Chapter 30

Greetings,

Drifting is a migration from a linear world that is full of neat processes and models to the road where everything happens at once. Any glue for general directions is gone.

The eco-tone is life material for metaphors where two adjacent ecosystems overlap in shadow, transparency, reflection, refraction, dappling, stippling, shimmering, moire, netting, layering and superimposition.

A place without a filter to distort knowledge and perception.

A ride, when it’s absolutely necessary. Driving along you engage each other with stories from the past and then you both realize suddenly how common it all is. How your lives are mingling, connected for the briefest time, short and long and quick and deadly evaporating exchanges.

It was one early fall in a cow town 60 miles north of Denver. He stood on the residential street thumbing a ride. Homer, an old crusty ranching farmer stopped his battered blue pickup and he got in. We traveled less than a mile, a few short city blocks. He said two things.

“If a person speaks the truth they don’t have to remember what they said,” and, “If you ever need a helping hand look at the end of your wrist.”

He thanked him for the ride and words of wisdom at an intersection full of salvation thrift stores and mini-marts, got out and started walking to get a paper and check out ads. Found a place in the basement of the King’s house a couple blocks from campus.

This university was the place where younger students called him a “Baby Killer” when they found out he was a veteran. Vietnam, 1969. He had no explanation, no excuse, no answers. He was invisible, he incorporated passive-aggressive silence. He became anonymous, a figment of their imagination.

He learned how to stay away from them, how to practice covert skills of black watch, night patrols, stealth, disguise, cunning, lock and load and put it on fully automatic. Nothing but the blues baby. Write it down, get it out, smile, move on.

His undeclared major was Survival 101. Before you learn how to live you need to learn how to die.

Peace.