Wet Ink

What of past hopes, past dreams?

They dissolve ~ as do hurts and disappointments. 

Isn't that our quest? To invite love to wash us clean? 

To forget?

There is this paradoxical relationship with recall.  We don't want to forget the good, we only wish to get past the so called ‘bad.’  Without remembering it whole, the pain as well as the disappointment, it is as if we have lived a fragmented existence; or worse, as if we never had been more than a fantasy of unsatisfied desire. 

Yet this is our shared heritage-living of contradicted truth.  Whatever mark we leave, it will be temporary.  We can only love in this moment.  That might suggest a sad state making for a heavy heart. The childish resistance to the unfolding real cries out

   'I don't want to leave all that I treasure and cherish.'  

Inspired to comment on my human experience, I desire to share.  I have appetite for it, as well as means to lay out a banquet for others who may be as famished as I am for comparisons; or parched to do the same from the point of not feeling abandoned.  While confused in seeking the refreshing nectar; that milk of human kindness, we grow anxious for evidence that whispers we are not deluded in our hoping.

A single life can be as a mere drop in a sea of tears, but my voice will call out from the end of my anguish, “No more tears for sorrows sake. I will not get over loving well"

Just as most certainly will follow, a contented sigh.

Spanish Bread

I humor myself with choices on the topic of titles.  I’ve no intention of diving into the variety of breads in Spain, (My wife read the title and mentioned perhaps I should have changed it to Cataluña Bread). I also had not intentionally learned about the nuances of the many differences in the country of Spain.  Growing up, for as far back as I can remember ~ well into my adulthood even ~ I thought Spain was a homogeneous society; sharing the same language and having the same customs.  It was only until I married a girl from Catalonia did I realize the complexities and stark differences of that mystical alluring country; with the many distinct different qualities of its individual regions.  I suppose I had suspected it from my lessons earlier in life about generalizing the world when I was stationed in Germany, but the reckoning came obliquely.  My German friends would often conjecture on topics of emotional issue as if all Americans thought and felt the same way.  Sure, our language was more or less English, but it held key regional inferences as well; different enough so when someone from the East might be perplexed with a phrase known well from the West.  I’m unsure if I captured the relationship of comparing the big country with the smaller parts that make it up.  I’m just as certain the same could be said for the villages within any region of any mentioned country.  Some shared qualities to be sure, as well as individual distinctions which are very specifically unique to a singular place.

  Which brings me to bread. 

When we visited Barcelona I could not eat enough of their bread. It seemed to me to be steeped in history. I’m sure I was assigning some mystical characteristic to it, but I would swear that I had never had bread before I ate Pa amb Tomàquet, (Bread distinctly prepared in a Catalan way.) Clearly distinctive ethnic dishes reflect the culture, but I didn’t expect it with a staple I was so intimately familiar with.

   Pa amb Tomàquet is simple. Rub an as newly picked tomato as you can find over fresh bread, spread the juice of the tomato over the face of the cut slice of bread like you were grinding cheese; then add a little olive oil and salt. It’s a delight I just cannot re-enact here in the States. It must be the bread. Or, perhaps, it was the fresh tomatoes? We can get Spanish olive oil, so it’s not that ingredient. For whatever the reason I can’t make Pometomarket , (I call it), here.  

   I think of Pa amb Tomàquet now and my eyes tear up, I miss it so much.  Perhaps I’ve attached my affection to that food and my second home with the delight I experienced with the friendship and intimacy that greeted me on my first visit.  Where subliminally I assigned the food with my initial positive impression I was washed in when introduced to my new extended family.

   That could be, just as a host of other reasons as well.  What I am aware of is my feeling that there is no other bread like it on the planet. Just as certainly, we could line up expats from their regional home towns from around the world and they’d get misty-eyed talking about a favorite dish, or the healing welcome to their soul with a bite of their home spun bread.

You human beings humble me sometimes with your very tender hearts. Some of the very best of the innocent child remains in you, even when you act in deplorably selfish ways towards one another.  I wish us better.

Far From Here

There are times that just descend, when I project myself out towards the west coast.  Usually it’s on a cloudy day, like today. But then, there have been times when I'm walking to my car after shopping and I'd pretend I was in Newport, or a sunset would have me near Laguna, on the beach even.  Sometimes, its the sounds or smells of people around me that spurs a memory of the places I've known, or grown up near.  What I'm saying is, its never the same situation; it just  happens.  I'd wonder about a girl I knew, what she’s doing at the moment, whose in her life. It'd be a sudden missing piece I needed to know the details.  I'd wear those possibilities as if I were writing a script. I'd wonder, how much forced laughter would be used to gloss over awkward times when no one knew what to do next?; like here. Things that really had no bearing on what I was doing at the moment. 

   The busy was palatable in Southern California.  Everyone seemed to have it.  It was like suddenly noticing the frequency of tattoos on the limbs of people you passed on the street; so many people rushing around in haste; in pantomime of important.  Then another notion kidnapped my attention: The word important. 

  I remembered that was the word earlier in the morning that had eluded me.  I make myself promises to check out the meanings of words that happen to sprout out of nowhere when I'm talking to myself.  I've noticed, I’m prone to explore the meanings of words I hear every day; so that I'll have more clarity. I take so much for granted; I notice it’s a shared confusion around me. We use words to convey our thoughts and feelings under the assumption that everyone shares the same definition for words.  That's totally bogus, so we all flounder around in a paranoid thrashing around between extremes of not knowing that we've been heard, to even being understood  if we had been listened to. 

   But back to this word, important. 

I allowed my mind to linger on that word and noticed how hard people try to be important.  Covertly most of the time, since rarely would anyone admit they were feeling insecure or inferior.  And never mind the new age premise of everything changes, which of course it does, so that even when we feel insignificant or unworthy, its only for such a short span of seconds do we really need to make a big deal out of it?  Is feeling that way, I have to laugh, so important?  So, then we go about manipulating situations so suddenly we can be the deciding ingredient, crossroads of activity, then we're the ones sought out and can dispel this whisper of our former shadowy analysis of being nothing or a nobody.

  I had a dream where I was with the military.  I wasn't actually in the military, but I was someone important.  They gave me a helmet to wear and everyone I met mentioned how cool it looked on me.  I knew they were just sucking up, the fit was horrible, it kept sliding over my eyes and blocking my vision.  But its common to see that when meeting someone important; its a desperate act of finding something to offer that they might find interesting; an effort to establish some kind of report.  The camp was shelled by enemy mortars, a lot.  I stood in a cluster of soldiers and watched tents flying up in dusty debris.   While that was happening, as dreams are not constrained by time or sequence of events, I somehow knew that someone had been taken prisoner.  They tortured him to death. I watched the medic examine the body uttering in distress, "Oh no, Oh no" There were holes in the back of the corpse neck, I could see tendrils of muscle and nerve, I also noticed where the ear had been torn off, as well as other nasty digging things had been done by the hole bored into the crevice of his skull.  It was amazingly free of blood, but perhaps I'm squeamish in my dreams.  What a way to go, I recall thinking, screaming in pain. 

   I was then suddenly escorting a young soldier to a mental health trailer.  He had rebelled and cussed out his superiors.  For some reason I was responsible for making sure someone talked to him. I met an attractive woman counselor.  Not the headliner beauty of a movie showcase, but an easy on the eyes sort of beauty.  Her honey brown hair was pulled back, her face open, clean, well proportioned eyes that were welcoming.  The soft approachable look of a person who'd be working in the field of calming war stressed soldiers.  Her manner was direct, but not curt. She asks intelligent questions, I admired her professional air; she was skilled at not wasting time without being rude.  She was on the case, driving toward the heart of his affliction. As she asked her question she’d look straight into me, I felt increasing tremors shutter throughout me each time she’d glace from him, then back to me, lingering longer in our gaze. I wanted to stay there in her eyes, but it was obvious she’d work to do with this young man; I had no recourse but to smile and try to disengaged from the gravity of the notion that she was as powerfully attracted to me as I was to her. I shuffled towards my departure, despite her inviting stares that seemed to plead for me to stay. I had to leave her; leave me, to my thoughts of holding her in my arms while gently gliding into our first kiss that would echo over our combined remaining life.  Such are the romantic fantasies in dreams; you never see it coming.  

   I wonder how often it plays out that way?  Opened to a possibility, but for one reason or another the moment passes; the opportunity evaporates.  Be it fear of intimacy, or sensing of a threat; perhaps even fulfilled conditional promise necessary in order to get close; It doesn't matter, there wasn't time, and time is an illusion; certainly when it comes to possibilities of fit.  There’s a real affliction too. Continuing to play with those past details in the ‘what if’ afterglow time. 

   Tomorrow they'd be on your doorstep and you'd have to face the wrenching reality.  After all that invested chewed over options you still have to face the fact that you're no longer interested. Introduction to the real; everything changes, even your taste. Was a time I'd say all of that was a frigging waste of effort.  Now I see it differently.  I see it now as seeking evidence to support our conclusions. It'd be all that much sadder if we didn't get there; instead continued to lament, or regret our past choices. 

  I think it’s honing the method of being happy with values rather then in obtaining measurable results.  Since quality is a state of honoring those values, then being true to yourself while realizing it’s your way of becoming aware; of being present any of the time. It’s the whole value in any quest.  Well then, I guess it’s all a question of how much dreaming is necessary before we wake up?  It's nothing extraordinary, I do it all the time. Just like everybody else.