THE VALUE OF WHAT IS YOURS

Here in the aftermath of speed in darkness I am amazed in the night at how blithely I used to whirl about in bed while asleep, turning onto my right side or my left, doing double flips, handsprings, roundoffs, backhandstands, forward rolls, tucks, reverse double vaults etc. all night long with the grace and ease of a somnambulent gymnast, heedlessly lying on my back or flopping on my stomach to catch a last few Zs in the dawn; then I am amazed in the day at how I used to just jump up into morning sunlight and put arms and legs right and left, here and there into shirts and pants as though there were nothing to it, been doing it all my life then loping down the stairs to carry on with all the multiple twists, somersaults and triple-back saltos of daily life.

When you've got it, when it's yours, you don’t appreciate it, which is maybe why so many times in life it is taken away, held at a distance like a gem in a jeweler’s hand, to afford perspective, make visible to you the value of what is yours, before - if you are lucky - it is given back to you again.

And even if it is not, if it is gone forever, as can happen with age (the greatest teacher of genuine value), you are thankful for the treasure you held if only for a time...

So value every loved one, every friend, every day, every portion of breath, every grace of motion, as though you are much older than you are...

STILL LIFE

In a photo I just noticed again on the wall and took down to dust off and study with older eyes - a snapshot sent me years ago by my first wife, who was then cleaning out her past - beneath a clear blue sky I stand long-haired, headbanded with the US flag on a Fire Island beach back in the late 1960s, full-bearded, wearing my mirror shades that did wonders when we canoed the Adirondack lakes of all those summers...

It is morning in the photo - sun behind me as I gaze inland - sky looks like early autumn, probably not long before we newlyweds both resigned our post-college professional jobs and took off in our blue-and-white VW bus-cum-road-residence for what looked like forever, to find what awaited us in the greater world...

In the photo I'm not much more than a silhouette, but my hair is still dark and thick, glowing with the wildfires of youth... Far in the bright distance are two tiny figures of the only other people on that long curving beach, who came there that day as we did (maybe that was even the very weekend she and I went to our bank on the Island and got a letter affirming that we had 3500 dollars in our account, to demonstrate our solvency to world immigration authorities). We went from that day through years and countries all around the world - separated soon after our return - divorced not long after that. Years ago now, how their number grows, on the other side from here...

The small far-away couple stands close together, maybe a mile from where my wife was photographing me in loving close-up; the shorter of the pair appears to be throwing something into the ocean as the taller one stands straight and watches... They are tiny blurs, as we were to them, as then is to now...

I wonder who they were, and who we were, what they tried to do with their lives from that day onward, as we tried - the waves washing in, endless arcs over amber sands never the same - maybe those two also took a photo...

Or is the smaller person turning away from the other? In fact, are they even together there, in that fading snapshot of 40 years ago?

Distances can be deceiving...

METAPHOR

This morning while gazing at the Lake in that wondrous and silent glaze that spring dawns afford, my eyes followed a pair of ducks that flew together in a wing-to-wing dance just skimming the water surface all across the long horizon, out of the dark through the borderless blues and reds and violets and golds that were slowly braiding the rainbow of morning from the rising sun out across the dancing water, until the pair became one with the blinding light... I have never beheld a more beautiful metaphor for love.