I had set my alarm to wake me earlier than normal, earlier than I normally get up for work, earlier than I choose to get up on days when I don’t have to go to work, and then I sleep a little longer despite the annoying music and the annoying chatter, and when I finally get out of bed and stumble into the shower, I’m already running a little late and I know that I’ll need to speed a few extra miles per hour to get to work for shift change.

In my kitchen, the green digits shine from the clock on my stove. I am, I notice with a quick glance, already ten minutes late when I open the door to throw my gear into the back of my truck. When I walk into the cold air of the not-so-early morning, the sky is lighter than it has been for the past few months, and just over over the hill, tucked between two houses, the full moon is lowering itself into the horizon and it looks like I could simply drive over the hill, down to the waterfront, and run toward the pier and jump as high and far as I could until I landed gently on the moon.

It is unusual to see the moon in Seattle during the winter. When the full moon was rising, over the mountains, up into the sky, I was asleep, in bed early enough so I could get enough sleep before returning to work.

I stand there, maybe for 30 seconds or maybe just 15, and I watch the moon lingering in the sky and smile hugely. I want to stand there longer, much longer but I have to go, so I sit in my car for another minute, wait for it to warm up, stare at the moon. I think to myself that I should take a photo, because it’s so rare for me to see a full moon set in Seattle, when the sky is light and a dark shade of blue, but I don’t want to be late for work, even though I have a new camera that I want to try, but I refrain.

Drive down the road, down the hill, and the picture becomes more incredible. Drive through the tunnel, over the bridge, look out to where the sun is rising, look into my side mirror and see the moon hanging there, delicious in the not-so-early-morning sky. Pass through mountains capped with snow, beautiful photos that will surely fade from my always-forgetting mind.

•   •   •   •
Meanwhile, up in the mountains …

A little boy, just seven years old, goes sledding with his family. only he can’t stop the sled and is thrown onto a busy road, hit by a car and killed.

A elderly man slips on the ice, hits his head on just the right thing in just the right place and ends up with a life-threatening head injury that has probably already ended his life.

•   •   •   •
Meanwhile, down in the city ..

His cancer is back, stronger now than before. His liver isn’t holding up well, the oxygen carrying cells in his body are disappearing and he is, overall, feeling unwell.

•   •   •   •
Driving home, the mountain peaks dusted with snow, the sky blue. I’m exhausted. Too exhausted to stop, too exhausted to care about the taking a photo of the blue sky, the snow-capped peaks, the beauty of rock walls. Then I see an exit, pull over, stare easily at the mountain peak, smile, grin.

Click.

Me: We need to cut off your clothes.
Him: You’re going to cut *everything* off?
Me: Yes.
Him: I’m sorry I’m not better looking for you.

I wrote this back in September, but I never quite finished it because of that whole absence of desire thing I wrote about below. But it’s done now, and so here it is.

In the early morning, when the sun has failed to burn off the morning Seattle haze, I fire up my Ducati and think about which direction I want to point my wheels as I pull back on the throttle, rev the engine a little high (and a little higher still) and wait for that tingling feeling to diminish—the one I get whenever I feel my bike rumble and vibrate when I first set out for a ride.

I live close to the freeway entrance, and I find my way to the highway that will take me North, where I turn left some 40 miles into the ride and begin a series of random turns guided by sights and smells and a feeling somewhere inside my blood. Once I gain some speed I get that feeling again, the one that comes with the sound of wind rushing through my helmet, with the way the road blurs beneath my wheels, with the way air feels when it pushes into my skin at 60 miles an hour. And I grin inside my helmet and slide between cars like a chameleon that no one can see.

A friend asks if I worry about riding my bike, asks if I think about death when I do this, and I tell her that I always think about the inevitable end of my life. And I tell her, honestly, that I think about it every time I leave my house, every time I turn the key in the lock, and I wonder if today will be the last day that I ever lock my door, the last day I ever hear the lock click into place. And sometimes I pause for a moment with my hand on the door handle and think about whether or not I took out the trash or if I made my bed, and I realize none of that really matters, so I fire up the engine and accelerate to wherever it is I’m going.


All Roads Are Good

No matter which road I take, which road I turn down, which road I glide over—all roads are good roads, and sometimes it’s nice to be reminded.

I turn left and right here and there, speed forward on the straightaway, make last-minute decisions as quickly as my brain can process the need to turn because there are smells to follow: lavender, mint, corn, kale, berries. On the side of the road, tucked near telephone polls and driveways are pickup trucks and canopies and wooden shelters with farmers selling the end of summer’s harvest. And I want to stop and gather fruits and vegetables fresh from the field and bring them home to saute and toss into salads, but I don’t have a bag or a backpack or any way of getting them home.

I pull into a small town, find a place to eat lunch and while I pull off all my riding gear I watch a family of four step outside of their car to eat their bounty. I watch as they wipe their faces with massive napkins while the juice of their peaches drips onto the grass beneath their shoes. And for a moment I want to wander over to them, strike up a conversation and ask for a peach, but instead I step into a delightful ale house with good food and delicious beer.


All Roads Never End

When I get to the end of a road, I can see that it never ends, not really. I look beyond the barrier or the wall or the place where towering trees have replaced concrete and tar, and I can see the road ahead—all I need to do it step off my bike and step onto a new and yet-uncharted pathway. Dead ends feel like jumping off points, like you can run and run and run–as fast as you can run and then faster– then jump hard and high and far into the air with floppy arms and cheeky grins.

All Roads Lead Home

The ride home gets warmer with each mile. I take a turn, miss a planned exit, and find myself in stop-and-go traffic. And as I sit in this traffic inside a helmet, inside riding pants, inside a jacket, inside gloves, I realize that all I want to do is get out of the helmet and the jacket and the pants and the gloves and drink a cold beer. It is exceedingly hot, and I can feel sweat dripping down my arms, and my ass is sore, and my knees ache, and I think about getting a six pack of beer and going home to sit on my couch in the dark.

At home it’s dark, the curtains almost always closed, and I crack a cold beer and sit in my living room while I try to re-adjust to the sounds home. And I think about the awesomeness of my life, and the inevitable end of my very delightful life, and the beauty that leads me down the road of soft lips and cold beer and absolute moments of pleasure.

I have not been writing lately, which is really to say that I have had an absence of desire to write. It is not that I lack experiences or moments of growth that I want to write about, it is just that I have had an absence of desire to sit with my laptop and find words to express everything. Maybe it’s writer’s block. Maybe it’s a phase. Maybe it’s merely a moment of hibernation before I climb out of a space where I have been at rest.

Someone once told me that I was their future because whenever they looked out into their world they saw my name and surely this was a sign that we should be together. For the record I don’t believe in signs. I believe we become aware of things—like people and movies and books and cars and authors and music—and then we start to see them everywhere and we start to think it has meaning. I think that we find meaning in the sign, like we find meaning in the happening when people say that things happen for a reason.

•   •   •   •
When I hit the ignition on my Ducati, the sound of its engines and its tailpipes does something to my entire body that is unexplainable. Even if you loved motorcycles—and you loved the aesthetics and beauty of craftsmanship of motorcycles—I think it would still be hard to understand what I could only marginally put into words.

My friend just bought a Triumph, and we go for a relatively short ride—one that clocks in at 112 miles—so we can explore an area east of Seattle with winding roads that meander through farmland and rivers and road-side coffee stands. There are a lot of winding roads, and it feels good to lean left and right and push forward through each curve into the straightaway. And there is that sound—the sound that wind makes when it rushes into my helmet when the visor is up—that reminds me of how amazing and incredible it is to be alive.

Before we hit the halfway point in the ride, when the overcast sky has yet to burn off, I have to pull over to the side of the road and warm my ghostly white fingers on my engine and wait for the blood flow to return. Soon we find ourselves at an espresso stand and drink coffee and talk about death and motorcycles and the inevitable end of our lives.

•   •   •   •

• I shot a gun for the first time in my life, and it convinced me that I should keep a gun at home for personal safety. I shot a 22 and a 38 and a 45 at a zombie target: her name was Becky, and I have this target hanging in the hallway that leads from my living room to my kitchen. Whenever I walk by I think about buying a Playstation3 so I can play Max Payne and Vice City and Mafia.
• One of my coworkers said that she loved working with me because she liked to watch the way that I interact with my patients. She told me that no one talks with their patients the way I talk with mine, which is to say that I get to know them rather intimately during our transports, and when it’s time for me to leave they hug me and thank me and hold my hand before they say goodbye.
• I stood in an aisle at a bookstore looking for a specific copy of a book by Carlos Castaneda. It has to be a specific edition of the hardback version so I can complete my collection, which I’m quite certain will be given away once I’ve completed the collection because I am not fond of stuff. And I think about that moment when Carlos ran down a hill, and I wonder if I could ever have his courage.
• When I get into my car for the first time since she left, I can smell something wonderful, and I sit in the driver’s seat and simply inhale for a few seconds. Then I realize that it’s her, and I think about how wonderful she smells and tastes and feels against the tips of my fingers. I could, I think, touch her endlessly and never grow tired of the way that her skin feels against mine.

•   •   •   •
I find my way to a beach, to celebrate the birthday of a two-year-old boy, and I sit along the sand and the salt water and I watch the way the sun tries to burn through the fog and the haze and the smog. Behind me I can hear laughter and when I turn around I can see little boys and girls celebrating and laughing and playing with water. I watch the sun hang in the sky, wait for it to fall behind the mountains, and I think about the sun and the ocean and the mountains and I understand why it is that I have chosen the path that I am on.

Back home, then gone, then home, then gone. Home now, for a few hours, then gone again. Summer does this to me, kicks me outside and I get lost in the wonder of everything that’s out there to explore, especially now that everything is accessible with the melting of snow and the opening of highways that are usually closed during the winter.

The sun, after a while (a short while, really) is too much for me. I don’t have a problem with the sun hitting my skin, I have a problem with how bright the sun is and how my eyes are quite sensitive to the too-bright light. I have two pairs of sunglasses, each with different lenses: red lenses for days when the sun is all but hidden above the cloud layer, and darker lenses for when the sun is shining so bright that when I take off my sunglasses it is painful and almost blinding.

I drive home from the San Juan Islands after a great weekend with a group of friends that involved a small plane ride and a view of the islands from a few thousand feet in the air. The drive home seems shorter than I remember, and my phone keeps beeping from various people sending me text messages, but neither the music or the messages is able to hold my attention because in the distance I can see Mt. Rainier. And a few minutes later I can see the moon rising in the East, and it’s not quite a full moon, but almost, and I’m lost in wonder for a full hour as I try to watch the road and watch the moon and watch the volcano. Closer to home I can see a hot-air balloon rising in the East, like it’s heading for the moon and it adds to things that I am watching through the cracked, glass window that separates me from the air outside.

I think about Ansel Adams and how he waited for the moon to be in just the right spot before he photographed Half Moon Dome. He would often wait for weeks until what was happening before his eyes matched the vision inside his head and there was the subtle sound of a lens opening and closing. When I get close to home, the last freeway before I pull off on my exit, the moon is almost in the right spot where I would want to sit on a cliff with a large format camera, hunker down beneath a black cover and gently release the shutter. I wonder how far East I would have to drive before it was just right, shutter-releasing right, but it’s late and I have to work in the morning so I find my way home.

When I get home, pull a few things into the house and eat dinner, I walk into the living room and see something sitting on the couch that I don’t recognize because I’ve been home and then gone and mostly gone after that. I realize that a friend of mine has left something for me, and when I look at it for a while and try to figure out what it is I burst into a huge smile. She has brought me red panels of Japanese painted paper that are meant to be hung on a wall, like wallpaper, and it is the red that I’ve been looking for in terms of what color I want to paint my kitchen.

Often, coming home is filled with surprises. And now that I am on a stretch of ten days off, there will be a lot of coming and going and going back again, and my days will be filled with surprises as I aimlessly wander into the too-bright sunshine with my dark lenses, and maybe when I return home once the sun has fallen below my line of sight, when its time to take the sunglasses off, I’ll walk through my front door and find another surprise in my very dark house.

A few weeks ago I went to a concert at a venue in central Washington. It’s basically a desert with sage brush and rattlesnakes and super hot temperatures during the day and reasonably cool temperatures at night. When the concert is over, it’s almost midnight when we walk back to the campground. My friend has already set up the bed I’m going to sleep in, but the stars and the cool night air and the sweet smell of summer are enough for me to pitch a tent outside and slip inside after everyone in our group is long and fast asleep.

It’s cold outside, and I’m shivering a little, but it’s enough that when I look through the binoculars I have to hold my breath and force my body to stop shivering so I can see through the glass to the waning orb rising into the darkness of the night’s sky without it seeming like I’m looking at an old black and white silent movie with all its choppiness.

When I was young, maybe 10 years old, I got a telescope for my birthday or Christmas or for some reason I can no longer remember. I did the usual things that any curious 10 year old would do: I looked through the windows of houses and apartments to see what other people do when they’re inside their homes. And I stargazed and spent as much time as I could staring at the moon in all of its various phases.

Through the binoculars, I can see craters and textures and shadows. On one side it looks like someone with scraggly teeth has taken a bite out its side. This makes me laugh a little, and I stare through the binoculars for as long as I can before the shivering becomes too much.

I sit in my tent for awhile and stare at the moon, watch it rise and change color, turn more of a deep yellow and a deep red then back to mostly white. And it grows smaller as it rises higher into the sky. I sink my head deep into my pillow, and watch the moon as my eyelids get heavier, and as soon as I think it’s time to find my way into a dream-filled state, there is a shooting star that falls just below my vision of the moon and I pull my head up quickly, try to see where the shooting star has fallen and it seems so close, but not close enough that I could run through the sage and the brush and the dirt and the sleeping rattlesnakes to gather the space rock into my hands and carry it safely back to my tent.

Then I fall asleep in the cool night air with the light of the moon blanketing me with warmth.

Years ago when I was in San Francisco, I watched an older man stroll through the rocks down by the wharf. He stopped near me and began to build a tower of rocks, each one carefully balanced on the one beneath it. After awhile, maybe ten minutes or so, a crowd of people were standing around watching him. He said nothing to no one and after he placed the smallest rock on top he walked away without looking back. Today I tried to do the same at a beach along the coast of Oregon.

There is a sand hill just outside Pelican Brewery in Oregon that people climb all day long. It is not for the weary, judging by the number of people I see begin the climb then stop and sit in the sand and savor the view toward the south. Anyone strong enough to climb to the top is rewarded with views in every direction despite the fiery wind that leaves me chewing on sand.

In the morning, when I wake with a slight hangover, I think about how I can merge the Everything of Today within the Confines of Today. I have to re-certify for one of my jobs, and I have to stop at a bookstore to buy something for a friend, and I have to meet up with another friend at the pub for drinks and hugs and goodbyes, and I need to spend some time by myself whether I’m in sitting in a cafe or riding my scooter or lying in bed in silence.

It’s warm outside—mostly I am annoyed by the blinding sunshine whereas the heat has yet to piss me off—and I tool around the city on my scooter and feel the way air feels when it passes over my skin at 35 miles an hour. This delights me to no end, and I think about riding and riding and riding until I run out of gas or time or space, but this won’t happen, can’t happen, and so I focus on the things that I need to do for the day.

Once I get to the pub, I realize that I’ve forgotten to bring a Canadian nickel, which I need to buy a piece of artwork from my bartender, who is selling things that he drew on the back of a coaster for “one Canadian nickel.” He has placed his pieces along a section of wall near the bar, and there are seven in total, and they are crass and bold and absolutely wonderful.

I ask the waitstaff if they have any Canadian nickels, and the answer is “no” but one of the waitresses acquires a one cent Euro piece from a patron at one of her tables. I have never seen anything related to the Euro, and it is smaller than an American or Canadian penny. I offer my bartender my one cent Euro for one of his art pieces, which causes him to blankly stare at me for a solid two seconds. I tell him that he needs to do the math, because maybe my one cent Euro is the equivalent of five cents Canadian. He goes to the computer, looks it up and informs me that my Euro is no good here,because it is not even close to having the value of a Canadian nickel. I tell him to look at it, and maybe the aesthetics might win him over. Sadly, he hands back the coin and I wait for my friend to come who will have a handful of Canadian nickels, even though this feels like cheating. I harass him for awhile, and he finally concedes and let me have the “Fucking Loser” piece of my one-cent Euro piece.

First Trish arrives, then Kurt and finally Bobby, whose taken the bus from across the water, and his suitcase, he tells me, weighs 50.4 pounds. He huffs it to the pub, and we talk about things and drink and eat and laugh and there is a large moment when I realize that he’s moving, as in away, as in he will no longer live down the street and meet me at the pub at noon. While I do not go to the pub to be social, I have developed friendships there, and while I do not generally miss people, his absence will be duly noted.

Cathy walks around with a plastic bag full of buttons in a variety of colors that say “FUCK CANCER.” I buy one for five dollars to help benefit a friend of ours who is going through cancer and has no money to pay his hospital bills because his last employer cancelled his insurance while he was going through chemotherapy. There is a benefit for him in two days—this involves a band and a lot of fun and a shitload of alcohol—but I can’t make it because I have to work. Bobby buys a button, and the bartender asks him what color he wants, to which Bobby says “whatever.” This causes the bartender to give him the Miami Vice colored button with pink and blue. The three of us laugh and grin and later Bobby drops his button into his curry and there is more laughter.

When it’s time to go, time for Bobby to make his way to the airport, we walk outside, me and Trish and Bobby, and there are hugs and kisses and conversations about future events, and then it’s over and the goodbyes pass and I start my journey home.

It’s not hot anymore, the sky isn’t blue anymore, and I am thankful that the sun is hidden behind clouds and and a slowly darkening sky. It’s just cool enough that I need to wear a jacket to ride my scooter home, where I turn on the fan in my bedroom and push the heat into another room, out the through the open window and into the night. Then I settle into bed and think about how nice it will be to sleep in a cool room as I fade into sleep. In the morning I’ll ride my motorcycle for as long as possible before I need to return home.