This is a recollection of something true.

i've been watching you for hours
it's been years since we were born
we were perfect when we started
i've been wondering where we've gone
{"a murder of one" - counting crows}

Hey look, a piece of the world!

We had just finished hiking the Hocking falls, beautiful rocks and trees. At the entrance there's a sculpture that looks vaguely like a part of a map projection made out of bronze. One of the children said "Hey look, a piece of the world!" I was struck by this poignant observation. Half-joking, half-dead-serious, i pointed at RoguePoet and said "Hey look, a piece of the world!

We are all connected in this life. Noders are more connected, drawn to a site that is built upon associations that are explict, implicit, and subtle. Our conversations kept rolling all night because "that reminds me of..." Just like when you go read Wikipedia to research the Tacoma Narrows Bridge only to end up 3 hours later reading about Lesbianism in Erotica and William Howard Taft, it's easy to get lost in each other's personal softlinks.

This one goes to eleven

Looking into a noder's eyes is always an intense experience. We're all so full of life and living that it just spills out. The project we lead at work. Coaching kids in baseball. How we found martial arts. A smile from mother to child. Knitting. Cooking. Firebuilding.

Mitzi and i marveled several times at how everyone seems to be getting to a very nice place in their lives. Going on trips, getting the good job, getting married and letting go of the past. It's an energy we share, and each higher plateau we reach the more it gives the rest of us the strength to continue climbing.

Row, row, row your boat

On the canoe trip, we started singing a round of "Row Row Row Your Boat". I've always felt deeply about this song, though it's just a kid's ditty (right?). The final line life is but a dream is as haunting to me as ashes, ashes, we all fall down. Life is but a dream, and we only have today, this hour and this moment. Being around all of you reminds me how important it is to fill our lives with the very best stuff we can find. Just like we should fill our bodies with the most nourishing food and clean water, we just feel better when we know we're around good people, doing good things.

{silence in the forest}

I spent several times this weekend alone. Most notably, one of the nights i left the party with a glass of bourbon and sat next to Outside Buddha (as opposed to Veranda Buddha). I soaked in the quiet and the darkness and the feeling of seperation from the group. I've been lonely for quite some time this year, and it has felt so good to feel that connection again. But such connection always feels like they're those solar-powered lamps along the path to the campground: set far apart, feeble in the massive dark, and too soon to go out.

Breaking me from my reverie, i overheard someone say "but you don't know me, the things i've said and done." And i thought, you're right. We don't know each other, and that is such a gift that we have. While we can tell each other the heartbreaking stories, reveal ways in which we were evil or stupid or wrong, each of us is mostly sheltered from where we were and what we've done. Just as important to spending time with good people, this weekend was our opportunity to be perfect, for a little while. Simple, Platonic ideal, horse-as-sphere. So often in life we feel forced by stress or people to be vicious, rude, and selfish. What a great gift to be allowed to be our best.

Y'all often told me how awesome i am, how much fun and how loving. Of course i wasn't always this way. I model my behavior after how radlab0 acted the first nodermeet i met her at, flitting to and fro, giving head massages and distributing smiles. I feel so terriably inadequte for such a task, but it is impossibly neccessary. One of my affirmations is "i am a light in the world", and i must thank all of you for allowing me to have that be true for a few days. Thank you so much.

Scenes from a Family Gathering:

  • The Deluge: as soon as we started thinking about driving to the cabin, the sky opened and the clouds shuddered.
  • Rain for hours before the wedding, then the sun shone and everyone came out to watch a beautiful thing.
  • First night mysteries, solved with a baseball bat.
  • Apples To Oranges: totally ignoring the rules while playing Apples To Apples
  • Throwing dylan into the river
  • Asian statues watching you poop
  • Italian Meat Pie - a slice was being eaten every single hour of the meet, and it was delicious.
  • Bourbon Cherries
  • Bourbon Fireballs
  • On the Radio: Walter and QXZ are in a band, and RoguePoet included a track on his mixtape, which was played one night. Walter went to turn off the music to play Guitar Hero, and realized it was one of his songs and froze.
  • Favorite Stephen King movies
  • Favorite Labyrinth scenes
  • Favorite Movie as an absurd liberal myth
  • GentlemanJim saying hello to everyone there within 2 minutes of his arrival
  • "Just a minute, let me take a hit of new-baby smell off your kid"
  • the secret sin
  • the scarlet month
  • the complete indefensibility of the cabin versus a zombie attack
  • ccunning's dad talking to the cabin's owner, at great length
  • lacto-ovo-baco vegitarians
  • "Hey Mitzi, can you hatch me a beer?"
  • Baconator? I hardly even knew 'er!
  • Seeing the sunrise at the end of each night.
  • BUM
  • 50 noders without wifi, cell reception, TV, or adequate water for 4 full days.
  • "No such thing as 'enough bourbon'. But there is such a thing as 'too much bourbon'."
  • OCD cleaning
  • "What other problems of the world can we solve tonight?"

Saturday night, after everyone had left the campfire and i was settling into my hammock to sleep, it sounded like someone bumped up against the temple bell on the front porch. In Buddhist practice, the bell is used to bring the mind back to present reality, to return from whatever you were preoccupied with and remember to be happy.

The sound rang soft and clear through the waning darkness, and i smiled.

All dreams, and they are made out of real things
Like a shoebox of photographs with sepia-toned lovin'

Love is the answer, at least for most of the questions in my head
Like why we're here and where are we going and how come it's so hard
It's not always easy and sometimes life can be deceiving
I'll tell you one thing, it's always better when we're together.

{"better together" - jack johnson}
{Track 18 on RoguePoet's mixcd, "Farther from Home"}