Sun and Fog Wrestled

The HVAC system of the building buzzes with tense energy. You notice when it gets quiet that these spaces are full of this anesthetic hum, that it's the pitch to which all the rooms and hallways are tuned, and that it keeps you a little edgy and drugged. Not terribly irritating but irritating enough. Not that there's anything wrong with being indoors; I like buildings. Right now it's joined from beneath by the low hum of something stirring, rousing itself. In about half an hour I'll begin a ten-day vacation. Time for coffee and reading, to walk and stare at stuff, slow time with people I love, to meander and learn things by accident. And outside it's March.

Every year Spring makes me crazy. I'm full of this loooonging but if it's for anything in particular I can't imagine what. Love? Or movement--the longing to go, to get on a plane for anyplace and land and walk along something, keep walking. Or for talk, maybe. Maybe the rest of the world would feel calmer if I could say whatever it is that keeps humming in me?

But. So. This blog.

Mark and I have been friends since 8th grade. I was the new kid at a small school, and lonely--although I don't remember being lonely--and I think my mom got Mark's mom to invite me to spend the night. I assume I was not entirely hateful company but I don't think I began my career as Mark's friend as entirely welcome company. Nevertheless he did welcome me. And over many years now he has been my friend, and taught me about friendship and about life, often unintentionally, I'm guessing. But really the conversation we keep having is mainly stoked by questions like what the hell is going on around here? what's the next thing? what am I for?

The answers to these questions seem to show up on an as-needed basis. And pretty indirectly. As if you asked the Heavens what the hell is going on here? And then it turns out that mild italian sausage is on sale, and that's sort of interesting, and now that's what's for dinner, and the question about what the hell gets displaced by variations on pasta sauce recipes.

Or better. Sometimes moments show up and entirely claim you. You see something beautiful, something that seems like the perfect words for what you couldn't say. Like the answer to the question you weren't wise enough to ask. Something that seems to act out enormous forces. As if, as you sat on a hillside above Santa Rosa flicking dew off the grass, sun and fog wrestled below you, slowly and vastly, and for a few moments you knew that their wrestling was the same as the wrestling inside you.