good morning, mostly

             

                              good morning, mostly

                              if we want to be realistic
                              but who wants that?
                              Christa?
                              the one who's sleep is interrupted 
                                    by sunlight

                              the farmer's daughter

                                    such as we are
                                    pioneer spirited

                              let no one squander opportunity
                              contained in each moment

                              real
                                  what is
                                        only this - no myth
                                             about anything

                             i don't want all this illusion

                             what does romance look like now?
                             all those songs
                                   ...for nothing



©  Tom Taylor

Good Morning Jacob

Letter to my Son
Sunday, 9 November

Good Morning Jacob…

Drawings make better words when something incomprehensible needs to be said.  Today I needed utter black and white to replace the spoken word.  I’ll call it Sphinx:  141109.  Adding the date makes the title useful – like a journal entry. 

Of course, it is a woman.  If there is an enigma of the female sex for males it is mainly because they are so important to us.  Women are the center of our lives.  For this reason it is imperative we work their puzzle. 

I’d like to think I am done with politics.  I’ve sworn it off numerous times before.  It comes with an unhealthy constant agitation.  In a democracy the election appears as an end-point to the struggle.  In fact, the struggle begins anew once all the votes have been cast and counted.  Some people live for this endless battle of wits and ideas.  It wears me down.  I have other things to do.  Right now I feel like an alcoholic waking from a bender.  I swear to God, never again.  But you know how that goes.  Actually you don’t, but I do as do so many others. 

What strikes me is how close to intoxication romantic love can feel.  Is it any wonder we often exhibit poor judgment while under its influence?  I’m not talking about sexual desire here.  That’s a separate topic.  No, I’m referring to the insatiable interest we have in another individual.  The affair can become an obsession, especially if we’re sixteen.  We get territorial.  People might think us neurotic.  During this period of greatest intensity it might seem advisable to have our driver’s license suspended.  We should be warned not to work around heavy machinery.  Lovers are prone to loose fingers, even limbs, while in their distracted state.  Their impaired judgment makes them a danger to themselves and others.  It’s a blessing we don’t all fall passionately in love simultaneously.  Society could not survive such a lapse in attention. 

How likely it is government will one day prescribe a lithium-type drug to suppress our emotional passions.  Legislators will point to data that irrefutably proves lost worker productivity when one becomes romantically involved.  This is a personal indulgence we simply can’t afford in the competition that comes with global economics.  We have all experienced the self-destructive side-effects of extreme emotional involvement.  Like sexual desire, romantic love is biology run amuck.  Sensible people are quick to realize human desires are not in good taste. 

Show me the rational basis for a passionate embrace.  No one can say it puts food on the table or helps pay the mortgage.  These are tough times.  We require serious remedies from sober minds.  If you find yourself fantasizing about sharing your life with another then slow down.  Come to your senses.  Think of the pitfalls.  Rest assured there will be grief.  Romance is easily crushed.  Everyone has sung the blues more than once.  It gets worse.  You have heard of lover’s leap, haven’t you?

I’ve made my point.  Simply say No! to that lingering kiss, evening walks along the seashore or, heaven forbid, sharing a bed.  I know how wonderful it all sounds but that’s the devious nature of biology.  Before you know it you’re hopelessly hooked to another human being.  They are so unreliable.  Guess what happens next?  Before you know it, two people become three and sometimes four, five or more.  Now you are swamped in love.  You find yourself worrying over all of them.  It’s a nightmare.  Where’d all the good times go? 

Women and men:  what is the meaning of this?  For that matter – any two people falling in love.  I suspect there is a master plan here.  Maybe we are meant to get all tangled up with each other.  Alone we can focus.  We’re productive, resourceful… powerful.  We can be dangerous.  Falling in love helps diffuse our destructive potential.  We snuggle when we could be devising diabolical plans for world domination or, at the least, plundering our neighbor’s possessions.  Instead of warring against nature we develop a curious interest in words that rhyme.  We write silly verse about someone’s eyes or the smallness of their hands.  We allow ourselves to daydream.  We notice the clouds.  We stop and watch at length someone special doing nothing in particular.  That’s love.  It’s filled with stupid stuff that makes us feel right.  Funny, isn’t it?

Love,

          Dad

Good Morning Jessicca

Letter to my Daughter
Sunday, 26 October

Good Morning Jessicca…

The world can’t find enough somebody did somebody wrong songs.  It’s the flip side of every romance.  The trouble with love is its promise weights too much for human nature to bear.  Love may seem immortal, just not with the same person.  It’s a cute trick of the Valentine, guaranteeing a fool for love is born each day and the weight of human love doubles every few years.

Love has no season.  There’s a full moon at harvest and the first kiss slips quickly into a lost embrace.  A new awakening begins.  There is no going back.  You taste the mystery.  Nothing ever felt so right.  Two lovers are swept away by a glorious current of desire, need and hope. 

It happens again.  Nothing new occurs beneath the sun and moon.  Not now.  Not ever.  Not in the course of events between two humans tangled in love.  Go trouble yourself with researching love’s path through song, poem, book and motion picture.  Consummation occurs early then sinks from view.  The love we now know is never as it once was.

I love you.  This is all I have.  Is it still good for you… or should I ask? 

You’re young.  You’ve been there by now.  You know the joy and, probably, you’ve felt the cold as it slips away.  Then the door shuts, forever.  It’s OK.  Let it sink in.  This is another course of nature, much as the inevitability of birth and death. 

Your life is given a new chance.  Love springs eternal.  Someone new wants to be with you.  It’s not a question of good.  We adjust to the rules of living.  In fact, we may fall in and out of love within the same marriage.  Life has ways to intervene.  The partner we loved at nineteen is not the same one we love at fifty, despite they’re sharing the same name.  It holds true for you, as well.  Personal growth that is healthy and rewarding has the potential for trouble in a dynamic relationship. 

It’s true.  Change can be a threat.  Difficulties must be confronted.  Accommodations are made.  Despite this effort change can lead to an end.  It’s the parting of irreconcilable differences.  Where once there were rose color glasses there now seems only illness.  You can’t deny the unhappiness.  Bitter words are exchanged.  It’s the pain of losing what you once cherished most.  Damn you!

 A broken heart need not be a terminal disease.  Sure we spend time stumbling about, appearing before all in clown makeup – adrift, stranded.  What’s the cure?  Stay busy.  Be involved with what’s outside you.  Change for the better may start slow, almost imperceptible.  One day you notice there are pleasant surprises to the day.  Your step lightens.  A sunset is shared.  Happiness returns but not as before.  The joy is more measured, yet worthy.  You find love never quite left.  It may be recast but it is always there to share.

Love,

          Dad

Good Morning Justin...

Letter to my Son
Sunday, 22 December

Gypsy serves breakfast

“Cade, you haven’t a romantic bone in your body.”

Cade paused to look up from his hash browns, bloody with catsup.

“Where’d I do you wrong, Gypsy?”

“You ain’t never’ve been close enough to do something wrong with me, cowboy.”

He smiled and shoveled in another bite.

“You think refilling my coffee might get you a bit too close?”

“That’s business.  We all have to take risks for a buck.”

“You got that right.  One buck – there’s your tip.”

“That a fact?  I’m thinking more along the lines two quarters suits you.”

“Like hell.”

“Damn straight.  You lay down a buck and you’ll get me thinking you came into money.  What happened?  Social Security give you a raise?”

“How bout that coffee, Honey?”

She grabbed up his wadded napkin and bounced it off his forehead, dropping right into the egg yolk.

“Hey!”

“Hey yourself.”

The bell jangled above the entrance.

“Gypsy, your walkway’s mighty slick outside.”

“I’ll have Cade grab a counter shaker and salt it before he leaves.”

“She’s sweet talking you, Cade.”

“Hey Bill.  Still living the dream?”

“He can’t afford it.  So Bill, ‘Senior Special’, decaf, cream, no sugar… right?”

“I come in here too often.”

“It’s the women.  Food stinks but Gypsy loves to give you suggestive looks.”

“I suggest you finish up, pay your tab and make yourself absent, Cade.”

“I can’t do that.  Bill here’s deathly afraid of being alone with you.”

“He ought to be.  I’ve a thing for a man in a toupee.”

“OK, that’s about enough.  Come over here and give this a feel.  It’s all real, Gypsy.”

“And it’s all yours, Honey.”

“Sorry, Bill.  I still think I can peak under it.”

“Make me a liar.  Come over here and put your hands through it.”

“Watch out, Gypsy.  He’s starting to stir.  You still messing with Viagra, Bill?”

“I get it by the case from Canada.  Might come in handy one day.”

“The internet’s a wonderful thing.”

“OK, Gypsy.  How would you know?”

Bill suddenly looked bewildered.  “What we talking about here, drugs or sex?”

“Why Bill, both of course.  Right, Cade?”
“You asking me?  I get my internet in the library.  Not much you can do there but pay your bills on line.”

“Says you.”  She winked.

“I hear you can look at whatever you want in a New York library.”

“That a fact?  Where’d you hear that, Bill?”

“Facebook,” Cade said.

“No, you got to have friends to be on Facebook.  Right, Bill?”

“Gypsy, I think my cakes are burning.”

“His is the short stack,” Cade smiled.

“Their pretty stacked compared to yours, Cade.”  She smiled back.

“You’d have to cook mine to know.”  Cade said.

“You’re strictly wheat toast and eggs.”  She replied.

They starred at each other.

Bill leaned away from the counter to take them both in.  
“Get a room,” he said.

Good Morning Jessicca...

Letter to my Daughter
Sunday, 1 December

T r a i n    M a n

Everett lived in a caboose at the end of a long train.  He had been a railroad man serving the great Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe for many years.  He had a number of duties, none too taxing, and he performed them reliably and well.  People might say he spent his whole life serving the railroad.  In his own mind, though, Everett saw himself as being a witness to the world that traveled past his window.  It was a vast panorama, populated by diverse people going about their business, creating their own stories, and all seen by Everett from a respectful distance.  He felt he knew and understood any number of them and he often spoke of their personal desires and trials while in long, thoughtful conversation with the favored people that populated his mind.  They would sometimes pose questions so that they might better understand the characters he saw.  Mostly the voices he heard were those of long-time friends but there were also a few adversarial types that questioned him more critically about the information he offered.  They found him most often prepared with well-considered opinions and a few colorful anecdotes to back him up.  They might appear a bit rude in the tone of their inquiry but it was perfectly alright with Everett because it kept his powers of observation sharp.

The person he most enjoyed speaking with was Diane.  He’d met her long ago while at an unscheduled stopover in a small town outside Albuquerque.  The train was parked on a sidetrack until the following afternoon while repairs were being made.  Everett had only time to kill so he walked over to a café on the road that paralleled the tracks.  It was a very small place with a short counter and only a few small tables with two chairs apiece lining the windowed wall.  This must be a family business he thought as the cashier looked to be the daughter of the old man doing the cooking.  Everett chose the eighty-nine cent breakfast of two eggs, toast and coffee included.  He was a bit surprised to find they didn’t ask how he wanted his eggs or coffee.  They just handed him scrambled eggs, wheat toast and coffee with cream and sugar.  He wasn’t about to fuss.  He was sure it would be good. 

Everett first saw Diane when he turned to find a table.  She sat in a corner partially obscured by shade, an empty coffee in front of her.  

“Bring me a fresh coffee and come sit with me,” she said.

Everett had the cashier pour a fresh cup and carried it on a tray with his food, sitting down across from her.  She smiled and casually took the cup from him.  They exchanged names.  Everett barely heard her say the name Diane as he was caught up in appreciating her eyes and her full, deep-colored lips that accented her dusky-scented skin, which elicited for him an image of Sicilian olive groves and hot-blooded women in peasant scarves.  Everett suddenly felt very pleasant and offered to share with her his eggs.  Diane made some comment about how bright the desert sun was this early in the day while she reached for the fork and began to eat.  Her attitude made it appear as though they were old friends picking up a conversation from the previous day.  It was as if she already knew all that there was to understand about him and this might have irritated Everett except for the fact she had spared him the embarrassment of having to explain himself to her.  Ceremony and formal politeness often left him tongue-tied. 

Between carefully selected bites of egg she briefly mentioned that there was a bit too much salt on them for her taste.  Diane talked at great length of desert snakes and birds of prey and of poets she liked and of the poetry she wrote, all in silver ink on dark paper that reminded her of papyrus.  Finally she said the only poets of any worth were all women.  She paused to study his face.  He thought she was overly opinionated but he felt captured by her soft, teasing approach and animated manner.  The color of her lips was a natural, deep maroon and he kept wondering how they must feel.  What?  She had asked him a question.

Everett smiled weakly and said, “I haven’t read all that much poetry.”

“Of course you haven’t.  What do you do with yourself Everett?”

“I’m with the railroad.  That’s my train over there.  I live in the caboose.”

“Really!  That must be interesting.  Where do you go?”

“Well most everywhere between Chicago and Los Angeles really - so long as there’s a track.”

“Well Everett that makes you a man of the world, doesn’t it?  I’m impressed.  Have you a stove and all in that caboose of yours?”

“I’ve actually got most everything you could ever want inside.  There’s an old pot-bellied stove, a table and a couple of chairs and a bed, of course.  I’m gone most all the time.  I have to sleep somewhere.”

“I so envy you.  Your home is on wheels.  You mind that I come and see it?”

Everett spent the remainder of the day enchanted.  Diane proceeded to make herself right at home in Everett’s world and he couldn’t have been more pleased.  She was royalty walking through his threshold.  It flattered her to have his undivided attention and she grew fond of him, teasing him and gently toying with his emotions.  His heart positively began to race as darkness fell and she showed no inclination for leaving.  They had become very comfortable together.  Everett found a long-lost inner voice he could share with her as they lay together in the darkness.  There truly was beauty in the world and his heart captured it all as he felt the warmth of her breath against his ear.  He dared to think of taking her off to Timbuktu and making sure he had her all for himself.  Eventually she would drift off into sleep but Everett was too enthralled with her at his side, his mind alert to her every move.   A cool light fell on them from a window and revealed to Everett a sky rich with stars.  He listened to the soft breathing of Diane’s slumber before, he too, finally lost consciousness and they passed together into the night.

There was the bare inkling of dawn when Everett awoke.  Diane was pressed up against him.  Her right leg draped over him, holding him to her.  He carefully laid his hand upon her thigh.

“You awake?”, she whispered.

“Yes.”

“How did you sleep?”

“Hardly at all.”

“You like me.”

“Yes.”

“A lot?”

“I love you.”

“Oh!  I love you, too – a little.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I love you, but – I have to leave.”

“Why?”

“Why?  Because I have a boyfriend.”

Everett was silent.

“He’s far away.  I’m going back to him today.  This morning.  Very soon.”

“You’re not fair.”

“Love isn’t fair, Everett.”

“I need you to stay with me.”

“I like you.  You’re a good man.  We’ve had our time together.  Now you have my memory.  That will have to do.”

Diane insisted on walking away alone, before the sun fully shone.  Everett stood watching, fighting the numb; fighting the anger.

Everett managed to frequent the café outside Albuquerque a couple more times, hoping without any real hope that he’d once again meet Diane there.  Then the café closed.  It was soon nothing more than a derelict shell amidst the creosote and sand.  He would occasionally glimpse the deserted hollow from his window on the passing train and it would faithfully revive the memories of that one day.

Everett lives in his caboose.  He speaks of the world passing his window.  And Diane listens.

Good Morning Justin...

Letter to my Son
Sunday, 6 October

I've lost a step with age

Good Morning Justin…

When you’re young falling in love truly is as easy as falling off a log.  With experience and age, though, romantic love may involve all the scrutiny a loan application gets from the bank.  Sex is no longer the compelling lighthouse beacon that once drew me forward through the fog years of my youth.  I was a firefly chasing dancing lights in the night.  Too often that magic moment under the stars was all about the rule of biology and reason be damned.  That’s not love, though, is it?  No.  I’m comparing the crisp tart of an apple with the sweet juice of an orange.  Let me start again. 

Love could be as illusionary as standing amidst a bevy of reflections in a room of funhouse mirrors.  What’s real?  Sure, there was always the question of whether someone really loved me.  The more important question for me, though, was whether I truly loved the one I was going through all that trouble to chase.  Let’s give myself the benefit of the doubt and believe it’s true when I say, “I love you.”  Great, I’m not a jerk – yet.  Now here’s where the relationship goes dicey.  I’m head over heels in love with this wonderful woman and we’ll assume she feels the same for me.  This is real heaven.  I’m better than the man I ever thought I could be.  I think thoughts and have feelings I never thought I could express.  I amaze myself at the kindness I feel and how considerate I am for the person I love.  And it’s all so effortless.  This whole marvelous attitude even spills over to my feelings for people I don’t even know.  I smile and say, “Good Morning!” to the checkout lady even though I have been in line for twenty minutes.  I’m in love and the world’s beautiful.  This is all so amazing.  So what’s the problem?

Romance is like a drug high.  You eventually have to come down.  It’s as certain as gravity on earth.  We wouldn’t benefit from the civilization we have if we were all spending each and every day as though it was our honeymoon.  Life returns to normal and so does the one you love.  Most people hope and expect their most significant relationship in life is forever.  But if it isn’t we endure a hard fall, followed by a shattering break.  Then we spend the next couple of years picking up the pieces.  Woe is me.

We’re talking a marathon if the whole thing works.  It’s not like romance at the movies.  Boy gets girl.  Boy loses girl.  Boy gets girl in a crescendo finish.  They embrace in a swooning kiss.  The End.  You come out of the movie, hand in hand with the one you love.  The two of you get in the car, nudge out of the parking space, and drive home.  The two of you buy groceries.  Together you repair the house.  You pay bills as a team and adjust the budget.  You disagree and argue from time to time.  You’re together for breakfast and dinner day after day, through all the seasons, through all the years, and the many trials and all the tests to the relationship from outside interests.  There are surprises that are sometimes heart-warming or are, at times, heart-rending.  It’s all in the life of a marriage or, at least, a relationship that feels like a marriage.

I don’t know about you but I can’t sustain my best behavior for more than a couple of hours, at most.  Give me a week and I’ll show you my best impersonation of dull and rude.   Of course, we can always hop in bed and stir the coals when the daily grind doesn’t feel fresh and spritely.  I’ll even think to brush my teeth first.  Yeah, it’s OK.  But I have to admit I ran out of fireworks quite a while back.  I’m a creature of habit.  Was it good for you?  Great, now let’s turn on the TV and get out the crackers and cheese.

Chuckles was depressed because he didn’t like the way his ears flopped over and there was nothing he could do about it.  He starred at his reflection again.  He could clearly see that both ears bent near the middle and then drooped over onto themselves.  It wasn’t normal. 

Why is it we have premium cable and yet there is never anything on.  Why is that, Honey?  Oh, your feet are cold.  Stop that!  Alright you’re going to get it.  And I mean in the worst sort of way.

By the way, how’s things with you?

Love,

          Dad

Good Morning Jacob...

Letter to my Son
Sunday, 4 August

Couple

Good Morning Jacob…

We’re entering the serious heat of summer.  We’ve had a generous helping of rainfall here in North Carolina and the ground beneath our feet steams with life’s manufactured bounty.  Everything everywhere is plump from prosperous times.  The sun overhead bakes all of our undertakings until they positively split open from an overabundance of goodness.  All the while chloroplast factories across the landscape are pushing photosynthetic operations to levels unseen since dinosaurs lounged in swamps and mosquitos were the size of a box of Milk Duds.  If you stop what you’re doing you can hear, wafting in the breeze, the Mother Nature Chorale sing another chorus… “Come on, Baby.  Let the good times roll!”

Somehow our planet triggered this riotous demonstration of imaginative molecular-based life and, after three and a half billion years of tweaking the global organism, we can boil this experience down to the simple statement that two minds speaking to one another makes for far more satisfying consciousness  than a single mind thinking alone.

That’s it.  Existence is best poked from multiple sides simultaneously by two people having a shared desire to find something beyond being merely awake.  Why only two?  For the same reason there are not three sexes, or more.  Find me a love song about a committee.  It isn’t a thing of beauty.  It may take many hands to bring a dream to reality but that dream begins with a single mind in love with another single mind.  I don’t know why we become so focused on another someone looking back at their other someone that happens to be oneself.  I suspect the merging of minds is too complicated to be successful when more than two are involved.    Put three people in the mix and we rely increasingly on accommodating the invariable third party out.  It quickly becomes two people and the distraction.  It is true the person on the outside trying to get in may vary with the circumstance but the result is always a tension that blocks real fulfillment for anyone.

I think we find this dynamic to be true at a very early age.  It’s a common enough experience to be instinctual.  Few matters of the mind or of the heart are as hard-wired into the human soul as is falling in love.  At least that’s what songs used to tell us when we were sixteen.  That may be the only age when we actually experience torrid, undiluted romantic love.  After that life gets complicated real quick.  There’s nothing like a personal relationship to cause a promising career to jump the tracks.  Feeling love for another can sometimes have the intensity of being under the influence of a drug.  We say and do things beyond the comprehension of more rational minds.  Don’t blame me.  I’m in love.

“Excuse me.  I’m sorry but I have to interrupt this conversation here and now.  The problem is you’re mistaking immature, narcissistic feelings and sexual passions for adult love.  Let’s be clear.  True expressions of love are actually quite responsible.  I think you’ve been characterizing love as some overwhelming desire for self-gratification.  This overweening emotional concern for self leads to delusional relationships that inevitably end badly.  This kind of story is related countless times by people with a couple of drinks under their belt in bars everywhere.  You don’t raise families and make the house payment with those kinds of notions.”

Thank you for the correction.  Where was I?  OK, here’s the point.  Maybe society is too complicated and we are all too civilized to fall in love.  Love isn’t manageable.  It’s playing with fire.  Compatibility is the far safer bet.  Intense feelings scramble the egg.  Cozy doesn’t break the yolk.  Look at your breakfast table for guidance.  If everything is neat and orderly then you should definitely stick with cozy.  If there’s a cigarette butt stashed out among the unfinished hash browns then the chances are you’ve got someone across from you that is one fiery bundle and your life is overloaded with chaos.  Truth is, though, you wouldn’t have it any other way.

Love,

           Dad