what the stump teaches

I've had moments where I've felt far away. While reading fable haven was one of them. I think it was when I was reading about a giant. The top of wheeler peak is another place. And the top of timp. Or when I'm in a hotel in a Chicago suburb, or in a sketchy Hispanic Southern California neighborhood. Or when I'm so zoned in on a calculus problem. Or when I'm studying and the spirit is teaching. Or when I'm almost crying to "stubborn love" when I'm driving her back for the last time. Or when I was dehydrated at the top of grove creek canyon. Or when I stared down the bear claw slopes. 

Even though you were 15 feet away, with that sunset, it felt closer. And both our heads were flipped upside down to see it differently. And I wonder what it feels like to see things from other people's perspectives. But I need to make sure my heart is seated, waiting for the final exam. Pencil in hand. Because the words I'll write down will leap off the page into my mouth. And I won't be able to do anything but spew them to you. Just like smoke they'll wisp into the sky and join the sun, the moon, and the stars in their own quest to give me the light. The moon will hold those words, and advertise them to me as it finds me in a car after I just lost another tic-tac-toe game on foggy car window. Or when it found them on their first. The wheels on that car spun too fast, the asphalt groaned, and next week grinned ear to ear. 

The house I'm building is made out of the solid memories made. The wood grew from a forest. This forest was explored by a man with an eye for the unknown. The unknown is what lies ahead of every Iceland road shadowed by Iceland mountains under an Iceland sky. Every Iceland goat came from a mama goat that came from a long heritage of proud mama goats, back to the beginning. It was there for every moment that mattered. And when you think about everyone's moments that mattered it's a walk by the pond with bread in hand to feed the ducks. It's every beveled dresser edge. It's everyone's grandparents old rocker. It's every funeral that had a good ending. And it's every time the sun is out just enough to draw your spirit from its burrow into something greater than itself. 

Just like when Jonah found himself back in Ninnevah. Just like when Jonah found himself back in Ninnevah. What that must have felt like. A call from the past. A cry to the future. A change for the better. I imagine Jonah felt like every anonymous valentine. Because every anonymous valentine has yet to find most of us. It's a high dive, a broken porcelain bathtub, and a mighty stump that is now a stepping stool to what life used to be. 

So let's sit there for a while, and watch the telephone wires shoot back and forth messages that need to be said right now, and let's wait. Let's sit there for a while, and watch the clouds change their shapes and speak to each other like whales in the ocean speak, like crackling fires speak, and let's wait. So let's sit there for a while, and think about every basement bookcase that dutifully holds the words of prophets, poets, and pages of professors that will go unreviewed until the will splits the inheritance between mourners, and let's wait. So let's sit there for a while, and think about how the berry bushes feel about having soccer balls blast through their branches. They must worry about the golden gems they hold out to us so dearly, and that's all they live for, so let's think about them, and let's wait. So let's sit there for a while, and pray for the sweet old lady in whose backyard we sit, she never found love but sure knows how to dish it out in the form of Easter egg hunt memories and Halloween visits, both of which never went without enough pictures to fill a photo album, and let's wait. Let's wait for the future to take its time to come because we are realizing that even though the stump may be hard he comfortably shows us what he sees, just like grandpa.

 I'm learning to see life more like grandpa.