Elegy for Summer

You go to the desert and you can breathe.  It's stark and vast and just maybe there's enough room here to  allow for your spinning wheels to wind themselves down, until

(finally)

you're still.

The summer was one long high-rev, and it was everything you planned, except you forgot to schedule in the rest that makes the thrills thrilling.  You feel like a shit for complaining about back-to-back-to-back thrills, but it might actually be better than feeling

(nothing)

which is mostly all there is left to sense.

There is no

(center)

(ground)

(connection)

energy.

There are

(hurt feelings)

(double-bookings)

(over-sleepings)

many things and people that you miss.

So you go to the desert, and you wonder

why, again, am I here?

and you pedal through strange dreamscapes, finally noticing you are unable to outrun resistance.

(gee, it took you long enough)

And just then you are so tired that the only thing left to do is

(surrender)

(center)

(ground)

and your heart takes flight.

Small Gifts

Spring burst forth along Colorado's front range in a riot of prematurely hot days and a sudden profusion of flowers: trees heavy with blossoms, bulbs dripping in color, phlox unfolding a month ahead of schedule.  It is intoxicating and glorious, but I can't experience that without a sliver of underlying anxiety.  I feel unprepared for the headlong plunge into the fecundity of summer, like the whole earth is moving at a pace I can't match.

I am like a gear in an old-fashioned pocketwatch, tiny and fragile, being moved by my proximity and connection to all those around me.  Small gifts are the lubrication that keep our machine from locking up.  Kindness keeps me from overheating as the seconds tick faster.

Will has been overseas for work and a friend I met in my gypsy days but have not seen for years opened her home and welcomed him as she would have me, like an old friend. 

My mother was my date to a friend's 65th birthday party this weekend.  She greeted us and said to my mom, Your daughter is one of my favorite people on the planet.

The new babysitter goes above and beyond and I come home to a clean kitchen.

A gorgeous slab of lemon-fennel salmon arrived in my kitchen just before the afternoon party preparation got the best of me.

Hugs.  Scalp massages.  Cupcakes.

Small things that, in the words of Robert Brault, become the big things.  These are the things that give me room to breathe, the things that make it safe to unfold the tender parts, the things that make it possible to embrace the noisy, crowded abundance of summer.

Red Rocks

297.365 iPhoneSummer is not summer in Denver without at least one trip to Red Rocks.  Last week Krista sprung on me the good news that she had an extra ticket to My Morning Jacket.  It was a divine way to end my kid-free staycation and a classic Red Rocks night: warm, windy, lightning in the distance over Denver, rock 'n roll, shiny happy Coloradans embraced by the incredible sandstone monoliths. 

I think it's fair to say that I've never been to a bad show here.  There's something about the space that elevates the senses and inspires the performer and the crowd to connect.

Thanks Krista.

Crepuscular

252.365 46mm f5.3 1/320 ISO 200

I know, I know.  How many sky shots through the windshield can I possibly put in this spot?  And isn't there some kind of law against drive-by shootings?

But here's one of the things about summer in Denver: even when you are driving on a soulless highway through a maze of malls and suburban housing developments, sometimes this place still takes your breath away.

Also, Jewel just taught me this definition of crepuscular: 

Crepuscular rays (also known as God Rays), in atmospheric optics, are rays of sunlight that appear to radiate from a single point in the sky.

Thank you Jewel, and thank you Wikipedia.

Reading the Signs

247.365 200mm f5.6 1/640 ISO 200Seriously.  I mean, just look at that face.  Yesterday was that kind of day, when everything seems majestic and beautiful and almost perfectly manifested.  When the Universe sends all kinds of affirmative signs.  Will and I had to drive up to the mountains yesterday to take care of some personal business.  The morning sky was cloudless.  The road was wide open.  Vast swaths of purple lupines were in bloom.  We saw two antelopes pronghorns, two elks, and two moose over the course of the day's driving. 

It was the kind of day that reminds you that the path may not be effortless, but when you find yourself in the flow, you go with it and let the good stuff wash over you.  And then you say Thank You.