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Sobbing in the hotel bathroom? This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. She came out dry-eyed and composed, but I knew I’d crossed the line. There is nothing like this feeling. Can one die of sadness? I could tell she almost had, and that I was next in line.

Lying together in the darkness. “This is the worst day of my life,” she said. More shocked than sorry at first, the man-child didn’t understand.

“My worst day was when you left to move to Dubuque,” I answered—getting in the last word—but the thing was false, contrived, unclean. What was this, some kind of contest?!? There was no comparison at all. (And her moving didn’t constitute abandonment. I cried for days back then, but that’s not what it was.) Still not grasping what was right in front of me, I lay awake a long time and decided I would live, regardless, no matter what transpired next.

Just then something like a window opened deep inside:

Oh Jesus God. Oh no. Oh great fucking holy hell. I COULD FEEL WHAT SHE WAS FEELING, at least as much as I could stand. It was unbearably sad. She carried the weight of all the hurt I’d dished out for decades. Everything she’d said to me for years was true and oh so simple. As I lay there in the dark, I saw the whole of my irrational betrayal. Years of criticizing and correction. The gift of sarcasm turned perverse and used to wound. Emotional abuse. The constant chipping away of self-esteem. A million tiny digs that added up because I never stopped!

That’s what you women get for marrying us momma’s boys. We wouldn’t be that way if they’d been good to us. We think women are all out to hold us back. Being hard and absolute is the only way to make sure of your loyalty. Being right about everything is an unconscious manly duty. That you would love us unconditionally from the get-go is inconceivable. You must submit to all our fears and make us whole—especially with sex—or we will strike out with a vengeance. Sometimes it’s even physical. Not in my case, because I’m lucky. I have the cleverness, the dropping of the killing insult. The only reason I’m still alive is that I’ve never used this on a man who might have beat the crap right out of me. More luck, of course. It almost happened many times.

She’d been right all along in matters of the heart. Thank God for what little charm I did possess, because I’d treated her like dirt. Exactly like my alcoholic father, too, no empathy at all. Ironically, this revelation eased the pain enough for me to fall asleep. She’d done nothing to me. Whatever else I had to deal with, she wasn’t it. All I had to do for her was be a man.

I told her of these insights in the morning, calmly. She listened quietly and said, “We’ll see.”

The rest of the day was utterly different, however. Without a bridle, she was free, and so was I. The family visit that followed was a thousand times better than ever before. The cousins’ reunion we’d come for was a blessing, though I knew almost no one. People liked me, and I liked them. “Are you still a transformed person?” she asked me afterwards before going to bed. It was something of a miracle, all right. With just one stumble under stress, I was almost sane for once and hardly knew the feeling.

By pre-arrangement, she stayed to fly back later. On the long drive home, I had ample time to meditate upon my many sins, if we can call them that, for I felt no guilt and needed no forgiveness: the way it was, was the way it was. But as I drove along, the “window” opened up again from time to time. A song or sight would set this off, leaving me in ruins.

Okay, I’d manifested everything I never thought I was.

Okay, I’d treated her the same way I’d treated myself for my whole life!

Okay, okay…

But now I knew why I was alive and breathing on God’s green earth. If I could feel true compassion—not guilt—for a single person I had wronged, anyone, just once, especially any brave enough to stand real close, I’d beat the odds and die a happy man.

That’s all that Creation requires of me. It’s what I’m here to learn, why all the shit was dumped on me.

“We’ll see,” she said.

Amen!

So I walked up the mesa again today. It was ferociously windy, maybe 55 degrees, with a bright sun under mostly cloudless skies. Wearing only shorts and T-shirt, I wasn’t cold. What clouds there were blew over the mountains long and straight, cloud-taffy pulled out by the western wind.

As I walked, I thought about another hike a few years back. At the time, I was worried I was dying and had just had an encounter with a spectral darkness on the trail. The upshot was that I made a bargain with the Creator, that if I could stay healthy until I was 90, I’d gladly shed my mortal coil then. (Short-sighted, wasn’t it!) Well, today I had another little talk and put in a pitch for more time: if living past 90 would make someone happy, then please extend my stay, is how I put it. I guess we’ll see. Pretty nifty social engineering on my ass, though.

The thing is, I’ve had so much more energy lately. It’s like I’m just waking up and don’t want the party to end before I’ve had my fun. So many incredible things have happened to me over the years, and yet I know I mostly missed them. That’s how it always is. But if I could go back in time with the emotional muscle I have now, I’d pick the first 10 years of my life on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, say ’75-’85. (There are so many times, but this will do.) To think that I arrived before the final ruination of development, when country life was still a WAY of life and living on the water wasn’t just for swells, but didn’t recognize it for the awesome gift it was instead of just another whistle-stop… If I could go back and pay attention, soak it up, smell and taste it all again, I’ll bet the days would get real slow, and if I paid enough attention, I could kill time dead. My wife would be there too, again, the way she is now only happier, because I wouldn’t be crazy, stirring up the mud. If only. That’s not the way this rolls, though, is it?

I keep on walking up the mesa. You need your wits about you here these days, because since the land grant cut that road across the hills to open up property for sale, there’s always people sitting in a pickup somewhere, looking funny. (And then there was the time we almost interrupted someone else’s coitus, only both were guys.) I take my time now, coming to the open areas along the trail, stepping in the quiet dirt instead of crunching on the rocks. Before I walk out into the open, I pause for several easy breaths and listen, maybe have a drink of water. I like this way of moving, and it takes me out of my head.

On the way back down, I catch myself writing something like this story in my mind, but there’s a lot more going on, unwholesome fulminating bullshit underneath the surface. This isn’t right, not right at all. I stop and breathe. Another sip of water. The sun is warm on my black shirt.

Moving on, no words.

The trick is staying a millisecond ahead of the black tsunami.

Just be here like a tuning fork, vibrating in the Now.

It was a sharp, disgusting late winter day. Juan del Llano stared through the window at bare tree branches waving in the wind: heavy, dull clouds had eaten the mountaintops, leaving nothing for him. The next thing you know, it’ll start snowing, he thought to himself, and of course it did.

For the next 20 minutes it snowed like the end of the world, a howling sideways barrage that fell into great swirling clumps where the wind broke over trees and houses. In 10 minutes the bare clay patio was covered in white. Pure as the driven snow, he grimaced, knowing it would soon melt into mud for tracking through the house, never mind how happy the tulips he hadn’t watered yet would be.

The snow subsided. He opened the front door to check for damage. Not much, but the stones were slushy wet, the icy, humid air straight out of his past. Goddamn March! It had been a week of blows no one would understand, least of all himself, devoid of honor.

Surely there must be someone else to kick. He realized he’d have to walk out to the woodpile later in the slop and cursed his self-drawn fate: the mud, the debt, his belly fat. Whatever wouldn’t let him die in peace he’d never known.

Returning to his desk, he spent the next two hours composing and recomposing a long and evil email message to an idiot of a client, the only one who’d ever paid him without bitching. Worthless dreck, he muttered inwardly. Restrictors of freedom. Placental scavengers. Ignorance incarnate! Slashing his own throat was how the game was played, yet somehow this made him feel better for a while. So good, in fact, that in the end he never hit the “Send” button.

The weasels chewing on his tender parts looked up briefly, panting through yellowed fangs, and then resumed their feasting (though with lessened appetite). Filthy geriatric ominvores, he groused. Maybe if he fed them scraps of recognition, they would curl up in the pockets of his hand-me-down soul, and he could buy a new one.

After all, he did like the way their little pink tongues trembled, steaming in the chill.

I just had a very close encounter with a big brown hawk. A couple of feet away would qualify, yes?

This happened less than a mile from home. I was at the top end of the road where the pavement ends. About two singlewides from my turn, I drove all at once into a screaming flock of magpies! [left] Dozens of them, wheeling and caterwauling all around me. This isn’t normal, so I slowed to a crawl to see what was going on. The next thing I knew, a large hawk all but dropped out of the sky, flapping frantically to break its fall, right in front of my face. Its outstretched wings were easily the width of my windshield. If I hadn’t jammed on the brakes immediately, I would have smashed it head-on. As it was, the bird and I caught ourselves at the last split second, so that we just barely touched before it flew off, but touch we did. Feathers pushed against the glass!

I was momentarily stunned and pulled off on the side of the road to check out the rest of the action. The hawk, which I now perceived to be exhausted, managed to make it to the top of a telephone pole about 50 yards away, while the magpies settled into the branches of an adjacent tree. I couldn’t believe how many of them there were. They’d obviously been mobbing the poor hawk, something I’ve witnessed many times, but never anything like this where the raptor was so terribly outnumbered.

A big hawk is at a disadvantage against smaller birds in the air, although these were magpies and pretty big themselves. It does happen that raptors end up getting killed this way, but that’s unusual. For the most part, mobbing birds will just harass the victim. This time I drove away worried for the hawk.

Closest I’ve ever been to a live one, bar none.

UPDATE: Oops, I’m wrong. Make that a live conscious one. In fact, the closest I’ve ever been to a live hawk was when I picked up a dazed merlin that hit our kitchen window in Maryland once. I carried it over to a stump and laid it down to see if it was dead or alive, keeping an eye out for the cats in the meantime. A couple of minutes later, it staggered to its feet and flew away.