Earlies

Wake with a shock, late after too many false starts in the middle of the silent nights. Strange dreams of holiday shopping, new apartments, and a climb across peaceful, icy waters bounce around your head like ping pong balls while you wait for the coffee to steep. 

a full writing day

The gift trickles across your eyebrows without knowing quite where to land. The coffee begins to sink in, remind you of the magic feeling when a page is blank, a day is new, an everything is possible. 

You sit down in front of the word processor, greet it like an old friend. Feel like a stranger to it, but at once that you've known each other your whole life. 

It feels like home. And you are ready to come back to it.

Ridge View

At the top of the switchbacks, where the mountain ridge peaks and the valleys spread in three directions, Big Sky making a name for itself without even trying, stood a lone picnic table. I climbed the last incline, through a sea of gold, long grass waving in the wind. Sat on the picnic table and looked out over the valley, searching for answers among the rolling hills, the cast fields, the cars in miniature making their way across the highway. 

It's always in silence that the answers come. I saw the core of what it is to be human, the core of what it is to be me, and how the two don't seem to intersect as much as they should.

The insight didn't seem so hard to swallow, more like getting glasses after the world was blurry for years. Like a psychic only telling you things you already know.

I took my core back down the mountainside. Made my way back to the little cabin in the valley. Sat in silence, holding the core in the palm of my hand, 

and wondering where it goes now.

I'd Forgotten How It Goes

I wake early in the cold morning, with just the slightest hint of magic across my eyelids, like sensing the season's first snow fall before you look out the window. Step out into the quiet cabin, where what remains of my life sits immobile, a still life painting in the mountains. Here is the typewriter, with a half written poem in its jaws. Here is the piano, preparing for a wedding, piles of paper trying to make sense of your literary ambitions. 

He summons you to work, and you cannot quite tell what's getting in your way, until the coffee sinks into your chest and reminds you of feelings long lost. You want to be writing, it whispers to you, the words are ready. 

if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.

You arrived at the doorstep
of everything you were hoping you would find

and all you have to do is walk through.

Notes on Home

Shake out of a dream, your pulse high and your mind elsewhere. Returning to Earth takes longer when you were just light years away. The western wilderness remains steadfast outside your window, quiet in an early morning breeze, as the sun climbs the mountainside behind the house. A new day, a blank slate. You see the end of the road approaching, want desperately to find the metaphor that will shift you into a higher gear. Want to feel the deadline energy make you savor each moment.

Images of New York came across the screen last night, simple, sweet and quintessentially home. They asked if I miss the city, and when I said no, it was clear they heard what they wanted in the answer. But not missing it doesn't mean never wanting to go back. 

No, filled me with such joy. 

Because not missing New York now, means it is still a home I take for granted. 

Not missing New York now, means it has not been taken from me. 

I saw those images on the screen, and all I felt was peace.

Sunset Park

On the drive home, the sun set behind me, setting the grassy knolls aflame in bright washes of yellow. Remains of clouds become homing beacons, dotting the sky with bright lights and sharp edges. Turn off the highway to the small country road, feel it in your gut, it's time to pull over. 

Find the western horizon aflame, impossibly stretched across the endless miles of sky, pink feathers around the edges and a sliver of moon on the periwinkle ends. The air smelling of grass, cows, summer. Back in the car, see the first black bear of the trip, pausing as I pass, dusk settled by the time I reach the little cabin. The insight of the evening not to forget all the things you are already doing right, that are already going well. It's so easy to see the things not yet accomplished. 

But you've already seen a sunset the kind that takes your breath away, already seen a black bear, a night sky, already felt the afternoon breeze across your shoulders. You've already discovered a new story in the melee of your mind. 

There is much left to do. But oh, how many stars you hold already in your hands.

Past Lives

It's beginning to feel like it did. 

That time when I thought I could create a life for myself that would feel right, when I looked at the tracks behind me and liked where they'd walked. All the good things came when I was there, it's not lost on me. 

I am worse for the wear now, the telltale signs of having been raked across the coals crisscross my skin, singe my hair. But I looked in the mirror the other day, the one little mirror in this cabin whose other reflections are all of the mind, and I saw the glint in my eye returned. Recognized it like a dear old friend. 

The stars across the Montana sky are unending, twinkling into the silent night like it's not their job to find any answers, only keep you company while you do. 

For the first time in a long time, you feel like that is exactly enough.

burn

Another day, another struggle, they align on the horizon like patient orphans, waiting for a meal. I sit at the computer, trying to tell stories, but all that comes out is my own inadequacies: I am never enough. 

Back at the drawing board on the porch, I read old books and begin to see new patterns. How everything we do is a muscle to contract, and when the muscle is out of use, we must start from the beginning again. Fewer reps, lower weights, longer breaks. Breathe. A little stretching, a little more fun and games. It wasn't meant to make you cry, only to prove to yourself a little more of what you can do. 

Only to remind yourself how sweet it is to feel your muscles ache,
knowing you have used them for something good.