Until We Could - Richard Blanco

This is a beautiful video. It is a beautiful poem.Watch the video. Drink in its beauty, its poignancy, its nod to history. But the real substance, the meat, is this amazing poem. I haven't heard such amazing use of the English language in quite a while. So, read the poem, as well. Marvel in it as I do.

"Until We Could"

Richard Blanco, 2014 

I knew it then, in that room where we found 

for the first time our eyes, and everything— 

even the din and smoke of the city around us— 

disappeared, leaving us alone as if we stood 

the last two in the world left capable of love, 

or as if two mirrors face-to-face with no end 

to the light our eyes could bend into infinity. 

I knew since I knew you—but we couldn’t... 

I caught the sunlight pining through the sheers, 

traveling millions of dark miles simply to graze 

your skin as I did that first dawn I studied you 

sleeping beside me: Yes, I counted your eyelashes, 

read your dreams like butterflies flitting underneath 

your eyelids, ready to flutter into the room. Yes, 

I praised you like a majestic creature my god forgot 

to create, till that morning of you suddenly tamed 

in my arms, first for me to see, name you mine. 

Yes to the rise and fall of your body breathing, 

your every exhale a breath I took in as my own 

wanting to keep even the air between us as one. 

Yes to all of you. Yes I knew, but still we couldn’t... 

I taught you how to dance Salsa by looking 

into my Caribbean eyes, you learned to speak 

in my tongue, while teaching me how to catch 

a snowflake in my palms and love the grey 

clouds of your grey hometown. Our years began 

collecting in glossy photos time-lining our lives 

across shelves and walls glancing back at us: 

Us embracing in some sunset, more captivated 

by each other than the sky brushed plum and rose. 

Us claiming some mountain that didn’t matter 

as much our climbing it, together. Us leaning 

against columns of ruins as ancient as our love 

was new, or leaning into our dreams at a table 

flickering candlelight in our full-mooned eyes. 

I knew me as much as us, and yet we couldn’t....

Though I forgave your blue eyes turning green 

each time you lied, but kept believing you, though 

we learned to say good morning after long nights 

of silence in the same bed, though every door slam 

taught me to hold on by letting us go, and saying 

you’re right became as true as saying I’m right, 

till there was nothing a long walk couldn’t resolve: 

holding hands and hope under the street lights 

lustering like a string of pearls guiding us home, 

or a stroll along the beach with our dog, the sea 

washed out by our smiles, our laughter roaring 

louder than the waves, though we understood 

our love was the same as our parents, though 

we dared to tell them so, and they understood. 

Though we knew, we couldn’t—no one could. 

When the fiery kick lines and fires were set for us 

by our founding mother-fathers at Stonewall, 

we first spoke of defiance. When we paraded glitter, 

leather, and rainbows made human, our word 

became pride down every city street, saying: 

Just let us be. But that wasn’t enough. Parades 

became rallies—bold words on signs and mouths 

until a man claimed freedom as another word 

for marriage and he said: Let us in, we said: love 

is love, proclaimed it into all eyes that would 

listen at every door that would open, until noes 

and maybes turned into yeses, town by town, 

city by city, state by state, understanding us 

and the woman who dared say enough until 

the gavel struck into law what we always knew: 

Love is the right to say: I do and I do and I do... 

and I do want us to see every tulip we’ve planted 

come up spring after spring, a hundred more years 

of dinners cooked over a shared glass of wine, and 

a thousand more movies in bed. I do until our eyes 

become voices speaking without speaking, until 

like a cloud meshed into a cloud, there’s no more 

you, me—our names useless. I do want you to be 

the last face I see—your breath my last breath, 

I do, I do and will and will for those who still can’t

vow it yet, but know love’s exact reason as much 

as they know how a sail keeps the wind without 

breaking, or how roots dig a way into the earth, 

or how the stars open their eyes to the night, or 

how a vine becomes one with the wall it loves, or 

how, when I hold you, you are rain in my hands.

FRUSTRATIONS OF MODERN LIFE IN SUBURBAN AMERICA

So, this happened tonight.
I have been using the same old laptop for ages. An old Dell I got for maybe $600 in 2009; back when their commercials featured a young stoner exclaiming, “Dude! You’re gettin’ a Dell!”
Anyway, it ain’t pretty. It has clear packing tape on the outside. It takes about four minutes to completely boot up and another minute to exchange greetings with the Internet and get rolling online. But once it gets going, it goes along just fine, and the damned thing has worked every single time I’ve turned it on. 
That is, until November, my birthday, when I decided it was time to upgrade, as it were. So I bought myself a fancy, up-to-date laptop-slash-tablet, touch-screen, lightning fast, full of RAM and ROM and all kinds of important acronyms.
It runs Windows 8, which I hate, but I’m willing to get used to. It boots up in about 15 seconds.
So, I took my time. I moved all my important stuff from the old Dell to the new Lenovo. My brother helped me move all my music and that was that. It was like emptying the glove compartment of a car you’ve driven for years. But for the past few weeks I’ve been groovin’ on the new-car smell, drivin’ the new Lenovo through town while the old Dell sat in the driveway. I was getting quite used to the ease of a touch-screen, and I was finally learning where keys like “delete”, “page down”, and so forth are on the new keyboard.
Then, tonight, just a couple of hours ago as a matter of fact, I was propped up on my bed, touch-screening away to my heart’s delight, posting droll quips about the oncoming blizzard on Facebook. I noticed a hair, clinging to the upper edge of the touch-screen, and went to wipe it away. It didn’t move. It wasn’t a hair. It was a crack, and as I watched, helpless, breathless, it grew, emitting the faintest screeching sound, until it reached from the upper edge of the screen to the lower one. My eight week-old computer.
Here is a tech tip for the most technologically inept of you: touch-screens do not work well with a giant crack in them. 
OK, shit happens. Time to address the problem. My evening has now transformed from a leisurely night browsing Facebook and watching Antiques Roadshow, to a night of Dealing With a Fucked Up Brand Fucking New Computer.
Step One: Warranty. 
Now, I am no web designer. What do I know? But, it seems to me, that when you find yourself at a web page which has just confirmed to you that your device, based on its serial number, is still under warranty, there should be some sort of link provided where you can work on getting your device repaired. Not so at Lenovo’s website. There were links, however, where you could purchase additional, “enhanced” coverage, but no instruction on how to go about using it. Their “Contact Us” link, instead of leading to any kind of real directory or even a simple phone number, dragged me into a rabbit hole of questions which were supposed to make it easier for them to “meet my needs” but instead left me a half an hour later with rising aggravation levels and still no closer to being helped.
Next I turn to my credit card receipt which is conveniently located online at the American Express website. Jackpot! A phone number! I don’t care if it’s the number of the employee lunchroom, I’m calling it.
Before long, I finally had “Tech Support” on the line. She said her name was “Jolie” but she sounded about as French as Tandoori Chicken. Jolie listened politely to my story, and in a mere 15 minutes she was able to provide me with all the information which I had already been able to provide for myself via the internet. After only five more minutes she was already able to tell me that this sort of problem is not covered under my warranty; but they can nevertheless fix the problem for a $99 “consumable but non-refundable” deposit (“consumable?” really?) and an estimated repair bill of $250 to $300. For an eight week-old laptop that decided to go spontaneously Mirror Crack’d  on me out of nowhere. Thanks for standing behind your product, “Jolie”.
I am always cordial to customer service reps, particularly if they are probably being paid a hundred bucks a month or something, so “You’re kidding,” was the best I could muster. “I’ll have to call you back.”
I could practically hear her sneering at me through the telephone line as she gave me my reference number.
But here’s where things get better. 
I called American Express. Now there’s a company who knows how to do customer service. I had their 800-number in moments, and within two or three minutes I was talking to someone who could actually help me. I was talking to actual Americans, who knew that it was about to snow shitloads in Massachusetts, and the proper usage of “y’all”.
Anyway, American Express has a program called “purchase protection”, which is coverage for 90 days, for up to $1000, for a case just like mine. If things go my way, it looks as though they will pay to either repair or replace the fancy new laptop. 
Thank you, American Express. I’m not usually one to profess gratitude or affection for huge, faceless multinational corporations, but thank you. 
In the meantime, I’m back in the driver’s seat of the old 2009 Inspiron. My fingers know where all the keys on the keyboard are. It ain’t pretty, but it runs.

THANKS GIVING

A storm has just passed.
At the edge of what was once a nicely manicured suburban lawn, a man stands and draws his family around him. He is wet, somewhat disheveled; he wears a Notre Dame T-shirt which is slightly ripped and clings to his body from the rain. Inside his mind, he is constantly, incessantly counting the heads of his family. “All here,” he keeps reassuring himself, “All here.” His young daughter holds her favorite doll limply; the doll appears as dazed and listless as the little girl holding it. To him, his wife looks radiant and strong, but he can see just behind her eyes that she is ready to crumble. The dog runs around the yard blissfully, with what the man recognizes as part of a leg from what was once the dining room table in its mouth. A twenty-dollar bill lies on the lawn, flapping lightly in the post-storm breeze, rendered as unimportant and valueless as the rest of the debris around it.
Finally, he takes a deep breath and speaks. “We are so lucky,” he says.
This, to me, is the essence of Thanksgiving.
Most of us, when we think about being “lucky”, think about things like making the subway just before the doors close, or being narrowly missed by a flaming chunk of SkyLab as it drops out of the sky. There is very little that is lucky about your house being in the direct path of an EF-4 tornado. That’s actually quite unlucky, to be honest. And yet, we hear this sort of thing time and time again. Whenever our illusions of safety and control have been swept aside, people whose whole lives have just been turned upside-down gather what is precious to them and proclaim their good fortune.
If we have one another, if we have our very lives, if we have tomorrow and a chance to begin again, then we have what we need. All the rest is just “stuff.”
So, today, as you bow your head and pray, or meditate, or notice that your fly is undone, whatever it is you do on Thanksgiving Day to make it solemn, be thankful for the turkey and the green bean casserole, to be sure. But start here: Be thankful for what is really precious in your life. Gather it all close to you, throw a proverbial blanket around yourselves, and imagine that you’re all you’ve got left. Then remember how lucky you really are.
Give thanks for that.

“DUST IN THE WIND”

People my age might remember a band called “Kansas”, who came out with an album entitled “Point of Know Return” in 1977. I owned a copy, and just like every other suburban white kid my age, I can remember listening to it wearing those gigantic, padded headphones with the curly cord which we used back then, and thinking how cosmic and profound it all was. Upon further consideration, though, I found that there was actually no “there” there, so to speak. Their lyrics were more like meaningless or nearly-meaningless drivel written to complement electric organ and Moog synthesizer riffs and appeal to the bong-hitting 12 to 18 year-old demographic who found Loggins & Messina to be too folksy and Aerosmith to be too hardcore. 

“They say the sea turns so dark that

You know it's time, you see the sign

They say the point demons guard is

An ocean grave, for all the brave,

Was it you that said, "How long, how long,

How long to the point of know return?"

…Really? What?

So, today, as I was walking the dog and turned the corner onto a neighborhood street, I began to hear the strains of “Dust in the Wind” blasting from the window of a house down the road. Immediately that ironic, judgmental inner voice of mine, the one we all have (don't we?), began to chuckle and wonder, “Who is listening to that old schlock?”
Then I saw whose house it was.
It was the house of a neighbor who is currently battling cancer for the second time. A family who lost a son just a year or so ago to a drug overdose.

“Now don’t hang on
Nothin’ lasts forever but the earth and sky
It slips away
And all your money won’t another minute buy.
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind…”

And suddenly that little judgmental, ironic voice in my head shut right the hell up and felt kind of ashamed of itself.
All this just went to remind me that no matter how we see or hear this world, this day, this song on the radio, someone else sees it in an entirely different light. While we contemplate our weekend and worry about getting the car fixed, someone else is wondering whether they’ll live to see Christmas and is hoping, above all, that it won’t hurt. That 3½-minute, made-for-AM-radio hit you’ve always disregarded as musical tripe, someone else thinks of as a prayer.
"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle" - Ian Maclaren

"To Have My Bestest Friend Again"

Yeah, it's kind of maudlin and tear-jerkery, I know. But there was a soul I knew, named Buster. I miss him more than I miss anyone or anything that's gone in my life. I think about him every single day. 

Song of the Open Road

BY WALT WHITMAN

1

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,

Healthy, free, the world before me,

The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,

Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,

Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,

Strong and content I travel the open road.

The earth, that is sufficient,

I do not want the constellations any nearer,

I know they are very well where they are,

I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,

I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,

I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,

I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.)

2

You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all that is here,

I believe that much unseen is also here.

Here the profound lesson of reception, nor preference nor denial,

The black with his woolly head, the felon, the diseas’d, the illiterate person, are not denied;

The birth, the hasting after the physician, the beggar’s tramp, the drunkard’s stagger, the laughing party of mechanics,

The escaped youth, the rich person’s carriage, the fop, the eloping couple,

The early market-man, the hearse, the moving of furniture into the town, the return back from the town,

They pass, I also pass, any thing passes, none can be interdicted,

None but are accepted, none but shall be dear to me.

3

You air that serves me with breath to speak!

You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them shape!

You light that wraps me and all things in delicate equable showers!

You paths worn in the irregular hollows by the roadsides!

I believe you are latent with unseen existences, you are so dear to me.

You flagg’d walks of the cities! you strong curbs at the edges!

You ferries! you planks and posts of wharves! you timber-lined sides! you distant ships!

You rows of houses! you window-pierc’d façades! you roofs!

You porches and entrances! you copings and iron guards!

You windows whose transparent shells might expose so much!

You doors and ascending steps! you arches!

You gray stones of interminable pavements! you trodden crossings!

From all that has touch’d you I believe you have imparted to yourselves, and now would impart the same secretly to me,

From the living and the dead you have peopled your impassive surfaces, and the spirits thereof would be evident and amicable with me.

4

The earth expanding right hand and left hand,

The picture alive, every part in its best light,

The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is not wanted,

The cheerful voice of the public road, the gay fresh sentiment of the road.

O highway I travel, do you say to me Do not leave me?

Do you say Venture not—if you leave me you are lost?

Do you say I am already prepared, I am well-beaten and undenied, adhere to me?

O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you,

You express me better than I can express myself,

You shall be more to me than my poem.

I think heroic deeds were all conceiv’d in the open air, and all free poems also,

I think I could stop here myself and do miracles,

I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like, and whoever beholds me shall like me,

I think whoever I see must be happy.

5

From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,

Going where I list, my own master total and absolute,

Listening to others, considering well what they say,

Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,

Gently,but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.

I inhale great draughts of space,

The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.

I am larger, better than I thought,

I did not know I held so much goodness.

All seems beautiful to me,

I can repeat over to men and women You have done such good to me I would do the same to you,

I will recruit for myself and you as I go,

I will scatter myself among men and women as I go,

I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them,

Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me,

Whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me.

6

Now if a thousand perfect men were to appear it would not amaze me,

Now if a thousand beautiful forms of women appear’d it would not astonish me.

Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons,

It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.

Here a great personal deed has room,

(Such a deed seizes upon the hearts of the whole race of men,

Its effusion of strength and will overwhelms law and mocks all authority and all argument against it.)

Here is the test of wisdom,

Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,

Wisdom cannot be pass’d from one having it to another not having it,

Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof,

Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content,

Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things;

Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul.

Now I re-examine philosophies and religions,

They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the spacious clouds and along the landscape and flowing currents.

Here is realization,

Here is a man tallied—he realizes here what he has in him,

The past, the future, majesty, love—if they are vacant of you, you are vacant of them.

Only the kernel of every object nourishes;

Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me?

Where is he that undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and me?

Here is adhesiveness, it is not previously fashion’d, it is apropos;

Do you know what it is as you pass to be loved by strangers?

Do you know the talk of those turning eye-balls?

7

Here is the efflux of the soul,

The efflux of the soul comes from within through embower’d gates, ever provoking questions,

These yearnings why are they? these thoughts in the darkness why are they?

Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the sunlight expands my blood?

Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank?

Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?

(I think they hang there winter and summer on those trees and always drop fruit as I pass;)

What is it I interchange so suddenly with strangers?

What with some driver as I ride on the seat by his side?

What with some fisherman drawing his seine by the shore as I walk by and pause?

What gives me to be free to a woman’s and man’s good-will? what gives them to be free to mine?

8

The efflux of the soul is happiness, here is happiness,

I think it pervades the open air, waiting at all times,

Now it flows unto us, we are rightly charged.

Here rises the fluid and attaching character,

The fluid and attaching character is the freshness and sweetness of man and woman,

(The herbs of the morning sprout no fresher and sweeter every day out of the roots of themselves, than it sprouts fresh and sweet continually out of itself.)

Toward the fluid and attaching character exudes the sweat of the love of young and old,

From it falls distill’d the charm that mocks beauty and attainments,

Toward it heaves the shuddering longing ache of contact.

9

Allons! whoever you are come travel with me!

Traveling with me you find what never tires.

The earth never tires,

The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, Nature is rude and incomprehensible at first,

Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop’d,

I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.

Allons! we must not stop here,

However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling we cannot remain here,

However shelter’d this port and however calm these waters we must not anchor here,

However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted to receive it but a little while.

10

Allons! the inducements shall be greater,

We will sail pathless and wild seas,

We will go where winds blow, waves dash, and the Yankee clipper speeds by under full sail.

Allons! with power, liberty, the earth, the elements,

Health, defiance, gayety, self-esteem, curiosity;

Allons! from all formules!

From your formules, O bat-eyed and materialistic priests.

The stale cadaver blocks up the passage—the burial waits no longer.

Allons! yet take warning!

He traveling with me needs the best blood, thews, endurance,

None may come to the trial till he or she bring courage and health,

Come not here if you have already spent the best of yourself,

Only those may come who come in sweet and determin’d bodies,

No diseas’d person, no rum-drinker or venereal taint is permitted here.

(I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes,

We convince by our presence.)

11

Listen! I will be honest with you,

I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes,

These are the days that must happen to you:

You shall not heap up what is call’d riches,

You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve,

You but arrive at the city to which you were destin’d, you hardly settle yourself to satisfaction before you are call’d by an irresistible call to depart,

You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who remain behind you,

What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with passionate kisses of parting,

You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reach’d hands toward you.

12

Allons! after the great Companions, and to belong to them!

They too are on the road—they are the swift and majestic men—they are the greatest women,

Enjoyers of calms of seas and storms of seas,

Sailors of many a ship, walkers of many a mile of land,

Habituès of many distant countries, habituès of far-distant dwellings,

Trusters of men and women, observers of cities, solitary toilers,

Pausers and contemplators of tufts, blossoms, shells of the shore,

Dancers at wedding-dances, kissers of brides, tender helpers of children, bearers of children,

Soldiers of revolts, standers by gaping graves, lowerers-down of coffins,

Journeyers over consecutive seasons, over the years, the curious years each emerging from that which preceded it,

Journeyers as with companions, namely their own diverse phases,

Forth-steppers from the latent unrealized baby-days,

Journeyers gayly with their own youth, journeyers with their bearded and well-grain’d manhood,

Journeyers with their womanhood, ample, unsurpass’d, content,

Journeyers with their own sublime old age of manhood or womanhood,

Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe,

Old age, flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.

13

Allons! to that which is endless as it was beginningless,

To undergo much, tramps of days, rests of nights,

To merge all in the travel they tend to, and the days and nights they tend to,

Again to merge them in the start of superior journeys,

To see nothing anywhere but what you may reach it and pass it,

To conceive no time, however distant, but what you may reach it and pass it,

To look up or down no road but it stretches and waits for you, however long but it stretches and waits for you,

To see no being, not God’s or any, but you also go thither,

To see no possession but you may possess it, enjoying all without labor or purchase, abstracting the feast yet not abstracting one particle of it,

To take the best of the farmer’s farm and the rich man’s elegant villa, and the chaste blessings of the well-married couple, and the fruits of orchards and flowers of gardens,

To take to your use out of the compact cities as you pass through,

To carry buildings and streets with you afterward wherever you go,

To gather the minds of men out of their brains as you encounter them, to gather the love out of their hearts,

To take your lovers on the road with you, for all that you leave them behind you,

To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for traveling souls.

All parts away for the progress of souls,

All religion, all solid things, arts, governments—all that was or is apparent upon this globe or any globe, falls into niches and corners before the procession of souls along the grand roads of the universe.

Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand roads of the universe, all other progress is the needed emblem and sustenance.

Forever alive, forever forward,

Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble, dissatisfied,

Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by men,

They go! they go! I know that they go, but I know not where they go,

But I know that they go toward the best—toward something great.

Whoever you are, come forth! or man or woman come forth!

You must not stay sleeping and dallying there in the house, though you built it, or though it has been built for you.

Out of the dark confinement! out from behind the screen!

It is useless to protest, I know all and expose it.

Behold through you as bad as the rest,

Through the laughter, dancing, dining, supping, of people,

Inside of dresses and ornaments, inside of those wash’d and trimm’d faces,

Behold a secret silent loathing and despair.

No husband, no wife, no friend, trusted to hear the confession,

Another self, a duplicate of every one, skulking and hiding it goes,

Formless and wordless through the streets of the cities, polite and bland in the parlors,

In the cars of railroads, in steamboats, in the public assembly,

Home to the houses of men and women, at the table, in the bedroom, everywhere,

Smartly attired, countenance smiling, form upright, death under the breast-bones, hell under the skull-bones,

Under the broadcloth and gloves, under the ribbons and artificial flowers,

Keeping fair with the customs, speaking not a syllable of itself,

Speaking of any thing else but never of itself.

14

Allons! through struggles and wars!

The goal that was named cannot be countermanded.

Have the past struggles succeeded?

What has succeeded? yourself? your nation? Nature?

Now understand me well—it is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary.

My call is the call of battle, I nourish active rebellion,

He going with me must go well arm’d,

He going with me goes often with spare diet, poverty, angry enemies, desertions.

15

Allons! the road is before us!

It is safe—I have tried it—my own feet have tried it well—be not detain’d!

Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopen’d!

Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearn’d!

Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher!

Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the court, and the judge expound the law.

Camerado, I give you my hand!

I give you my love more precious than money,

I give you myself before preaching or law;

Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?

Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

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from Facebook, originally posted 9/19/14

Made it home yesterday afternoon. I did not go online once yesterday, which, as anyone who knows me will tell you, never happens. But, we spent the day "getting home", and once we got home we had Mom and Aunt Barbara here, so we spent the day chatting with them and looking at pictures and such. Then there were the animals: the dog was beside himself with wiggling, slobbering dog-joy, of course;  and once the cat had forgiven us and made us suffer for a bit, she needed all of her attention too. Mark left a while ago to bring the ladies back to Saugus, so the house is blessedly quiet for the first time since I got home.
Never did get around to writing that story. Not enough "idle hours" at the resort, and a laptop is hardly the accessory one wants while riding in an innertube. I thought I might try something on the trip home, but we ended up having the most extraordinary flight on Wednesday. 
The plane was a McDonnell-Douglas with a capacity of roughly 150-250 people, I would guess. There were 25 souls aboard that flight, which was probably the primary reason why the flight was so pleasant in the first place. Once we got past the torturous vetting process of being allowed back into the US, the entire process was not only painless, I might even go so far as to say pleasant. Everyone had their pick of seats, and once everyone was snack'ed and beverage'd, the flight attendants grabbed some food from First Class and relaxed in the rear, which was cool. The baby only cried once. The air was smooth as silk, hardly a bump from takeoff to landing, and we were ahead of schedule.
There are advantages to being someone, like me, who lives largely inside of his own head. This allows you to have almost transcendental moments in the most unlikely of places, even somewhere like on an airplane in mid-flight, where ordinarily you would be cramped, aching, quite possibly nauseous, and wondering if anyone has ever really ordered a $350 briefcase from SkyMall. 
We were flying due north, and Mark and I were stretching out in an exit row directly over the wings. The weather had been beautiful all day. I had finished my last book that morning, so my iPod was playing and I had been admiring the clouds and thinking how they looked like giant kernels of exploded popcorn from that angle. At sunset, the sun was exactly at the tip of the wing out to the west. I took some pictures but no matter how many megapixels I have, nothing could capture the magnificence of it. A mysterious landscape of white below, a blaze of red and searing yellow at the horizon, and sapphire blue above, fading into grayscale as night took over. Mumford and Sons was playing on my iPod as I watched the sun slowly dissolve away. Could there be a better band than Mumford and Sons for that moment? "Awake my soul..." At that moment, I could look below at the landscape. The pilot was flying us right up the coast of the United States, and when I looked down, I could see exactly where we were. I recognized the Chesapeake Bay and the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and I knew that the cluster of lights to the west was Baltimore, my home town, and I knew my brother and his family were there, and the souls of my Mom and Dad. I waved. 
The iPod shuffled to James Galway playing a concerto for flute by Bach. As I looked down, I was able to see whole neighborhoods pop into view from the growing darkness as all their streetlights came on at once, crazy Lite-Brite pictures drawn by civil engineers. I had one of those moments when you remember how small and insignificant you really are. I realized how the guy felt when he composed the theme song from "Arthur": "caught between the moon and New York City."
And before I knew it, there it was, New York City, and we were landing at JFK. Our Dream Flight had ended. We all smiled and deplaned and re-assumed our roles as red blood cells in the throbbing circulatory system of Air Travel. I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I did, but I doubt they did. 
Anyway, so that's why I haven't gotten the story written.

It's nice to be home.