Book 2: Zoe's Flow, 2.2

 Do you believe in miracles?

That is the album he was listening to when he was younger as he assembled one of the freshest, most enjoyable writings he'd ever crafted. He was typing in those days into a Compaq Computer. Plunking away with two pointers and much patience with typos. The specific date escapes him to this day, but there was snow in the air and Kenny G was still close to newborn on the airwaves, nevertheless, that afternoon he got caught up in a vision.

He flew onto the stage of the page as a snowflake… Whirling through the skies of his life, if you will. We join the flying snowflake with a friendly visit to each of his brothers, we are strewn through the yawning expanse of the deep blue starry skies out in the country, we address carolers in the town square, we are nearly licked by a labrador and then wind up slipping through the doorway for the day of the big day… of course, at home.

His last great turn before falling onto the mat in front of the brick fireplace, with its family photos and dads stuffed pheasant on the mantle, wreath in the center with candles about, takes him through a stables where an infant surrounded by sheep and donkeys is attended by his mother.

He wondered how Zoe was making it now that the snow was falling so freely. They had expected nearly 6 to 8 inches. He went back and forth between fear for her… And then also in more hopeful moments there was almost a slight giddiness as he wondered how she was making it out there. The two of them had confidence in each other. It took her a lot to leave the apartment, and yet, she believed fully that he would be perfectly okay… After some time of course. Likewise, letting go of her was starting to happen along these lines.

She's going to find a good place. Her new adventures are underway as we speak.

But now the snowflakes… All the snowflakes. Each and every one. Out in the park, where he wore his cashmere scarf and leather gloves, pairing well with his Cambridge gray topcoat and tweed drivers cap, it was nothing but snowflakes as far as the eye could reach.

How many trillion now stirred in the air above him, so alive.

And – oh yes!…

No two of them are the same.

No two of them are the same.

… Nor is any human, Zoe might say.

They are singular beings.

Failing to see the miracle they are, as they live and breathe. They are singular, she could go on, you remember how she was. They are singular, they're also contingent beings… They do not exist of necessity. You and I do not "have to be here."

There was a time before you were here and in just a glimpse there will be a time going on long after you. What brings you into being? And what about your parents, parents, parents…?

It takes a miracle to make a snowflake, to give it its duration out over the open field among the breezes white cold of the living, on a winters wind, right? Flight, is love on the feather tips, is life, flown singularly…

We are given from the wind and into the wind among and between those like us who would never last long without it, Zoe might say. We are contingent beings, sustained breath by breath, drink by drink, meal by meal…

A second time – behold all things new… In your midst The Christmas winds especially remind us of this mysterious and intimate love life we wake up to as often as we wish we could, in the flow and with a gusty gracious and helping wind… Zoe might say.

Christmas was about awakening once again to the invitation to live in full communion with Christ alive, to participate and to remain as present to his loving presence and also his suffering as we can and to remain in hope of full restoration of creation, in its entirety…Fullness of life forever and for all… Amen and amen.

He was now of course at his desk writing. He drank coffee. He kept thinking about these things.

Then he would stop again. He would put on his orange scarf, button his topcoat firmly, afix his hat after running a hand through his hair and make his way back out among the snowflakes.

For all he knew she could be walking out there someplace in the park. Worth a try…

Book 2: Zoe's Flow, 2.1

A young woman with dark brown hair past her shoulders wears a hippie hat and a worn-out corduroy jacket and pets Zoe perfectly as far as the Burmese is concerned. The Doobie Brothers are playing through the stereo as they pull away. The young man driving shrugs and holds up his hands as if whatever she is positing will not be including him.

After the initial shock of being hoisted up and into a whole new hemisphere of reality, she let herself settle in and the affection the young lady was showing brought forth as a lullaby, a weightless purring mantra… Oh how wonderful… Life is good… Oh how wonderful… Life is good…

After repeating it a few times Zoe expected some sort of response but it soon became clear that the young lady was not going to be able to converse with her in English/human given her age probably. With a little more maturity and openness it might've worked… Nevertheless, Zoe went on "meowing" and purring and by the time it was time to hop out quite a bond of trust had already been established.

Don't leave me here, please take me with you, I may need a meal and some minor first-aid for my upper lip. She kept it up to no avail. 

Instinctively, Zoe had a sense of the goodness of the girls intentions. She was ready to see what was happening next, life had opened a welcoming door.

Sometimes living as a feline could mean one putting their full trust in the touch of a hand or a simple ear scratch to assess how secure and safe things felt. For now this was a good place to be.

They had been to the grocery store and the two of them entered their trailer up a handmade stairway that looked as though it had been there for a very long time but was still offkilter and out of place. Inside the trailer there was wall to wall paneling and a few couches that wrapped around which were carpeted in green and beige and brown shag. The place smelled like coffee and marijuana and coriander and allspice and chai, together with just a hint of sweaty socks, perfume and garlic.

She laid Zoe down on the couch and followed the young man toward the back through a narrow hallway beyond the kitchenette.

You stay here now sweetie, I'll be right back with some milk for you and some yummy tuna.

If that thing pees in here once… I swear. He put milk and eggs and cheese and hot dogs into the fridge and a sixpack of PBR. He removed his hat and shoes.

No no… I told you there's a whole bunch of sand underneath if she wants outside and I'll keep tabs on a litter box…

Which is going where? The young man asked, his shirt off, staring at her with a rather distrustful smile.

It can go here. She walked back out front and shuffled a few boxes around underneath the sink and tossed out two items through the front door. Right here see… Plenty of space and then we can close it behind the curtain. And we spray some Lysol every now and then, no big deal, this place reeks anyway dude.

And you're going to take care of it? He said. One hundred percent?

I'm going to take care of her, yes. It's meant to be. Look how beautiful she is. You would probably have to pay lots of money for a cat like her don't you think?

Zoe had the benefit of understanding their entire conversation but still was left curious (at least for the first few moments) regarding what transpired next as the door closed and some sort of interaction occurred between the two of them causing much ruckus and that involved several minutes of what sounded to Zoe like an extended wrestling match.

She sat up on the bed and stared at the closed door. The shuffling of limbs, the sound of throne pillows. What on earth are they doing to each other?… 

Then with a slap and an oooh and a MEEEEOOWW! Zoe awakened… Pouncing like an arrow shot, straight across the double mattress, as she was when first a kitten in the skattered shock of lightning.

Oh for crying out loud!… She sprang over and hid herself quickly under a pillow and curled into a ball covering her ears. Apparently there were going to be some things to adjust to here in her new twentysomething hippie abode.

Afterword they all toked and ate Cheeze-its with peanut butter.

Book 2: Zoe's Flow, 2.0

The day after tomorrow Laura would come and stay for a few days. Would it really improve the likelihood of finding Zoe?

Her silly face would not leave his head. It would be nice to have some company.

He had been mapping out the neighborhood from a felines point of view to the best of his ability. The fish market was certainly worth a second, even a third look or even make it a standing routine check perhaps. Kelly's was always well worth a careful once over, of course, after they had been there together so many times.

But where was she going – where had she always wanted to be? If she was willing to leave in the first place, what would she be reaching for that she didn't already have? She was a minimalist. It was at her encouragement that he had been able to make a good start at non-attachment in the first place; letting things be what they were, experiencing life as a process, something flowing. That was her vibe. 

My goodness, he thought to himself, how bad must I have made it for her before she finally was forced to leave.

The guilt. She needed food, my presence, some companionship.

That night he decided to get out for an intentional run. All the lights were up around the city by now and it would be an electrically dazzling mile or so but his favorite was to get out beyond the farthest west hill and head down to where it was still yet dark enough to take in a full moon or an occasional search for Saturn.

Tonight as he ran his thoughts continued.

If it weren't for the bad weather she'd probably be happy outside for a good long season.

I wonder if she would ever have the stones to hop on a truck or bus or something…? Did she realize she wasn't far from open country, 40 miles or so from the northern fringes of the Blue Ridge?

He fell into a rhythm that began to feel dreamy, more visionary. He thought he would check his pulse for sure when he returned home.

What a Fisher… she must be. I could just imagine her…  nestling herself into a small cave near one of the canyons and making her way down each dawn to the meandering silver string of river, on down to the spattering brooks where Trout riggle through the stony turns gaining speed and stirring the waters first sourced and strung through the mountains rounded hips rising up to firm their respective glacial tips. Her hips splayed, pouring her over a limb like a supremely more adorable snake, her blue eyes peering deeply into the rush of the taught white waters beneath. A pure creature, hunter of life.

She didn't need much to get by. She made the world wear her like a lucky fur, an outdoorsy Zen master at home in the mountains of Burma.

Book 2: Zoe's Flow, 1.9

The morning after Zoe's blue dreams amidst the puffy garbage bags, the frigid air stunk like diesel fuel and dead fish, the skies were beige and broken by naked limbs and the new lights being strewn up around knuckley brown trunks of large and tiny Maples blinked in festive twirls.

Shaking off the sleep she made her way down to a doughnut shop near Quincy and 33rd, just off the Central Parkway. She brought cravings for chocolate doughnut, jelly filled, strong black coffee. The man she left had spoiled her for sure.

She thought to herself, Of Course it's ridiculous my needing my menu of choices. But I'm not going to blame myself. He was a generous soul, indeed. I remember times when he would really shoot the works. We'd have prime rib, he'd fill my little dish with Cabernet Sauvignon, let me sit by the table. He would not only ask, but learned what I liked on pizza and afterword always went half-zees on toppings.

She went on ruminating as she kept tucked away under park benches or keeping close to the alleyways.

Yes, I am a cat who knows what she wants for breakfast from Kelly's Doughnuts. And the same idiot who lavished me, unconsciously perhaps setting up a sense of expectation of the same, day after day, after month after year… Oh, the cookies we would make!… Yes all of that… For which I was so appreciative for so long, to have all of that suddenly taken away… Only to watch him curl up into a selfish, apathetic ball of insensitivity and neglect… I did what I had to do!

And now it's starting to rain, I am freezing my mitts off and I want some damned doughnuts!

It was just then that Zoe's journey would take its first major shift.

At last the gleaming lights at Kelly's were in view. Without seeming too desperate Zoe made her way for the front door. It was unfortunately very close to rush-hour for lunch but she decided to dart for the door anyway amidst many wet galoshes and pointy umbrellas.

Immediately she felt a kick to her midsection and the odd sense of weightless flight. Oh my God what's happening!… The world around her spun in slow motion.… And then… Biff! Splash!

She almost landed in the street and toppled over into a puddle which soaked her from nose to tail tip. She shook off the water completely startled and had half a mind to find the person who had just kicked her and fly straight at him with the claws out and sink her teeth into his jugular's until the SOB fell to the floor, all blue in the face and utterly lifeless – paid in full for his sickening offense!

As I live and breathe I will have this man's blood for my breakfast!

Nevertheless, the owner shouted: Get the Hell Out Of Here… you damn cat!…

Zoe scampered away to the nearest alley and sat attending to her bloodied lip. She would sit here and try to recover before simply moving out again into the gale.

But again, as though gravity itself was beginning to lose its hold – her entire weight vaulted straight up into the air. First she tangled and tried to twist against the upward movement. Unexpectedly, she felt a hand just below her chin that was soft, the energy was gentle. Soft hands were stroking her chin and her head at the back of her ears. She was held in someone's arms and instinctively closed her eyes and began to purr and to soak in the warmth of the person's body.

It made it clear to her how frozen she was straight through her entire system. As the petting continued, the person walked over and took shelter in their Honda CRV which smelled like cotton candy and coconut butter.

What on earth was about to happen next? Zoe had to work to care at all about that question.

We're gonna take you home sweetie! Everything is going to be okay.

Warmth radiated through the woman's hands. Her nails were well trimmed leaving each of the tips perfectly rounded as though cultivated for massage. Zoe's sense of surprise, of wonder and gratitude was now paired with the heat enveloping every inch of her chocolatey fur covered being. This was nice. It was happening, it was better than doughnuts.

Book 2: Zoe's Flow, 1.8

 Zoe is more than worth it. I'm going to keep at it. Make some plans, do some networking around town.

He stood now by the small apartment window looking out while they spoke.

Something else weird happened, Yes what's that? Laura asked… The poppy fell off the wall and onto the floor the other day, I slammed the door shut as Anthony and I were heading out to search.

Interesting…

So, yeah… Thank you so much for calling back. I mean… You're someone who gets it.

Who gets it or who gets you…?

They had already gotten through the mutual apologies, she being sorry for overdoing it on her "alterations" of his revelatory and very personal process of spiritual formation and all that surrounded her overstepping, he being sorry for being so touchy and angry to that degree, without hearing her out. The main thing now was Zoe.

Who gets me, yes… Maybe almost half as much as my cat. He smiled.

They made a date when she would come out to see him and they would hit the surrounding areas from a different perspective.

He thought her idea of focusing on restaurants was a smart one, maybe force himself to dig a little deeper in garbage areas.

Tonight the city was chilled to its lowest temperatures yet. But the air was still and the moon cold as bright. He thought about lucky Fred curled up on the couch with Laura, hearing all about the conversation they just had. He got online and played chess with a guy from Zimbabwe and lost four times in a row over the course of two hours while taking trips back and forth to the fridge, to the bourbon in the cupboard above the microwave, to the case of records in the crate on the floor.

AMERICAN PIE was one of his favorites for this mood. The big finale was one he would skip. He would not, however, miss Starry Starry Night…

Over the next few days he was forced to fall into his routines for his work schedules. He thought he was destined to throw up each morning, as getting up early became harder and harder.

He would think about Zoe all throughout the day and was sore in his neck from constantly spinning his head around from side to side whenever he was out in public. He searched desperately. People probably think I have some kind of disorder, he thought.

By grace, there were other times that he would choose to stop thinking and so sometimes gave himself to tai chi on the occasional afternoon break.

He stopped on purpose and chose to cause an intentional swimming through the ether. It was not space of course, but a sort of density through which he swam and forced himself forward as might a fish in a cold stream in the Canadian mountain waters. Limbs being spun in undulating flow, arms waving the space open, slicing through the gelatinous room.

Just keep swimming.… Then stop… The earth turns, feel still how you flow, still one flowing…

Was she here? Was that Zoe…?

Book 2: Zoe's Flow, 1.7

 I only want to make thoughtful choices. Simple and efficient. Think clearly, be decisive, I'll be fine.

She walked for 24 hours without stopping for more than a pause to smell something, make the occasional analysis as to the edibility of a given glob on the sidewalk. Under a park bench, while it poured rain, she managed only one full facial from a cab that blew up a puddle nearly hitting the curb to get around a Swanson's delivery truck.

She was kicked by a man near the corner of the apartment near the garbage can where he liked to pick through fresh drop-offs – on his own apparently. She wondered how the man had gathered any information about her mother and why someone would pour forth such horrible and inaccurate commentary about someone's family member, none of which should ever be shared in the first place with anyone, irrespective of whether or not the claims could be substantiated. Clearly he and her mother had never met.

The night was dark and murky and the winds howled in between the downtown district filled with its ten to twenty story buildings where she soon discovered there would be much light but little opportunity to slip in somewhere unnoticed. The glow of the place felt strangely comfortable however. The bright windows of the storefronts glowed warmly and it felt like being at home watching the big screen, only the wet concrete was no place to curl up and try to turn in for the evening.

No, after several more hours, finally she discovered an alley with an overflowing dumpster whose bags filled with garbage were more cushy and plump than stinky and so she nestled in between a few of them and circled herself around four times into one perfect Burmese bull's-eye. Her tummy was soft beneath her chin.

Some kids from around the neighborhood piled up on the bags beside her and smoked reefer for nearly 2 hours.

Zoe breathed deeply.

She slept.

And she slept and she slept the most beautiful sleep that a tired sleeper would want to hear about. She slept in dreams that moved in soft blue light throughout an expansive ether, an ever opening universe expanding outward and drawing all things into deeper complexity, connection and beauty… God's glory set ablaze right before her dazzling eyes… As when the autumn came… As when she slept nestled under leaves of gold, those thrown over her by Angel after Angel, winged and running and thrown into embrace… Sleep and dream the power of the love of God – throw it to your heart and out through all your bones… Sleep Zoe… Sleep… Dream your blue dream through me…

Book 2: Zoe's Flow, 1.6

 I lost track of how many blocks we had walked, alleys we'd checked, dumpsters and mucky ditches we scrapped through and how badly my feet ached so we sat down. There were benches in the middle of the Parkway and it was strangely quite secluded from the noises of the surrounding traffic, pedestrian and vehicular. We got beef sandwiches from Milleys. Hot coffees.

I think you're probably going to have to make some signs. Anthony wiped horseradish sauce from his mustache, also glad to be off his feet.

Yeah… This just sucks!

I was half-asleep when I opened that window.

Don't do this to yourself… Don't do it.

This just sucks, man… Just a few hours after and everything would have been fine. I'm just confused… I'm angry, I'm hurt. I'd love to tell her she's a bitch!… Zoe!!

Okay, now… Easy now, let's hush down, hush it… Dude seriously…tshh, shoo, shoo…

I dug into the beef sandwich, best roast beef in town. And you definitely need the horse radish.

That night, listening to RUSH and doing some charcoal sketches from old photos with friends felt utterly unbound and weightless. I was completely in the flow of the music and color and form of line emerging at the tips of my fingers and all of this movement lost grip of time and space and so was everlasting in that pure white always glorious flash of radiance!

I raced through the ether, electric.

Then the crash. With every thought he received, onto and into himself, his mind stacked sandbags too heavy. One after the next.

The sense of a reality moving forward, of his life without Zoe… Without her completely… It stabbed straight through his chest. Piercing him straight through his heart, he was relieved to be at home bearing it alone and felt the need to let it shake through him and out like a demon thrown from an empty tomb. It was just so stupid! So damned unnecessary!  She's got to turn up somehow.

Final flashes of golden light disperse as leaves release from branches and fall twirling to the grass.

The snow turns to rain on the trees framed at the center of the window.

A golden shawl once above us… he had thought while sitting on the bench… Is now slowly given to the ground.

There is a piano playing tenderly. Sad notes and gentle.

I miss you Zoe. Come home.

Book 2: Zoe's Flow, 1.5

Speak the thoughts and say what they show, say where, say which, say why, say how, say when… All you ever do is attend the show and say what it is and where it goes and what our ears want to tell us and your nose discerns and your fingertips touch and point to and to whatever your curiosities, wherever your wanderings wish to take us… Attend to the flow. Tell us what occurs to you… What seems to make sense… Or maybe no sense. Tell and show… Attend to the flow, tell and show.

~from The Spiral-Bound Notebook

Beyond eight lanes of traffic only a mile or so away, the morning rush with its thousand travelers in steaming vehicles sipping their Starbucks, texting their friends, speaking aloud their two cents to the morning talk shows; the shining towers of glass slowly release their myriad raindrops, rivulets streaming down, splashing out to freefall down into the surrounding mulch and landscaping. It is undeniably a sort of castle set atop a hillside close at hand but beyond the reach of the modern towers of the city, the old cathedrals, the historic districts, the discos and fast food restaurants.

Having been constructed in 1858 the still glowing conservatory wore a timeless elegance, architecturally sounding out each of its vaulted lines straight upward, garnering the great force of linear simplicity in its framing so as to accentuate and companion its most vital guest, it's paradisaic cause and Edenic purpose, the light of the sun.

Here within, millions of life forms could grow freely and into their true identity, co-mingling one with the other and thereby mutually supporting what would later be called biodiversity, a sort of natural harmony of living things to be enjoyed not only by scientists in search of answers for earth's future, but also for each visitor invited to reimagine the wonders of these living surroundings so similar to their own.

Here is where over 200,000 people will visit in a given year, where buses filled with children and/or the elderly will deliver groups, rewarding the youngest with a foretaste of the finest future they can imagine and the oldest, who knows but perhaps a certain sense of the same.

Here is where Zoe found her way to more than she'd ever imagined. Here is where she waits, again long hours throughout the late morning at the top of the rock. But of course she does so quite differently.

She never waits. Not nearly in the same way that most would. Contentment is not a thing she works at, it is how she manifests as a being. Being is what she does, she is, and that is all.

The comparative mind belongs to another, she may tell you. The way of others is to perhaps live in constant evaluation of what is; what is present, what is missing. 

For them, whatever they possess must needs be the very finest and best, which will carry them a very long way but never forward into their fullness. Instead, on their phones, faces lit by the false light, they scroll up and up endlessly assuming that one or perhaps just a few more flips of the thumb upward will bring them to their perfect boots and coats, their cars, couches and televisions and updated kitchens and baths every couple of years. They will want to show you. They will want you to see their life.

In many ways, to the extent that she knew she had this gift, Zoe tried to simply exude contentment. There was no point in trying to teach it or point out when people were needing to be more patient or less attached to this or that.

This is why they had gotten along so well for as long as they did. They rarely preached to each other about how to be. Rather they always were working, or so it seemed to her, at being… Manifesting what they wanted more than talking about it. Showing more than telling.

Still, if you asked her, she would tell you it was all a little more complicated than that. Much discontentment arose that rainy night she jumped out the open window after all. Her foreboding upon making those first frigid steps out onto the wet concrete of the city's night and all of its dangerous possibilities was still not stronger than her dissatisfaction.

So, a contented creature… Indeed. Nevertheless, there were moments that demanded a shift in vision, perhaps even a different way in to contentedness, one that could send one straight out into the high winds of homelessness, of rabid raccoons and stray dogs and animal control trucks.

Book 2: Zoe's Flow, 1.4

ALL SAINTS DAY

How do you lose an F ing cat?

I guess I had thrown him for a loop. It seemed perfectly obvious to me how this could happen to someone. I wasn't some kind of idiot, after all.

Still Anthony sat mystified on the couch while I finished getting dressed. I was ready to put my coat on and get flying out the door. We did just that and I told him of course nothing about Zoe's special presence and abilities. I still felt like SH but managed to get my boots on and while making down the stairs I caught him up on the basics.

She's a small brown cat, kind of like darker paws and face, but bright blue eyes. But the colors are all muted so she looks like a shadow usually anyway.

I'm glad I found you, we couldn't remember which apartment number at first but nonetheless it seemed little if any traffic up here for a few days and we were getting concerned. 

Helluva cough… he said. Let's grab you a bagel and some hot coffee, figure out a plan.

At first I thought you were my friend Laura… 

Oh really.  I see… A friend Laura?… 

The window has been closed. The door shut firmly behind them as they leave. The Poppy photo drops to the floor. 

No, no no it's not what you think, just a friend. She has a dog named Fred and we are both pretty close to our pets so when I started to come to, here in the last few hours, I reached out… To see…

You reached out… Ladies and gentlemen, alas, the man was only reaching out… Outreaching, that's all it was… Reaching for Laura…

Will you please knock it off – I'm serious here.

I just don't understand it. Part of me gets it. I feel terrible, the poor little creature has put up with a lot. I think I literally slept two days in a row. 

On the other hand – you think you get to know a cat, right? Day after day living together. Could I not just have some time for me to be sick, did someone constantly need to be heard. You have to understand man, the Burmese… The Burmese are like people, man! Believe me. It's like having a roommate.

I hear you man –

I mean what the hell! Are we gonna go chase now, all over the city? Is that what I'm supposed to do? She's probably doing just fine. She is highly intelligent, beyond smart man. I'm telling you this is a brilliant… Amazingly, adaptive… I can't even begin to describe…

She's a cat.

What you mean? – – I mean that's it – she's a cat! Come on!

Don't say that like that – What Do You Mean –? Like that! 

She's a cat. 

See what I mean? People don't get it –

All right, I'm sorry – let's just trace some of the places around here where I've seen you two walking.

Outside temperatures had plummeted 20° over the last eight hours and there was snow in the air intermingled with dead leaves all awhirl through the parkway out in front of the building. Each bundled up.

I chose the Memphis Lambskin Leather Bomber moto jacket and tweed scarf, I wore Norwegian gloves.

I guzzled down the rest of my French roast – felt both of my ears pop open again crystal clear – and we headed out the door wincing into the wind.

Book 2: Zoe's Flow, 1.3

We are not loved because we are beautiful and good. We are beautiful and good because we are loved. Jurgen Moltmann

In all fairness to her, she had tried her level best.

Although she had agreed within herself to only use her human voice when he was already awake and completely oriented, which is to say worth talking to, during the long nights of his illness he was so inaccessible that she brought out every voice she was capable of doing.

Tarzan of the jungle, no go. Pavarotti bellowing out his finest from Nessun Dorma (No one shall sleep!) Nothin.

She tried out her own urgent holler and immediately decided it was never going to be enough to wake him. She tried several types of canine bark; the Yorky, the Terrier, the rest of your run-of-the-mill yippy dogs – zippo. Most especially she took pride in her snarling Doberman, the growling German Shepherd, the plaintive whaling of a coyote, the crooning richness of the forlorn Red Bone Hound but nothing seemed to work.

Of course many of the natural moves that any cat in her situation would've made she tried. With the litter box turned into a disgusting minefield, her food dish giving up the last of its crusty edges, and finally choking down one small water bug that made its way out of the bathroom, she resorted to much more physical means.

She batted him about the face, right and left, right left right, left left right right… But the man continued to snore deeply. All that was audible were the rhythmic interruptions in the long and drawn out reverberations as when one rides along the speed strips of a highway shoulder, skipping on and off in syncopation with her rapidfire welterweight combinations.  B errrr…barrr…brrr…berror

It was just no use. Would she need to get out the claws and put them to use? Had she ever done so while living with him? The violent temptations, by some small grace, left her mind as quickly as they entered. Certainly it would go against every thing she'd ever stood for and despite feeling hurt by his recent negligence, she decided to ere on the side of nonviolence. There had to be another way forward without hurting anyone.

It was just shortly after this important choice, while she had positioned herself squarely atop of the man's face for a good long sit, that the opened window caught her eye. While she had gone off to rest or think of different ways of rousing him from the couch he must have gotten up for a moment wanting some fresh air. After being tossed left and then right, then once more straight up with a backflip and all four paws to the floor, she decided the window was her best option.

One way or another she knew that it was the best choice she could make given the circumstances. Things would work out. If she didn't act now she might very well lose any chance in the future were he ever to decide to shut it. Then where would she be?

Stuck in the stagnant box, listening to the refrigerator trickle, to the furnace blowing. Endlessly adjusting what seemed to her like such basic needs… Finding a morsel and a relatively clean place later on to let it go… Even these had been knocked offkilter so drastically since the idiot had run off and gotten infected somewhere… Enough – no more of this, she thought.

No, something alighted within her in that moment. Something… let's call it instinct, made her hop straight up over the sill and out into the cool of the night that one night already so long ago.

Book 2: Zoe's Flow, 1.2

Paradisaic intentionality happens by initiating and sustaining the conscious manifestation of communion. Being one with God on purpose in the immediate present. Trusting where the spirit moves while we are relinquished to the very gaze of Christ.

… from the Spiral-Bound Notebook

What you see is who you are? Father Richard Rohr

Hello? Are you there?

Laura, it's me… I know I left a message already, I was hoping you would pick up.

He spoke in stammers, his fever still over 101. The city had been under cloud cover for nearly two weeks with rain and cold wind ushering in a late and grumpy November.

Couch cushions were on the floor, blankets were tossed about from the bedroom and nearly every item of clothing from the closet had been tossed out in search of the cat.

How on earth? When the hell would she even have had a chance to get out.

Hey, call me will you…? You're never going to believe this but I can't find Zoe. He swallowed deeply and tried to hide the sound of his stuffed head. I know it's been tough for me to talk about… Sorry it's taken me so long. I'm just in a bit of a panic as you might imagine. Shoot me a text or something, if you can. Thanks

He rummaged through the cupboards and took out a large garbage bag and began filling it with the random items he'd been strewing about the apartment since falling ill; open soup cans and Kleenex wads, a box of Triscuits along with three Gatorade's drunk down to various levels, blue, purple and orange. Two different Sunday papers had been dismembered completely. He threw laundry into the wash and upon sitting down in the leather chair only then noticed the top ledge straight across from him at eye level, the window had been left ajar.

He must've opened it during one of his fever's in an attempt to move through sweats. So much of it was a swirl of aches and pain, one dream dissolving into the next with all of them being quite epic in nature. It reminded him of the legendary night on his journey through the Poppy and into so much more. Still, the illness dreams were different… circular and barely making any sense, abstracted characters and words, the repetitions of alleyways and hallways from high school.

Throughout the illness he had an underlying sense that after he was better he was really going to have to make it up to her somehow. Still, all of it stayed in dream state.

Litter… must change. Food… Can food… Zoe…

Now he stepped into the shower to get a full restart. He'd pick up something downstairs, ask Anthony and the others if they had seen a chocolate Burmese cat anywhere around the neighborhood. What then? What if some kids had her?

Would that even be so bad? What sort of a friend was he in the first place, completely forgetting about her for most of the time he was sick. Maybe she got hit by a car, traffic was crazy sometimes depending upon the time of day, especially right outside of the coffee shop at rush hour.

How many people within their lifetime would ever be gifted with such a smart and spiritually balanced companion cat like he was? Her English was immaculate.

Good Lord I hope she's okay. Kids these days get a hold of a mysterious looking creature like that and the next thing you know…

He heard his phone buzzing as he made his way back to the bedroom. It was his mother, more than likely calling to see how he was feeling. Why couldn't Laura just call? Why was that so important?

All he knew was that he wanted Zoe home. He let out three crackling bronchial coughs and decided to sit down to finish toweling off. As his dizziness settled somewhat just then he heard the ring, more than likely for the first time ever, of his apartment door bell.

Hello? Am I at the right place?

Book 2: Zoe's Flow, 1.1

She rests high above the canopy of palms. 

Down below, fruit trees are scattered between great boulders, streams are woven and swell, jetting into freefall before careening down the falls, sounding out the endless quenching, full supply.

The wash of cool water bathes itself; churning beneath in deep currents below the surface, then out foamy to the rippling white edges of the lagoon.

A small chorus of turning Finch swarm past in song as clouds, towering well beyond the glass, part like the doors of an ancient cathedral, pouring light and heat onto her face.

Try to tell her she is not the Queen, attempt to ask what ever took so long for her to get here, she'll leave you cold.

Not unlike the Abyssinians, bred so closely to her own, she knew there was a great tendency to get caught up in too many human affairs given the social nature of her ancestry. Still it was time. Over time. Which is why three weeks earlier she had taken leave of the apartment at an opportunity one night with a window left open and nothing but a zombie roommate to engage. Zoe took to the streets.

It was time for pure feline.

I am a furbearing animal and I need nothing else but to breathe and carry on simply, efficiently. To live cleanly and happily.

She licks and licks again. A great Canyon of deep blue is opened above. Here is where she lies effortlessly and for as long as she wishes. Feline wholly and truly. Unadulterated by human influence and sentiment, strictly speaking: CAT – nothing else,; meowers, man.

Three days per week people are allowed in to enjoy the five-stories-tall Wardian's case.  Otherwise, as far as she is concerned, which is as far as anything will go from now on, this is her little kingdom.

Every hour, as the shadows move across the stony pathways fanning patterns all about the broad leaves of the Yucca plant, the massive Bismarck palm, belongs to her. 

Yes, she would tell you immediately, to her and also as equally to any living thing held there in gentle dynamic permanence, in paradisaic balance within the centuries-old tropical conservatory.  So to then did it belong to the fragrant orange Jasmine… the Blue Porterweed… Yellow and green budgies, The Golden bamboo with it's scampering monkeys in miniature… every musing of the Fiddle Leaf Fig… each of the daily red splashes of Hibiscus and Canna Lily.

Of course, there are mice. There is a way to become rather hungry and lackadaisical if one is not careful. Surely it took her at least a month to become completely acclimated and to win her way to the top of the searching rock, to earn her Queendom fair and square. However, she continued to marvel at how quickly so many of the other creatures within the obscure and profoundly comfortable confines found so many ways to adapt to her arrival and effortless ascendancy among such a diverse group of species.

Half of the joy she now savored through morning hours such as these came in sharp contrast, of course, to how things had gone for her that first night out, back when the man had become so sick and run down, so much so it was as if she had disappeared already and he hadn't even noticed.

Zombie

 A few weeks after returning home from camping, just on the cusp of driving out to have dinner and spend some time figuring things out with Laura he pitched a fever all of a sudden. At first he thought it was only a change of temperature outside that might've hit him wrong after a hot shower and then too quickly out with wet hair to the icy chill of his route. As it turned out, within hours he was in the full grip of extreme body aches and all he wanted to do was sleep.

None of it fit. He hadn't been around anyone who was sick. He had met every need he could think of out on his trip, so why now? This was his usual response to any kind of illness, although he didn't have many experiences with it to begin with. Getting sick confounded him mostly. Where on earth!

Not only did he have to manage the gripping muscle aches and kryptonic fatigue, his deep sense of irritation burned through the center of his stomach and anger brought acid to ongoing bouts of apoplectic swearing and damning nearly everything in his wake.

He damned nearly everything he set eyes on: the noisy refrigerator, the remote with its batteries fizzling out, the bright lights of his neighbors Chevy flashing in and out of his windows – why was it right when he could finally open his eyes that that SOB would decide to turn into the drive outside the apartment?

A few days of misery turned into a full week and his skull seemed to be packed with more than a month's worth of nose blowing… Yes, after clearing much of the shelf of cold medicines at the local drugstore down the street. As he shivered past Anthony downstairs waving his bag of medicines he could overhear him in the background saying, "Did a zombie just go through here?"

From the couch to the bed, from the bathroom to the couch to the bed, he wore the carpet into pathways of misery and discontent. He dreamt mainly through dark cloud cover, returning to old pain, seeing faces missed or wished he'd understood. He was sick in his dreaming and even had a few dreams after lying down to get some rest within a dream he was already taking. Paste filled his mouth again and again and he spat through two boxes of Kleenex before calling his doctor.

Not knowing what day it was, he found himself on hold with the receptionist for nearly 25 minutes. The apartment was an icebox. He could smell his own stench. He glanced over to the calendar to see it was now Monday of the following week when it all got started. After she finally answered he was informed that Dr. Hildebrand was no longer practicing but that he could make an appointment with one of those new to the practice, would next Thursday with Dr. Colby at 8 AM work for him? He laughed and hung up the phone.

He turned the food channel back on the TV. Muted of course to save himself from the assault it could bring to his senses with each commercial.

It was then that he heard himself muttering into the pillow, it's okay Zoe… I'll be better soon.

Zoe. Oh my God – Zoe!… Zoe!

Home Trip

 [Continue]

It was all right to hit the highway and head back to the city. On the rampway to route 45 he put on Dwight Yocum, A Thousand Miles from Nowhere. A driving song from one of 100 playlists in his cell phone.

The miracle fish was a joy to devour back at his campsite over the open flames. The dry pine he had turned into kindling sparked and snapped wildly before mellowing down to the perfect bed of coals. He kept the head on and ate the delicate meat with his fingers. The whole place reeked like Brown Trout. 

Bear were known to live in those areas of course, so he did his best to clean things up afterward. It was time to go home anyway. Still, he packed up and headed out looking over his shoulder fairly often just in case.

Later he smiled at how the days ruminations had met up with a profound example of his own contingency. If there had been no trout, he might've been on to slugs or snails or something even more disgusting. As it was, he had eaten well and was grateful and would take the experience back with him to remember where life truly comes from. Breath by breath and drink by drink and meal by meal .

Now back to the city and to the Uber job and bike route. And of course, Laura, with all of her enthusiasm. Getting in touch wasn't going to be a choice it was only a question of when.

When he stopped for gas at the Shell station, still an hour from his apartment, he took a second to check messages on his phone. There among several from family, one or two goofy ones from Perkins, was another from Laura. It was an image of a red Poppy in miniature.

She's honestly sending it to me, he said to himself… Like I need some reminding or something?

The only message just below the image of the bright red flower with its glistening, it's pure water droplets wobbling fresh at the edges of each petal… The only words were these: you mad at me?

Do you think so maybe? Like so many times before him in his life, something beautiful had emerged, spiritual and close to the heart. No wonder he felt her energy as intrusive. There were so many projects he'd tried to do with friends, of course, that never worked out. Collaborating – especially after a fair amount of pressure – never seemed to turn out well for him.

Creative inspirations are sacrosanct, he said, this time surprisingly out loud. He heard himself say it inside the Subaru which had now been filled with the aroma of Reese's peanut butter cup. Whatever's in the spiral came out of me… What's more – that it felt so divine, like such a sweet touch from God – –

Dammit! Why on earth did I ever open things up to the extent I did?

The picture was a gift from her. Fine. He should have never told her where it had taken him, should never have involved her in trying to discern what on earth to do with the experience… That was between him and God.

He shut off the music and cracked both of the windows and pressed his foot to the floor. He picked his thumbs at the corners only now wishing, although on his way back to an indoor way of being, he'd grabbed another pack of Marlboro Lights.

He picked up the phone to call his friend and tell him he was on his way to pick up Zoe.

Yes, he said to his friend. It was a great trip – I could stay out there for months, man.

CONTINGENCY

[Continue]

Although he had no more food, he decided to push himself, to test his skills. The campsite was still comfy enough. All he had to do was catch something and he could buy himself another forty-eight hours out in his paradise.

He found himself and lost himself throughout the hours of the morning.

It's the way of gratitude… in the extreme. Reminding; I don't have to be here. Take away but a few essentials and I am in good company with the animals of the wood to provide what is needed to live, or else… It's where I discover my true contingency as a being.

What it sees becomes real, each thought an invitation to manifestation.

Back when he camped that first full night alone so many years ago he'd hiked the woods and found an opening to a beach where a large oak tree had fallen near the shoreline. Now he sat on what remained of it on a beach that had grown more sandy and spacious. His teeth were trying to pierce through a sturdy fishing line, attempting to snip off the old set up with a bobber and try some casting with a sluggo instead, see if a bass would take it.

He was there but his thoughts, still juiced up with morning coffee, were elsewhere.

It can be a trained action of love and devotion. Keeping one's whole heart open toward the other; a pure vessel of love, restorative wholeness.… What might blossom from it?

Laura would rush ahead and forget too much and turn it into something quick and cheesy for church folk. No thanks.

He enjoyed most, in his imagination, the interview format where he sat with headphones on his head in a cramped studio in New York or Los Angeles or Chicago with a well-known host on spirituality and it all poured out of him like warm syrup, no… like a balm, a soothing ointment on an angry contusion.

"I guess I'd invite people to think more about a life posture, if that makes any sense. There's never a bad time to remember, to reconnect more fully to life and to come to a certain enjoyment of the ebb and flow of forgetting and remembering, …  as I think also there's not much use in adding thinking or worry to our forgetfulness, the seemingly necessary interruptions of any day-to-day human encounters, God knows."

"We stay awake. We find trust, we are granted trust, strong trust. We open our eyes or reopen them. We replace ourselves into the present, breathing in, breathing out [for most of us]… Fully alive to the moment which always means aware of our choices, our true freedom to take responsibility for and manage our thoughts, feelings and longings.  Love illumines, by grace, a kind of truth-sight; the eyes of the soul, the entire body-spirit illumined and awake."

He stood up and walked down the shoreline, one foot in the water and the other not. He went barefoot as it was really starting to get hot and he walked down into more shaded space and started to cast. He'd reel in evenly then give a few firm snaps on the line with a flick of his wrist to make the neon yellow and green lure dance beneath the cold water.

We fall asleep and are driven by our minds down pathways and around a million different byways where we, from that place, can be said to have become unconscious.

It pays no attention and can become a place of reactivity only, a place of responding only to what's in front of us, of nonstop strategizing with full possession of the imagination enlisted, attaching to outcomes we want, on the lookout for danger and pleasure, taking the nearest fruit, the more instant and satisfying googo available, the "thing" that we believe will satiate in the moment. Call it: Comfort Coma… wherein "I want-I want-I want" replaces one's awareness of life, "I breathe in, I breathe out."

Flies buzzed about and some would bite in search of his blood to live.

We can wake up and in the light of loving compassion more accurately See the more reactive thoughts and entanglements, we can awaken to tenderly guide our awareness toward what's alive in us. Here possibilities emerge as we listen to our longings, the powers of imagination are reenlisted to a much more beautiful cause… And the flow continues.

He reeled and tugged at the fishing rod. A large crow gave Caw! out beyond the hillside to his east.

What's most noticeable in the awake place? We live and move and have our being, gift by gift… One breath at a time, one meal at a time…

SNAP!! FISH ON!

Catch and Release

 [Continue]

Drip. Drop.

We outpour until empty. We wait and hold and carry until full. We outpour until empty.

Although Acorn Lake had supplied him with a new adventure and plenty of perch, parked near Crows Lake his campsite was nearly the same as it was when he was a boy. It felt like his. Home base was a place from which to go adventuring.

This morning, upon its blue-gray face cool raindrops pattered and plucked all about the surface in circles and plops, speckling the canvas through the cool hours of the morning.

Breezes touched in gusts, feathering as a finger would the broad spaces with rippling waves, patterns of movement keeping his eyes more than hungry to follow the wind wherever it pressed. There were deeper swells fanning more slowly and other ripplings trailing away with haste as the gale came and withdrew its invisible caresses.

Out in the deeps the chop increased with crushed whitecaps bubbling over while the skies grew more cloudy and the mist of early dawn clung wet to everything alive and green and bouldered and of bark and twig and blade and leaf; rain even found its way through the sifting teeth of the gravel beneath the stump he chose.

The whole world was trickling.

It would never end.

It was a pain to put together a fire with everything soaked, but I managed to get one going and was glad I kept some kindling in the tent on purpose. I got the fire hot and the pan put on top and then opened the bacon that was waiting in my cool pack. The parka was at home in the environment, the air was full of pine and dead wet leaves and bacon was what won out after all as the aroma filled the forest.

Bluebirds erupted from a nearby shrub ushering praises to the pig. The fat sputtered and shot fiery from the pan. He threw it into his mouth as hot as he could stand it. He left it on to get crunchy much farther than most, but loved how most of it at that point just melted in your mouth.

I did fried eggs over easy.

The wind picked up and became more steady. Flashes of sunlight gave way to longer periods of shadow and looming cloud cover.

I lit a candle and read inside the tent when rains returned.

I gave myself a back rub against the stony ground just beneath my sleeping bag.

I took a nap after a knip of brunch-time bourbon, forgetting about how Zoe was doing on her second retreat, forgetting about what I still wanted to add to my thoughts on the life of prayer…

About how sure one could be of the reality of God's hiddeness.… The felt sense of being unable to locate God's presence throughout a situation, is human as human can get… So the divine participates as well in a sort of shared disorientation and it has always been part of the cycle of communion and withdrawal between the divine from the mortal from the very beginning.

At least it would seem to me. I dipped my bacon in syrup I brought for pancakes that I still was saving for one more morning…

We outpour until empty. We wait and hold and carry until full. We outpour until empty.

I took a nap… I took a nap forgetting about all of this.

Nevertheless all of the words were out and real, as real as they were spoken.

I lick the syrup from my lip and crunch down the salty fried fat.

The smile could not be wiped from my face, ever.

Timeless

[Continue…]

The great waters of Superior lie still at dawn.

Above on a branch

Cry, cry Mourning doves.

Love. Oh love, love.

Love. Oh love, love.

He sat with the stars for hours and poked at the embers in the pit all aglow like a face lit from the other side of the earth reaching for food from the forest …

…so I threw twigs into it nearly to falling asleep.

Of the 9 to 10 questions she had asked this was the one he pestered with presently while whittling a stick with his jackknife, his boots crossed over one another beside the fire on the 2 1/2 foot pit the county had put in with concrete and aluminum wheel rims.

Q Right up front you seem interested in what prayer is and how prayer happens. You give it a life so to speak. Could you talk about that a little?

A. Sure, I'm inviting and feeling invited to See the life of the prayer… To recognize how some of it is listening and how some of it is speaking… How visions come, where our individual thrills of the heart meet the Spirits sacred anointing for the sake of others and ourselves…

It's birthing, and prior to that one can even be drawn toward what transpired, what radiated from someplace outside oneself, choosing to make its way to an epicenter of one's essential charged existence. It comes into being. The cause is always the movement of God and we then respond. 

I sip on my coffee and check back into one of my old journals. Sure enough, here it is:

From a prayer of St. Augustine – You shed your fragrance about me; I drew breath and now I gasp for your sweet perfume. I tasted you and now I hunger and thirst for you. You touched me and I am inflamed with love of your peace…

For me, the picture of myself somehow "calling out" would only serve to illustrate how I, in that state of thought, misunderstand myself and my environment.  Nevertheless, through that calling I sometimes move myself into awareness of Loving Presence which is of course there the whole time and never leaves us.

I wanted to keep thinking about it. It bothered me greatly that she thought I should. I feel as though I am being pressed to pry open something that would otherwise remain rather sweet and private and not a "thing" to be autopsied or studied. If I chose I would think about it some more.

I will not, however, dissect what is holy to me.

For anyone. Ever.

He savored every sip of his coffee in the tin cup he brought along in his pack once purchased at Drummond Island bakery on the far east Islands of the Upper Peninsula.

He had taken the fairy there and spent most of his time with his then girlfriend Jane, bicycling and tenting all throughout northern Michigan and Ontario during their two summers together.

I finished the last of my coffee and made my way over to the pack where I got eggs and butter and other things gathered to cook some breakfast. I threw a few pieces of kindling on the still smoldering ashes and watched them light up like another little miracle out of nowhere. I put the cast-iron skillet right on top of the coals, let some butter sizzle for a second and through five eggs into it and scrambled them up nice. I threw a can of hash into the other hot pan beside it and kept a lid on to keep the pine ashes from floating in.

I was thirsty after the Jamison from the night before so guzzled one cold orange juice and sat there listening to the chitters and cheeps of the Finch and Cardinals. There were no blowers blowing or lawnmowers running. All I heard was the water trickling over each of the pans as I cleaned a little bit with paper towel and water out in the bushes away from the site.

I got things ready and departed and after a two hour walk found Acorn Lake and a dock with boat rentals and spent the afternoon catching perch in a little hole I uncovered that was tucked away behind the shadows of four enormous Michigan White Pine. It was a fine day in the sun and fun to catch a good suppers worth, with stripes all up and down their sides. 

Time was nowhere to be found. I lived forever.

I sprinkled them with Shore Lunch and fried them up and drank red wine and waited for a second course of piping hot baked potato out from the coals. I was only angry I had forgotten salt for about fifteen minutes. Who doesn't bring salt, if he bothers to bring potatoes?

A gull cried that he could hear from the rocky beaches not far from where he'd parked. Everything was closer without any noise that could interfere but what was pure and breezy and wide open. All that spread apart the deep blue above him was a slender sheath of white cloud whisper, as if threaded, one slender seamless and centered cloth and it amused him to see such beauty right beside the small bag of trash he'd started gathering.

Now he wanted to lie down and swing in the hammock. He brought a paperback book filled with astonishing essays by Brian Doyle.

I swung from side to side. Watching what was made and witnessed all at once, in love.

It lasted forever.

Under the Canopy

 [Continue]

Who wrote this part? I did.

It wasn't about pride but merely trying to understand one voice from the next.

On a piece of paper the next morning he wrote: I will right now and be the main surveyor.

As I awoke I hardly even heard the alarm. My body was filled with expectation and readiness to get out of the condo and the city where lately streets had been all busted up and much renovation of buildings causing backups that could ruin your afternoon.

I hopped in the Honda and stopped off at Starbucks for another blonde and popped in John Denver's greatest hits just as I exited into the freeway speeds and spaces and 80 mile an hour grooves I would have to press myself into, but it was never a problem for the Civic which could hop into warp speed at the touch of a toe.

The road was everywhere and I was everywhere on the road and as a bright sunlight pierced through the front windshield into my face I squinted and smiled and let it warm me and the feeling of the movement, the motion and the heat became one and I sang out Rocky Mountain High then stuffed a Snickers bar into my face. The highway carried everything along with it in the woods it now took me through where they were deep and dense and the first ride out to the place I was headed all came back to me.

Our parents had dropped us off at some central location and we were all bussed in from different places from their.  I saw the guys in the cabin, Steve and Jamie and Todd and our counselor Danny Martin. How we all got trained up first and then were left as our final test to do a night alone.

It was going to be an amazing few days. When I got back, I told myself, I'd have a much better sense about everything related to the Poppy… And all the sloppy mess of feelings and irritations with Laura. Of course, the silly questions she sent were still sitting there somewhere on the kitchen table.

After I parked the Honda it felt so fine to simply walk around the other side to grab my one pack and second smaller bag without really needing to carry much else on the first trip out. It's only going to be a mile in, but that will keep me careful about my trips and how often I want to go back and forth to the car.

White Pine, Birch and Alder and Hemlock and Balsam and Maple surrounded the space and the canopies were multilayered but very high leaving the forest floor quite dry.

I found the site and sat down on a log and immediately took out one of the beers, an ice cold 12 ounce clear-bottled champagne of beers from the good people at Miller Highlife. I promised myself I would sit there until I belched before doing anything else.

I waved off a few flies and killed a few mosquitoes buzzing around my neck. I thought of Laura with her legs wrapped around my ankle on the couch as I slapped a biting fly viciously.

I surveyed the area looking for the best flat spot to place the tent.

A blue Jay hollered from pine branches above me, chickadees worried about and pestered with flecks of tree bark, spinning their little heads.

The beer settled in good and I could tell because I felt still and slowed down into a savoring type space. I worried then about why I had left so much yet to carry and also had the beer.

I am not always a smart man.

Later on that night, among many other things I want you to know… (So I'll tell you… after a while)… Later on I had a fire crackling good, and oh the stars…!

This is what they really look like, I said.

My goodness…

BACKCOUNTRY

[Continuing]

Entering into preparation to go camping marks the beginning of camping. Your entire mind is filled with where you will be and what you will need when you're at that place, which is now because you want to think ahead of yourself being there so you know what you need when you get there.

Getting there in the mind put one out into the storage area to bring out the small saw and his Estwing E6-25A Forged Steel Camp Axe with an 11 inch steel handle, several small but lengthy bundles of nylon cord, three tightly folded tarps, a battery-lantern flashlight and some other tools.

He had a simple dome-shaped tent, a Eureka, with highly durable nylon stretched over three bending rods that folded down nicely into a light and manageable addition to all that he could fit in the backpack he'd been given by his grandparents.  It was the Osprey men's Atmos 65 A pack, top-of-the-line. Almost weightless, well-balanced and concrete sturdy with breathability and all weather seams putting scientific lockdown on moisture.

He would bring corned beef hash and eggs and bread and cheese and butter and a can of raviolis and four liver sausage sandwiches and mustard and otherwise he would starve.

Six bottles of ice cold Miller High Life.  Protein bars. Blueberries. Old film camera.

He prepped a few lines with various lures and spoons, he'd bring six or so set up already, some for bass, others for pan fish.

The cooler evenings now were what drew him out and back to the woods again. He could breathe out there. There was sacred darkness enough to see the shining stars in their true light.   Away, far away from the noisy lights and glare of the city one tenderly could hold and be held in the cool moist air itself through an evening under a moon with half a light on.

One could walk with God the whole day long without a single interruption not knowing what interruption was as pure being in true flow. Give me the forest. Challenge me to catch a few fish or eat boxed macaroni and cheese. I'll put fire in front of you out of nowhere. Cook you a meal, play you a love song.

I'll need my flask, thermos.

Breathable and Durable

[Continuing]

Shut up Zoe. What do you know? You're a cat.

He zipped his coat all the way up after covering his entire head with the hood.

You give someone a gift and they open it and have an experience. The experience is there's. It's not yours. Why was this so difficult for her to see.

He looked at himself in the mirror through a rough halo of faux fur, finishing the Colombian coffee he made himself. Enjoying the coat in the mirror he was ready for the challenge of another wet and chilly morning through the blue darkness of the city and into the hilly neighborhoods that made up his territory. There was no way that he could use his old bike, it was of no use to him given the weather. He was shopping endlessly online for something rugged but hadn't saved up enough given how much he put out for the Forrester rental and Honda repairs recently.  He wanted something with big knobby tires, he wanted to do his usual great research as well.

Nevertheless, he went out the door on foot in a great parka, and a decent pair of boots.

He was really glad he had gone with the Merrill Men's Moab 2 mid waterproof hiking boot. It was unrivaled as to its waterproof protection and overall durability, well worth the price given its out-of-the-box comfort. The performance suede leather and mesh upper was both breathable and durable, and the closure felt snapped in, secure and snug. It was a breathable boot utilizing a FIT.ECo blended EVA footbed specially contoured for durability along with Vibram PC five outsole for grips with wet or dry surfaces. They gave him a lift no matter what and he never had to worry about rain getting in. So these with a pair of wool socks and you could live for weeks without worrying about your feet.

He was planning another getaway camping trip. He figured he was more than ready to do some fishing. The mom-and-pop down the street had Whitefish this weekend and he devoured it along with 1/2 bottle of Kendall Jackson Chardonnay, a baked potato and a tossed salad.

He'd settle for bluegill over the campfire, indeed.

Just East of the Indian territories, on his way back from Laura's, he had spotted a small state park almost no one knew about. It was more than familiar to him, however. He thought he might head back there and see if he couldn't grab some perch or crappie from Crows Lake where he first ever spent the night out in the woods alone.

He was thirteen. He blinked about in the world behind his glasses, scrawny yet overconfident. 

It was a night full of stars. Sighs too deep for words sung from high bows above as mourning doves sang love… And love… And love… over him while he sat peering skyward at the waxing moon of mid-July.

The sleeping bag was musty. He had his knife.

Bacon in the morning.

To Your Stations

[Continuing]

Mutual indwelling.

That says it all, he says to himself. 

He takes another long drag off of the handrolled he was given by his brother. He finds the chocolate milk in the fridge and guzzles it from the carton and sits down on the couch to open an empty page of the spiral-bound notebook.

To his own mind now he is radically present. He is completely embodied and available to himself, to the divine or to anyone. It is a helpful thing to receive an almost immediate sense of relief within and straight through to the fingertips. He wants to be able to center in without breathing in the one long drag or two. Thoughts are strewn before him about true contemplative's. He should be more able, he lacks legitimacy, unless… He suffers them. 

He lets them go. He continues to attend to the flow.

Held in God, holding God. Here together. Mutually indwelling.

Had he been putting a worm on a hook sitting on the cushion in the front of the fishing boat in shorts and sandals with a Ludington State Park ball cap on his head, would you not have been able to smell the lake, the waters aroma that was of earth and fish and moldering leaves and red pine with a touch of old rusty penny at the finish?

Mutual indwelling.

These were your horses and this one was truly your finest Buckskin companion for trailing in the forests or making your way out to a rustic camp. This one has eaten from your hands how many years, has such charge and also great balance at the edges where the switchbacks narrow steeply down near the foamy rapids.

Later, you will bring a fire into being with dry kindling and your ax and great love and the thrill for all things primitive. You will use your spectacles as a magnifier and point the suns rays into a small bundle you have assembled beneath leaves and snapped off twigs and a few pinecones.

Now squeeze the creatures black mane and hold onto those reigns or you'll be thrown on out to the thickets in the ditch without your hat. Spend the whole day with that horse and stay awake to tend to him lovingly.

He went into the workshop with scotch. 

He worked with clay, slowly giving shape with his bare hands to what he had seen and appreciated in myriad forms and at odd angles so freely throughout the day. He filled the small Cool Whip container with cold water and placed it beside the crude sculpture. He then turned the pedestal it was secured to and it revealed a slightly more human form … 

Oneness found manifestation. A ruddy piling of chunks taken warmly down to smoothness would be added through his careful tracing of fingertips gently up and down in a soft line that led to a dimpled finish which he pressed the ball of his fingertip into with a circular pinch near the top, each time adding just a bit of water to his finger, transforming the clay with one touch at a time.  Mutual indwelling.

Back to attending, yes the basics.

Creative's to your stations.

Drummers learned rudiments; triplets, flams, paradiddels, different assortments of accents among sixteenth notes and so forth… Playing them out in different patterns and variations was a blast, but first you had to know each of them by heart and how to keep them clean and tight with syncopation otherwise you spoil the show.

It was a twelve-year-old scotch and it was serving him very well today especially as it was coupled with the handrolled.

Tending felt effortless. 

Every now and then he would throw on another piece of wood. Become counter of the stars, wonder waiter as the moon went down and the sun rose high.

He would remember the days struggles in the boat to get the anchor down low enough to settle in near a spot he knew there were bass and perch and maybe even some northern tucked in behind an embankment where the tree crossed over had maybe been dead fifty years. 

He ate smoked fish and drank beer he purchased cold from the mom-and-pop down the street beside the one gas station of the small town.

He took out his guitar and sang songs about a Burmese Cat with great intentions and profoundly attuned intuitions, especially when it came to relationships. Yes, Zoe had agreed. Laura had overstepped and it needed to be talked through, just basic boundaries stuff, of course. 

Zoe's point, however, was that no matter how he looked at it, both of their experiences with the photograph served as sacred and somehow of influence… Her best advice was to let things unfold and stay in touch and to both remain genuine with each other… They were each recipients of something special… Nothing to be selfish about whatsoever…

MINE

[Continue] 

Within a day or two Laura had amassed two pages of questions that she thought would be helpful to ask in supporting what she called the "fleshing out" of the material on paradisaic intentionality, those precious seminal musings he had made himself vulnerable enough to share with her.

At his station near the window he sat beside the opened envelope in disbelief. He smoked a cigarette. He shook his head and mumbled to himself, completely taken off guard by her ability to take over and put herself in charge of it.

Why don't you dive in and make it your own… Looks like somebody needs to run my shit. She doesn't even understand half of it and now she takes it and turns it into some kind of assignment for me to work on.

Anthony came by with a warm-up for the French roast. He leaned in and had the cup full all at once.

Sup chief? How is that paper route feeling with all of this rain we've been having?  We need to get you a parka. It's supposed to be 38° tomorrow morning.

It had rained for four days on and off. He gazed out the window after thanking Anthony with a wave, then also pointing to the notebook in front of him as though saying – I'd love to talk but I'm in the middle of something right here.

It was a sketch of the kayak he'd used during his getaway trip.  He was happy with his lines at the far end and the precision with which he illustrated the islets through which the loose net of bungee cord was threaded over the top of the pack that only the artist knew had been filled with smoked fish and half a loaf of old French bread and a small flask of wine and a bottle of water.

Later that evening he went online to treat himself to a men's extra-large McMurdo parka by North Face. It was windproof and rain proof and had a fur lining around its hood with a 550 fill count of down making it perfectly warm and dry. Not only had it been wet walking up and down the broken sidewalks but the temperatures had also dropped for some reason in the city making the normal summer days feel more like autumn. The wet streets and bone chilling damp did wear on him toward the end of his route. His old blue hooded sweatshirt needed to be retired for some gear.

He ate a simple dinner and spent a few minutes clearing a space in front of the television to do tai chi. There was a group online that shared the practice each morning in a public park near Seoul, South Korea. For whatever reason the group decided to start a YouTube channel simply offering the group exercises with soft music each day. Although he usually got around to it later at night, he enjoyed the whole experience.

Often times Zoe would make her way to the corner of the room and peer out from behind the leather chair with a posture of curiosity. She would roll and stretch, contented.

He told himself he would look at Laura's questions again when he was ready. If he was ready. The letter from her sat on the end table beside his keys. He was angry with himself for opening up about the revelation and thought to himself how easy it would've been to keep it all to himself.

It was intimate. It was just for him. What else did he expect for reaching or pressing along further to show it to her, almost as though he had some credit to take for the whole thing ever happening in the first place. His own pride had led him to say – guess what happened to me? Now it was biting him in the ass.

Of course, this was only part of it. Doing what she did was way out of line. No question.

As for now, he was moving like one who floats through the air. Tranquil notes trilled and turned softly through an Asian flute.  All of the surrounding space was water in which he could suspend himself without an ounce of movement.

He could not move, he would not intend or push or press any movement of his limbs in any direction whatsoever. He let the air, the open space, take hold of him completely. He let it carry him along.

CONTEXT

 [Continuing]

The precious words he was after, the ones Laura was now "borrowing" for whatever reason, already felt illuminative given what they were. Checking back into the notebook at what preceded and followed the explanatory messages about Paradisaic Intentionality now, however, immediately showed him how critical the context had been.

Memories came back of their time together talking things through the first time around. It didn't start with heaven or the unbridled and loving imagination or some sort of pie in the sky time where somehow someone is given there own little independent and everlasting shopping spree with God just for themselves. No, the nights conversations and these vital Wonderworking practices had something to offer of immediate use and were ready to potently rebuff and overcome, tooth and claw, many of the world's deep pains and shades of darkness.

They talked about cancer. Not only that of her photographer grandmother but the many they knew; friends, families whose lives were completely sidetracked, silently dismantled out of nowhere. They grieved the helplessness that surrounds so many in its grip.

Mass shootings and hate crimes remained on the rise in our cities. It seemed the world was devolving into an anxious pit of chaos and fitful disconnection governed only by fear and force. And the worst of it was the undeniable sense that the churches were caught up in the politics of their own communities. Election results were clear. Christian folks had become increasingly indifferent to the pain endured by so many people who Jesus loved just as they were… people who were immigrants, people of color or who had disabilities, people whose sexual identities would be named nontraditional. People had been hurt by religious practices, the superimposition of their own individualistic kingdom visions that somehow didn't include millions and millions of God's children.

To be so comfortable while so many suffered. That's what really got to them both. Each refused to look past that.

The singular Poppy that Laura sent was at first thought to be the source of the peculiar magic each now sought to disentangle into some redemptive and restorative purpose. Surrounding conversation, an unavoidable and complex context, had in fact disclosed it as more of a conduit, merely one tributary through which much light and mystery had been flowing for years.

Did it not seem destined to flow well beyond his chicken scratch or a few crinkled pages now folded deep inside her purse?

He sat drinking coffee back in his station at Anthony's. His fingers were still dark from charcoal and now the soft pencil that he worked with to raise up a three-story lakeside cabin, another dwelling place his fingers could create right before his very eyes.

Laura had left a message on his phone. He had listened to it four or five times without deciding to call right back.

She had a cute voice that always sounded at home and comfy to him. Some people always sound like they're smiling or on their way to something good.

Hey I wanted to follow up, she said. It was great to reconnect and have a chance to finally tell you where the poppy photo came from. Fred's been moping around ever since you left. Anyway, wanted to thank you for letting me go on and on about how it made its way into in my dusty old shed.

I don't want to fill up your messages here, but passing it along to you, it being my grandmother's, with my house already full of so many of her visions – Well, as I said the other night, she saw more than most people. Because she was looking for more, expectant.

I'm glad you have it. Seems right.

And yes, you've probably noticed some pages missing from your notebook. Sorry to be a dork, but I told you this thing is special. It has to be turned into something. It's a class, it's a retreat waiting to happen. And I'm gonna stick to my guns and convince you that it's worth developing and sharing. People need to be doing this, man. I'm not just blowing smoke…

All right, take care. Call me.

Let Her Have Them

[Continuing] 

The Honda was fun to be back in again, pretty reasonable with this new mechanic Anthony had put him in touch with. Sure it was a blast to drive the Subaru for a few days. High-speed and rustic and versatile. 

Now based on his lived experience, he understood how easily one could fall with one's eyes wide open into the delusion that what they are doing is suddenly legendary because it's happening in a four-wheel-drive, Subaru Forrester. People can put on knobby souls to further increase their purchase on the gritty world with its rugged roads.

He did some painting which felt delicious after all the talking and endlessly talking, Uber customers went on and on most days.

Then he got out the charcoal.

He had the thought that we are carbon-based beings. He would create from carbon as carbon.

He had purchased it at the art supply and it had been sitting there waiting to be used. Twelve 1/2 inch sticks of charcoal, each with a different degree of density. Some were so soft one couldn't help but crumble off a corner even to pick one up and get started. He would always save the little crumb of charcoal and throw it on the paper and crush it in severely with his thumb and rub it about and work from there.

Mist. The lofty atoms. Roiling cloud. 

Gray-light and shadow. 

Quieting dusk. 

He worked on one very large soft white paper which almost could feel like a lamb's ear beneath one's fingertips. It was one large cosmos of canvas filled with many and various spirited beings spoken straight to manufacture through various extended incantations. Settings for presence to manifest as a state of being and witnessing being in one.

Soft awakening, a pillowy shawl strewn out into threads swirling between the wet knuckled fingers of maple root and dead twigs at the shoreline.

A glint of light opens upon the hedges just beyond the dead stump, well dressed in a glistening set of diamond pearls, line and post in perfect symmetry, veiling the dead crooked face of the tree with what is strung as the thread of an ornately beaded webwork.

These were what he made with chalk and paper and his fingers.

Later on it would be grilled cheese. He would take the griddle pan and heat it up on the front burner with a bright flame surging beneath. He would take butter and toss it on the pan and smear it on one of the pieces of bread and then he would lay that bread down and hear the hot sizzle and see it bubbling at the edges. He would take American cheese, probably three slices and lay them on top of the bread and butter the other piece of bread thoroughly and lay it on top with the butter side up. He would watch it crackling and fizzing at the edges and he would enjoy the aroma filling the entire kitchen as the cheese started to melt at the edges. He would take his spatula and quickly slide it beneath the sandwich and give it a flip and then enjoy watching the instantaneous blur of bread and cheese and butter frying up nicely being tossed through the air right there before his eyes.

Moments later he would be on the couch drinking a Miller High Life and watching the Cubs and eating his grilled cheese sandwich that he had cut in half at the diagonal leaving room for ketchup between the two halves. He dipped each bite deeply into the ketchup and enjoyed an abundance thereof which paired so nicely with the cheese, basic Kraft singles. Tonight, indeed, it was three slices.

Zoe heard him belching and watched him go back into the doorway of the art room and lean against it admiring his enchanted world on and off throughout the evening. Art play was the way, he knew that for sure and toasted to Zoe and heard from the announcer in the other room that it was a double and it would score 2.

I'll call her tomorrow. Better than turning it into some kind of who's calling who first nonsense. 

Yup.

WORDS MISSING

[Continuing]

Worship is a way of seeing the world in the light of God.

~Abraham Joshua Heschel

Of course, he would never be able to remember all of them exactly as they had been arranged. As he re-settled into his routines, the irritation remained. Sketch a man picking his thumbnails.

He had dialed her number twice on his cell phone while drinking French roast at Anthony's, while sitting comfortably at his station. Each time he hung up, flipping the phone closed and putting it back into his tweed sport coat.

It was that he had already allowed himself back up on the horse. He was already letting himself intend each fresh word for a new essay. The new dream had commenced and that meant much to him, very much. Would he call it: Praying into Practice? He wasn't sure, nor did he need to bother himself upfront, as to its title.

After the disappointment of his earlier essay being rejected by the Journal, this felt pristine. Actually if he wasn't one of those people who didn't generally talk a certain way, he would've told you that it felt anointed given how strangely the thoughts had shown up, the uncharted nature of their territory.

These were the missing words. These were the ones written on the pages of the spiral notebook that were now absent from its binding. Did Laura really have them? Would he ever ask?

*

By grace, every person's prayer essentially prays itself into being. It prays itself to life, pressing one's heart to open fully, ensuring also to procure the imaginations full willingness such that it can give itself, by faith, to the strongest extent possible, every power of illustration and movement. Each prayer seeks what it wishes to manifest and the wisest of mystics and sages suggest its fulfillment grants what all faith traditions have intoned from the beginning: We become what we long for.

A movie plays, we sense and see life in the light of God, producing soul-visions of the very life we desire in and with the divine, moment by moment, right before your eyes. We pray on earth all that is in heaven. We are revealers who are shown, we are seekers who know what we are after. Though the name is unbearably redactive, nevertheless it can, perhaps even must be named: Paradisaic Intentionality.

Perhaps some have in the past called it Kingdom Prayer. But who on earth anymore knows what a kingdom is or wants to, given what hierarchy itself has wrought throughout each of the bloodstrewn miseries of religious violence spanning human history?

It is what I call: Wonder Work… Edenic Walking; Willing our full selves forward prayerfully in an intentional manner. It is prayer-creating attendance to life and its flow from blessing to blessing, deep crying out to deep.  The endeavor places a blazing coal to the lips granting speech, giving power to words that can birth that one blessed sigh, the gaze of understanding, a tender touch of healing.

What it sees, becomes real, each thought an invitation to manifestation.

It can grant the smell of bacon or the sight of bright orange juice in a glass at the breakfast table. Through sorrow it sorrows, works any necessary pain or grief as clay. 

It is trained in the joy of birds and the turning of clouds.  It is play, it is deep breathing, it is connected time. Time for compassionate connection.  Moon-watching.  Glory-stepping.  Heart-listening.

Paradisaic intentionality happens by initiating and sustaining the conscious manifestation of communion, with Life and with all who are living… through love… in the present moment… by the spirit, thoroughly attending to whatever the liberated and trustful imagination, the healed and playful heart, might spill forth… 

It can be practiced and effective. It can be a chosen action of love and devotion. Who knows what it could do? God knows and we can make ourselves, through it, more wholly available to God and to others.

We would be trained for wonder.

*

Waiting for a red light, just about ready to drop off his final passenger for the evening, he still felt the fidget. 

There was a spattering of rain. Clouds hung low through the city. High-rises disappeared into mist at the darkening of evening.

It still felt strange to remember it as a once-happening event but also something that was still seeping out in terms of its purposes and meanings, with even some new specifics trickling in, now even well beyond the initial encounter.

As he was trying to explain to Zoe now back in the apartment, at first it did not feel like a speech or a definition or a lecture or an explanation… It was as though he sat within the sense of the prayer he would only later attempt to speak about.

There was what happened. There was the first writing down which occurred those few days after. Without the pages there was no toehold.

He wanted the words in front of him. They were not available, of course.

Later on he would try to find the notebook to see what material might've come after and whether or not it could grant any satisfaction for the time being. All he remembered was Laura's enthusiasm and the fun it was to explain this inexplicable prayer dream. Now it was feeling like more of a chore, like it meant something to get clear about, what was here to be learned or shared.

The Cubs were on against Cleveland and despite a few recent losses he didn't mind unwinding with a game. Two outs in the third with a runner on second. No score.  A blaring Cymbalta commercial.

He sipped his scotch. Someone out on the street was beeping for a friend to hurry up and get somewhere.

Zoe was wrapped up near his feet in front of the leather chair. You know they've lost three in a row, she said.

How about you stick with meow every now and then… You're going to jinx them.

SAVOR THE ROAD

 [Continuing]

I once read a story about a man who wrote a story that could be read forward or back and tell the very same thing.

… From the spiral-bound notebook

All the way home he listened to the Steve Miller band while driving between 80 and 90 mph in the Subaru. He drank a blonde, tall from Starbucks coffee, black with a Bacon and Gruyere egg puff which he ate like a muffin, two bights each along with a fairly moist chocolate chip scone.

He listened to Jet Airliner, setting the volume to 34 on the sound system which was rattling the seats and each of his ribs as he sang every word.

He felt relieved and open about how things were apparently unfolding for he and Laura now. What on earth?

And I just don't know… I just don't… turned over and over prayerfully as he began much work on complicating an otherwise perfectly simple and budding deep friendship.

The freeway, however, was wide open and he left the windows open wide. He turned words in his mind and on the road he drove the road on in his mind, where words turned over and over the freeway, and it was all nothing but breathing onward and in and out on the highway by way of grace that was travel and speed and utter freedom. He drove heaven in heaven, observing his bliss and renewing his soul on the highway in flight.

Give it a marble gigantic.

Give it a blue sky painted broader than sight.

People it with storys-high, brave detonations of cloud ascending.

Fly a jet plane through it. No really. Do it.

He pressed the pedal to the floor, fueled up on coffee with a gulp.

Big old jet airliner, Don't carry me too far away

Big old jet airliner, cause it's here that I got to stay

She simply must've torn them out and stuffed them away to keep them for herself. Why should it even bother me? I wrote the words, it's not as though those specific quotes are so long I don't carry them with me somehow automatically in my mind. She will have them. If I want them I know who to ask. It will be okay.

Zoe kept drinking her milk from her dish without even turning to acknowledge him.

He wasn't going to be the first one to call, that's for sure. He watered the plants and got groceries and checked back in with the newspaper and would run over the next evening to pick up the Honda from the shop and get things running again with Uber.

Home was nice. He shook his head a lot.

He missed her.

THIRSTY

 (Continuing)

The two of them carried on as carefree as children through the lazy summer day. They swam and laughed and mused, wondering about the strangeness of it all; the Poppy, its odd powers and all of the adventures it still seemed to be spinning out from its glistening epicenter, even into the present where the two were getting sunburned and beer-tired and made ready for an afternoon nap inside with the air conditioning on and the two of them sharing the couch.

Just before that, well under the influence of his third Old-Style beer, brewed in Milwaukee Wisconsin, as he started to repeat with every cold sip, he boldly announced that he was about to read the very best of the best from the spiral-bound notebook.

At least your humble about it, which is my favorite, she said.

Right? I should write about that.

There, overlooking the Kitteroo range which they still had not gotten anywhere near to hiking, not even into its foothills, they might have appeared to be two of the happiest people on earth.

A red tail hawk banking down to glimpse their folly would have seen mouths gaping wide with joy, would've heard laughter, witnessing two newly born into something fresh to the entirety of the creation, forming a kind of thing that was never a thing but more like a cloud on its bursting in, it's becoming without their efforts or plans and so well beyond their understanding.

Surely, the words were shared and to much beautiful and formative effect upon each of them. The reading proved they were not his at all. No sooner had they passed beyond his lips did he return to the same posture as earlier, that of the listener, a scribe in wonder, astonished.

Their visit would end, though there is more to tell. Naturally they would find their way into conversations about the framed photo and it's history and relationship to Laura, why she had sent it… Why this one? Why to him?

But for our purposes at present, we must simply remember to point out the horrible shock our dear friend did feel upon his return home when he found several pages of the spiral notebook missing.

The very finest words, those that made them sit still to stare at one another before going in for their much-needed beer nap. They were soon to disappear. The profound importance of securely reestablishing their whereabouts shortly after these encounters would come to test them greatly.

Like a strong hand threatening to crumble a tender blossom crudely in its palm, the future would enter to press against the green and fragile tendrils, what twirled so effortlessly toward life, abundant ripeness.

Perhaps Fred had some inclination, maybe that is why he whimpered and went on and on to bark as our friend rolled away after the visit in his immaculate Subaru Forrester.