She agrees to meet him

She agrees to meet him

At a grocery store

To talk about her work. 

Who could complain

There

In such a public place about

Him

Being nearly sixty and

Her

Being younger

Than his daughter turning twenty.

He arrives earlier than

Expected and is

Uncomfortable with what he

Is doing

There

Searching the store for

Her.  

It seems to

Him

This time

Walking through the aisles,

The meat is

Vividly primal,

The mounds of juicy

Vegetables, incredible,

Even the wine

Too suggestive 

For what he has in mind.

She arrives minutes later

Catching him by surprise

Wearing heels, tight jeans, and a sweater,

Lipstick as red as apples,  

Eyes flashing

Light like lemons.  Seeing

Him

She asks about his daughter

And he of

Her

Parents.  He ought to have

Picked her up

There

But it was awkward.

They would

Wonder.  Better privately

Where anyone can get

Groceries.

She wants  

To share a salad – where,

Holding his bowl,

He studies her

Hands, her smile, her hair

As she dabbles the tongs,

Talking about

College and everything

Going on

There.

Acutely aware of

Her

Perfume, her beside

Him,

His daughter’s

Text – give her my best  –

Resonating through the room.

Walking behind her

Into the eating area –

Table to the side, booth in the rear.  

She turns, questioning

In her eyes.

For a moment he is young,

Freshness on his fingers,

Ripeness on  

His tongue.

He sighs, putting down his salad,

Plastic forks and knives,

Pulling out her chair into the

Afternoon sun.

Acutely aware of the

Distance between their lives,

Sharing with

Her

Something funny and innocent about  

Him

Something should anyone care,

Seeing them

There,

Wouldn’t seem as strange to them

As it does to him.

I was in a car accident once

I was in a car accident once in which I didn't sustain any injuries and my car was untouched.  I live about seven easy minutes from my office, and at one point in my tiny commute, I get on the interstate to go up the highway about a mile and a half.  The interchange I use is angled so that the side mirror is not sufficient to see the traffic coming on behind you as you merge onto the highway, and if you literally don't turn your head and look back, you could be in a world of trouble.  

Well, this one morning I take the interchange and am driving fairly fast, as I have done it a thousand times.  I know the turns and the twists, and I know how to look back at the traffic as I start to merge.  

On this morning, I turn my head and see two cars coming towards me traveling at a much faster rate of speed -- the one on the left passing the one on the right.  

Only as I turn my head forward, I see death coming right at me in the form of a big blue van hurling like a projectile from the oncoming lanes in the other direction.  

This van literally has crashed through the median and is racing out of control directly towards the spot where I will be in a second.  It is vividly clear we both will meet at the same point on the highway at the exact same instant, and I know with absolute certainty all the way to the very core of my being I am going to die!  

Except, as I tighten my hands on the wheel and jam my foot on the brakes, I see from my side vision the two speeding cars passing by me, and, then, in front of me, a convergence of the two cars and the blue van.  I witness first-hand the unholy explosion, and, then, watch in shock as the two cars and the van tumble and split apart, throwing wreckage in every direction.  

My car squeals to a stop in amongst all sorts of crumpled pieces of metal and havoc.  I get out and am in a war zone; people are screaming for help and are horribly broken.  Other people from cars behind me and from the oncoming lanes are running up asking if I'm all right and racing on to help the injured.  

I remember thinking, "thank god, thank god, thank god...."   But why am I thanking god when three families have been torn apart and destroyed.  Am I thanking him for letting me live, or am I thanking him for throwing two cars in front of me.  

Why would god do this?  Why would he save me with two other perfectly good families?  

Shouldn't I have been saying, "oh god, oh god, what have you done, why have you done this?..."  

Except god didn't save me and didn't destroy those people.  It was just pointless utterances of an old fool who lived to tell the tale and was an hour late for work. 

****

Families

Lives lived and lost in time.
Who were they and why did they die?
I thought you knew back when I was young,
But it was a lie.  Time passes
So fast.
Details become someone's
generalities and
Subtleties lose their relevance.
Everyone's so confused --
Does anyone know how they lived?
This is useless.
Why did you tell me?
You didn't know and no one
Remembers.

Notes from the Field: Time

Recently I have had problems with birthdays and especially my own.  I spent this one in the skies ostensibly, flying to various cities to visit clients, and, I must admit, my family was not pleased at all as I didn't answer phone calls, return text messages, or communicate by email.  It sounds horrible in writing this down, though that wasn't my intent; I just didn't have anything to say and certainly nothing to celebrate.  

I remember one birthday spent in Costa Rica, and, again, I chose not to call home or acknowledge the day as anything special other than a day I spent alive in a tropical rainforest.  

I like the idea of getting into a car on your birthday and driving with your camera and shooting whatever moves you.  I like the idea of freedom to mourn the passing of time...  to take snap shots of items surrounding the day, pictures for the crypt.  

I decided that it was nice to be flying on a series of planes hither and yon right through my birthday.  At one point I got off a Southwest plane late one afternoon in San Francisco and got back on a Southwest plane the very next morning to Denver, meeting up with the exact same airline crew -- they must have thought I was a security official or someone from the airline, who knows.  In the middle of the flight the stewardess came up to me and said, "How are things with you, Mr. Giles!"  I can only guess at the machinations she went through to learn my name -- certainly she didn't ask me and no one had assigned seats…  

I didn't tell her my traveling on Southwest had nothing to do with her, that she and the crew were only a funny coincidence in my marathon run through time...  

On the plane I was thinking of regrets I have, and the one that kept coming to mind is not hiking the Inca Trail when I was in Cusco, Peru.  I had signed up for it months in advanced and even received official clearance from the Government of Peru, but family pressure resulted in my deciding at the last minute not to add a week to my journey and fly home.  

Now, in looking back at the opportunity I missed and looking ahead at my life, I don't think I will ever get that chance again.  I would have liked to have taken my camera and, walking behind the porters carrying my camping equipment, food stuff, and backpack, shot whatever came to mind, items surrounding the day, pictures for the crypt, all the while climbing to God sitting at the top of the world...  

Did you ever have a premonition on what day you would die, like June 5, or October 23, or February 12?  I always thought I would die on my birthday.  It seemed like a good way to bring a life to a fitting conclusion, like being born at 7:23 AM and dying at 7:22 AM many years later.  At 7:22 AM, I was on a plane flying to Las Vegas and thinking what my last breath would feel like.  My chest expands, air exhaled, and then a nod of the head, a slump of the shoulders, a relaxing of the muscles...  The stewardess coming over… "Mr. Giles, let me turn off your reading light and slow the cold air on your neck.  Unfasten your seat belt, relax your feet, your flight has landed..."

****

The Swami in Encinitas

Just back visiting Houston and San Diego.  Took to the skies Wednesday morning (with a two-hour unscheduled delay in Baltimore) and was home three nights later, right on time. Two days into my speed trip through America sitting in a java joint in Encinitas, CA, I discovered I was missing the key stroke between "d" and "g" on my keyboard.  (What the uck!)  To use my computer, I would need to write without using any words that required this particular letter.  That seemed somewhat mystical!  Well, no wonder, I later learned that Encinitas is home to Swami Paramahansa Yogananda.  His Realization Institute and Temple was just down the street!  

Here I was, now, by chance, sitting so close to the actual temple door, that with a simple knock I could realize the answers to all the questions I never asked!  In truth, though, unless the swami could give me a quick or abbreviated answer, say, a simple yes or no, this would have to wait.  I had no time to seek drawn-out universal truths as I had just arrived in San Diego that morning and now was in Encinitas on a power mission to speak to a prospective client and his spouse about their wealth!  

Talking about time, Encinitas appeared to be a laid-back beach community lost in time!  Clearly, we were going to have problems!  Upon arrival, I grabbed a minute and paid homage to the ocean -- that is until I realized just beyond the water breaking against the beach were about 500 people in black body suits sitting on their boards like penguins polluting the view, waiting on "their wave."  Three guys with balding white hair and beer bellies jammed in wet suits walked by me carrying boards down the beach; they looked like they could be my age -- what the uck, don't these people work?  Behind me I realized I was listening in on an old beach dude talking about the USSR.  Hearing slurred Russian history and eyeing old guys waiting on a Tsunami was too much!  Swami!  

I immediately got back on task and met up with my contacts!  We decided to have lunch in a highly-recommended Peruvian hole-in-the-wall on Main Street.  On the menu’s opening page I read the owner had discovered god on a trip to South America and was compelled in tribute to open his restaurant in Encinitas.  I didn't think we were eating anything special but then realized he never mentioned discovering god's recipes, just god -- bummer!  

Later, my couple gave me a once-around tour of Encinitas and the low-down on the original Swami who arrived in town back in the 1930s and now owns millions in land next to the ocean.  My contacts assured me that the word on the beach was that Swami's Cove was the spot where only the most enlightened chose to ride.  

Secretly, I wondered about the connection between the swami, his exclusive cove, the Peruvian owner neglecting to ask god’s about his recipes, and the penguin-like particles of humanity bobbing out on the ocean like plastic ducks in a shooting gallery.  But I said nothing; I needed my contacts to like me.  So I pressed my plea and said goodbye and soon was back on the road in my rental car roaring down to San Diego and an engagement later that evening with another client and his spouse.  

Perhaps it was easy to put Encinitas in my rear view mirror, knowing that when I woke this morning -- just as spaced as ever, totally broke, and more-than-slightly hung over -- I would have the Encinitas swami still to consider.  The thought occurred to me, I should have slipped a note under his door asking him about the universal truths I had just witnessed.  Was it Encinitas that was so enlightened, the bobbers, or me?  I simply couldn’t tell -- though his advice on reawakening my “ucking” key sure would have been appreciated… 

Winter

It's cancerous!

Snow-like, drifting through our lives.

Silence, long and sad.

Friends emerging, suffering,

Madness, sweeping through their lives.

It's freezing!  Wake up!

Your touch so cold.

Concert at La Selva

It's five AM, and I am writing from the La Selva Biological Station in Costa Rica.  I am listening to a howler monkey outside in the forest letting everyone know he is awake and hungry.  His bark is long and low and seems to roll across the forest like a shiver of wind.  But, there is no wind.  It is hot and sticky.  Two-shirt-days, another at night.   The last couple of days I have gotten up early and gone hiking with a guide to see the most spectacular birds (even though, personally, I wouldn't know a bird from a bush).  La Selva is an incredible site, with iguanas in the trees, peccaries eating unafraid less than three paces from my feet, a troop of spider monkeys crossing in the canopy overhead.  A little bit of paradise in a tropical rain forest.  Yesterday, I climbed one of three metal towers recently built out in the forest that allowed me for the first time to emerge above the canopy.  It was beautiful with a sea of tree tops as far as the eye could see and three volcanoes hovering in the heat off in the distance.  I thought of how there was so much to describe, but I was speechless.  Today it's off, once again, as the guide is waiting for me at six.  A pre-breakfast concert of motmots, tanagers, toucans, and hundreds of other brilliant birds before a long journey that returns me to the U.S. by week’s end.  Breathe it, smell it, feel it, bask in it... it will be gone that fast.