September, always.

Someone told me they had a dream last night and I was there hanging out with some of their departed friends, but smiling a reassuring smile from across a room...makes sense on this day, an anniversary....I get a thrill now when I go to sleep, because I always hope to see Ruby or some of my departed friends and family ....Funny with age, the balance quickly can become disproportionate...you can find that more of your top tier loved ones are dead then alive...it gives you no choice but to become a good confidante to death....I know I'm not the first to say this sort of thing...but when those you love are in death's embrace, you have to fall in love with death a bit too....I still see Larry Barrett rolling his eyes at half the stuff that comes out of my mouth (I'm sure he's rolling them over my attempt to be poetic here!)...He's still keeping me in check and I'm still hearing him everywhere. His laugh. Sometimes I don't even think he liked me at times, but I know for sure, we were friends. I think it was this day last year, on the 1 yr anniversary of his death, his brother scattered his ashes in a lake in Idaho, to be eternally alongside his mother ...I'm still transfixed on how a lake can become, or embody your beloved friend and how your friend is now the lake that his ashes were scattered within. Since childhood, I've spent a lot of time pondering this for every person that is now a lake, an ocean, a tree, a beautiful rose bush, or a marble monument. I haven't seen this particular lake, but I do dream of it.

   My walks these days are extra blissful and even though I'm fully engaged with life, its been mostly Ruby coming to me thru all the bursting energy of the prairie plants, the insects and the clouds..the insane colors.This was a place she loved ..(There's a certain spot on this walk I do everyday, across from a meadow, were I always think about Larry and the lake that is now Larry-always without fail. So, more then often, he joins me for the duration of these meditative jaunts through this labyrinth of tall grass prairie) I miss you Larry, if you woke up now, you'd simply ask "how long was I out for?" and it would have felt like a simple dream...

  And Ruby my girl, my dear sweet dog, who made me realize in those alternate parallel universes they speak of, I must be a mother to many creatures.....I'm missing, miss, miss, missing you! In three weeks it'll be a year you died in my arms, on your own terms, while I "sang you out" . It was a privilege to see you out of this world. Its been brutal for me but, yeah, there's that strange beauty of the missing itself. I wonder sometimes what the by product of the weight of missing is, for all of us?...It seems as if by now we all must have spun webs of silk the size of the universe's many mysterious curtains, filling the whole galactic theater...Or we've at least bled infinite jars of honey to nourish those in need of honey...it must be the case. God, i hope so. I don't think music itself can house this energy-its way more mysterious ....this missing is way more clunky (like the milky ways gravitational force and then some)and also impossibly refined...or, its just a boring word perhaps. Love.

   I'm flying to Seattle in a few weeks...I'll look down from the plane, possibly holding a strangers hand, as I often do on planes during take off....and I'll look at the state of Iowa below..It's splayed out like a geometric quilt, and it'll "be" Ruby I'm looking down on-covered by the quilt....Then, when I get to Seattle, I'll pass Larry's old house, the adorable small bungalow that was the epicenter of so many good times ....and i'll see the godforsaken sterile condo that was built there after they tore the house down...(boy you got out at the right time!)....But I promise, ill be thinking of the lake, Larry