be more.

 The rain explained that some moments it is the not/rain that I care about, the easiest to take for granted.  Which I didn’t fully understand until later.  I waited as long as I could that morning, loathe to dry the moisture from my skin, also aware that the world looks sideways at people who don’t have the sense to get out of the rain.

 On another morning, not long after, I remembered the not/rain.  I was in the same place, in that same hour, as if nature had bookmarked it for me.  The sun was still far below the horizon, barely lighting the space above the trees.  The morning was darker because there were heavy clouds edging across the pale blue I usually enjoy.  I could feel them, pregnant with rain, felt that same urgency from the other morning.  I knew it would be wet soon.

 I first noticed the color in the pine needles at the edge of the grass, they were a brighter coral somehow.  The yard began to magically fill with light, but a new tint of morning, before the morning had arrived.  The light was impossibly rosy orange, shading the living green around me.

In that moment two fawns and their mother came into the yard, and became a new color too, their coats were pale salmon, somehow brighter than the usual summer tan.  They minced proudly across the pink tinged grass, like runway models.

 The sun was still deep below the horizon, but its light met the dark gray clouds above this tableau and made them blush, changed them to a mix of scarlet and tangerine.  The light, feeling generous and playful, spilled down into my yard and changed my world from dim green to brilliant apricot and fresh cantaloupe. 

 And then it was gone.  And the clouds pressed back against the false dawn, and the dark pushed the color out of the yard.  And I knew what the rain meant, that sometimes it gives us beauty by being not/rain.  The clouds that give shape to the sky, the drops that put color into arching beauty after a storm, it is all rain being creative and generous.  Our companion.

 Summer is lighting this morning, the sky clear and blue with the promise of brilliant warmth, and I am grateful.  But the lesson I have been given is not lost.  The rain is my friend, on the days it chooses to join me here on earth and in the moments it stays above, waiting, and allows other beauty to exist for me.

 

Hope this finds you with palms up,

 

David

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright © 2022  David Smith

Without

 

 

August 8, 2022

 Greetings from kaore he,

 All around us are the invisible moments that others carry, little ribbons of time or memories or meaningful days.  We carry our own precious things, held loosely so they won’t crease or be stained, but close so they won’t slip away.  We pass each other everywhere usually not knowing what we have in common, each cupping a butterfly in our palm, feeling it flutter.

 A few days ago, I woke thinking of a single word, which is how things arrive sometimes.  I didn’t recognize what the day was or why the word appeared until later.  It was as if I was passing myself, neither of us aware of what the other was holding.

 The word is ‘without’.

 In that morning I said the word so often it began to sound strange, thought about the blend of two words that we used to create it, and overthought it.  Then it came to me what day it was.

 I sought the definition, which wasn’t necessary but sometimes matters, found the answers we already know.  ‘Without’ means; the absence of, lacking, not with, none of, not accompanied by.  It is a word filled with missing, with need and ache. 

 It has been a year and a few days since my sister Leslie was led from where she has always been to where she will always be.  That moment created a little living ribbon for each of us to hold, to know, to remember.  The days between this and that have filled with other things but held this one thing; we are without.

 Each of us who felt that loss, the grief that is wed to loving someone, are changed now.  It is the human condition we share with everyone we pass in this existence.  We have all felt the loss of one we cared for as they exchanged one life for something else.  They are with us, and then they are not with us.  We are without. 

 Thankfully we have the language beyond one word so that we can feel the loss, the pain, and think of it beyond just that.  We can say those words to ourselves and the people near us who are without and feel the comfort of knowing and sharing the ache.  We feel the lack and somehow, we feel the presence.

 The Old English source of the word is withutan which means ‘on the outside’.  What is comforting to me is that the word allows for the absence, and also gives us the presence of the person…just there, outside.  Outside this air, this sunlight, this ache, and not gone, but merely outside, merely beyond the veneer between this place and that.

 In truth, it isn’t always the end of life that leaves us without, sometimes it can be other space, other separation that invites the ache, the loss.  Time or distance or too few words, some element that took the place of being with, and leaves us without.   We hold these ribbons too, sometimes clenching them too tightly, wanting to make it different, feeling the possibility.  Missing a friend or a loved one who is on the outside, still close but without.  Not every lack can be resolved, but there is hope, there is possible. 

 Grief has many lessons, not all are obvious, not all are welcome.  It also has a purpose, not always one we would choose to accept.

 Today and tomorrow we will pass by everyone and I hope we will see them again, and see them differently.  They hold these same fragile butterflies in their palms, these precious things that are so hard to keep perfect, and yet we each desperately need to.  We are in the same family as they.

 Everyone we miss, including my sister, is filled with color and sound, with laughter and song and wishing and good wishes and dreaming and the billion things they did that mattered, and we are more because of them.  When we can’t see them each day, we are given something else instead, to hold carefully in our hands, to be with them.

 Our lives are filled with experiences that shape us in subtle ways.  And among those rich days there are these invisible moments, these powerful wisps of life that we keep with us.  We remember and we love and we ache and we are never, ever without.

  

Hope this finds you with,

 

David

 

 

Copyright © 2022  David Smith

Passenger

 

 

August 1, 2022

 Greetings from the puppet,

 I put the milk in the pantry.  Later when I found it, I thought: “Who did this?”, even though the answer was obvious.  It was as if there were three people involved in the vignette.

 This is a simple part of life, but suddenly held another facet for me.   A week ago, I tried to remember a name from years ago and gave up, and then for no reason the name was in my mouth.  It was as if a stranger delivered it, like a telegram.  It’s a common, ordinary thing for humans of any age, but it made me wonder.

 Yesterday I set out to run eighteen miles, which I managed to, but not at the pace I hoped for.  This by itself is not what interests me, although it’s related.  I ran as well as I was capable of, and if you had been there to ask me how it was going, you would have heard different answers at mile four and mile fourteen.  It was not an issue of motivation; some moments the body was just not interested in the effort, and then for no reason, I felt like I could fly.

 In the hours that unfolded on the narrow road, I intended to think, take time in my head.  I expected to ruminate about a project I have, about plans for the coming week, even compose the first words for this essay.  Instead, my mind was filled with other things, none of them unpleasant, just thoughts and ideas that seeped in.  Uninvited, unexpected, random snippets from all corners of my mind, none of which were particularly important, certainly not memorable. 

 After I showered and devoured my breakfast, I felt the morning catch up with me, and I relished the idea of a nap.  I stretched out and felt the satisfying unkinking of the various things that knot up when you run for a long time, already smiling at the rest, the sleep I knew was coming like a wave.

 Except the sinew in my body would have nothing to do with it.  I could see the muscles in my legs jumping and twitching, as if some alien thing was working its way beneath the skin.  Ugly cramps rippled through my legs and that caused my feet to chime in.  Watching my toes twist and gnarl, as if it were someone else’s feet I was seeing, or some kind of animation.  I finally gave up on the nap, knowing my body was at odds on the subject.

 Not for the first time, I marveled at all the autonomous activity that takes place in my body, breathing and heartbeat and blinking and sweating and the production of all the goo that makes us possible.  And, not for the first time, I started to feel like more of a passenger in the process.

 A few nights before I had a persistent dream, very complicated and so compelling that I wanted to see it to the end.  I had nothing to do with its production, it was simply in my Subconscious Netflix queue. 

 Before I thought about it much, I saw the confluence of mind and body and will as a fluid partnership.  Of course, I always picture myself as in charge of this partnership.  In truth, I may be more of a stagehand than holding a lead role.

 Of course, we are intelligent animals, capable of incredible plans and deep thinking.  We can train our bodies and ask amazing things of it.  The will, the desire to act, to move the body and mind into accomplishment, is powerful in all humans.  We can create, we can dream, we are self-aware, we can love, we can empathize, we have free will, the ability to choose our own lives.

 But isn’t it interesting while we are doing all of this, that often our minds and bodies are busy doing something else?

 Science will explain dreams and absent mindedness and depleted muscles and random thoughts and the auto functions of our body, and that is satisfying to a degree.  Some days our bodies will do what we ask, while our thoughts ignore us.  Other days it’s reverse, or just as often, neither body or spirit will cooperate with our intent, and it feels as though whatever the outcome it’s more magic than motivation. 

 I feel all this whirling around in me and it feels more mysterious and amazing than what science can explain.  It is something to marvel at, another reason to be astounded at the world we get to live in. 

  

Hope this finds you enjoying the view,

 

David

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright © 2022  David Smith

Whitney pics

 

Holy Book

 

July 25, 2022

 

Greetings from between the pages,

 “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend.  Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”   Groucho Marx

 One of the richest sources of life, second only to living it, is to know the lives of others.  We find ourselves connected to people and their stories through relationships with people that matter to us.  The more of these connections that exist, the more interesting and satisfying (and challenging) our days can feel. 

 Then, there are the calling cards of the lives around us.  There are songs, there are children, there is art, there is the spoken history of their existence.  And, blessedly, there are books.

 There are only rare times in my life where I was not reading a book, or about to.   (We can agree not to bother with those years before I was capable of reading since it spoils the point, and none of us want to appear pedantic.)  I don’t know if I was a discriminating reader, there were more forgettable westerns or science fiction than there were classics.  I will also confess that often you would find such masterpieces as Mad Magazine interspersed with more serious writing.  Hopefully I have not completely diluted the first sentence; books have always been integral in my life.

 When I was young, owning a book seemed to me to be a badge of success, a grown-up thing to aspire to.  All the books I thumbed through belonged to the library or my school.  I imagined having a shelf with leather bound tomes, none of which had the little index cards in the back reminding me when they needed to be returned.

 It took me time to accumulate books, mostly from prowling used bookstores.  Most were tattered paperbacks, with that musty smell that is unique to the specie.  I was given a few books, including an enormous dictionary, which was not my usual kind of reading, but could be said to contain all the other books I ever read.  Just slightly out of order.

 I once traded a hat for a book.  The hat suggested too big of a personality for me to wear and looked better on the man who gave me a copy of ‘Centennial’.  The book kept me company for weeks.  It transported me from lonely moments, from difficult challenges, to another place, to other lives.  It also made me wonder, even when I wasn’t reading.

 Not every book is worth reading by every reader.  In my younger days this would sound like heresy.  Even today I feel compelled to finish even the most awful book out of respect for the author, but I am slowly understanding that if the relationship doesn’t work, there’s no guilt to be held, or harm done.  We simply learn what we are able and move on to other pages.

 I love books, more now than twenty or thirty years ago.  There are some who might describe me as a bibliophile, which I will go on record as saying is a terrible word for what it intends.   I love to read, to know the lives of others, more than I love books for themselves, so perhaps the literal definition of bibliophile misses the mark.  Now I am being pedantic.

 Books are a holy thing to me now, beyond grammar and punctuation and tables of contents and copyrights and even authors.   I know more of the joy and ache of writing, what it means to express ideas in words in a meaningful way, and how rare and beautiful it is to push past the blank page to what could be waiting when the words settle down in their places.

 The living captured in books, comedy and tragedy, is meant to be added to our own lives.  In small ways we are changed, and what was written becomes woven in us in the days that follow. 

 These perfect gifts of paper and ink are a record of what happened.  A place to be curious.  A fantasy.  A story that takes us away from the drudgery of washing dishes or some glamor that sucks our soul.  Books are written by people.  It is a legacy, not only of the author, but of all who existed in the influence of the writing.  The writer’s story, and every small story that feeds their writing, holds in it the rich variety of life that is deeper and more powerful than simply words on paper.

 You can make friends, travel, learn, taste, understand, empathize.  You can be entertained, you can gather strength in unity, you can find answers, or find the path to more questions.  You can be curious, you can love, you can be outraged, find peace, or simply marvel at the living that is shared.  All of this from the comfort of where you are, simply by turning the page. 

  

Hope this finds you lost in the words,

 

David

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright © 2022  David Smith