Photo 2

Matthew W. Hill/Мэттью М. Хилл

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Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

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Rabbiting on about the moonlight.

The story is going to sound weird, but I assure you it's true. Every night I go swimming. Usually for a half hour to 40 minutes. I have not missed a day since January 1st. But that humble brag is not what this story is about. It's about a rabbit.
A tiny tiny wee rabbit.
There's lots of rabbits in the desert; you can see them pretty much everywhere. And yes, one rabbit pretty much looks like another.
But this wee rabbit is different.
For starters, he is particularly tiny. (I'm assuming that he's a he. I'm afraid I haven't asked him his preferred pronouns.) And I don't mean that he is a baby rabbit; he shaped like a full size rabbit, just smaller.
A fun-size rabbit if you will.
As an aside, what is up with that expression "fun size? What does the size of something have to do with it being fun? (Please don't answer that.) But particularly disturbs me is that it implies that other sizes are not fun. "I'm sorry, you ate the bigger candy bar. You are no longer going to have fun. Cue maniacal laughter...)
But,, as always, I digress.
My fun size rabbit has another distinguishing feature; he has a smudge of white on the right side of his face near his nose. Just like my cat Smudge. We Rab's (for some inexplicable reason the tiny rabbit has become Scottish) smudge is quite larger than Smudge's smudge. It's also more defined in it's outlined, so it's also less smudgier than Smudge's smudge.
Anyway, to the point of my tale. (I originally had a pun here on "cottontail," but I deleted it.)
My rabbit friend likes to come swimming with me. Pretty much every night. Well, I swim and he nibbles the grass near the pool. But we are both the last people to use the pool every night, and it's almost always just the two of us alone. I'm grateful he shares the pool with me. After all, his ancestors were here long before me, and his descendants will be here still long after I've left.
It's really peaceful to swim at this time of night, especially on a night like tonight, with a full moon shining through the palm trees. There's only a slight breeze, but it carries the scent of night blooming Jasmine from somebody's garden. With the surrounding quiet, it makes the whole scene both beautiful and a little surreal.
Or as wee Rab might say, "it's a braw bricht moonlit nicht ta nicht."
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Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my extreme loquaciousness, but sometimes, just like the moon itself, I am compelled to wax eloquently.
Wax on, wax off.

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I probably would not enjoy having a beer with the owner of this car.

Presented without judgment, but with highlights for those of you with small screens and or little inclination to zoom in.
15 year old Buick with the most Buick paint job ever. Check.
(Full disclosure; I have a Buick that is almost as old, in the same color.)
Second amendment sticker. Check.
Torn and faded Trump 2016 sticker. Check.
Oil lobby sticker promoting unrestricted drilling. Check.
Blue handicapped parking tag hanging from rear view mirror. Check.
Believe it or not, I really am not making any judgments here. I am just curious why anybody would want the world at large to know that much about them just by glancing at their car.
I guess we tend to do everything in the same way we do anything.
And while I'm writing this, I realize that I have a small sticker on my car. Nothing bad, or political, or controversial in any way, but something I no longer want to say about myself.
I'm now going out to my car to remove it. :)
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Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my not so subtle condescending snidness at entitled boomers.

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So...

Having determined, and accepted, my arrival at "here," the obvious question presents itself. But strangely, as important as that question is, in many ways the answer doesn't particularly matter. What is significant is that I'm asking myself the question. And while this question is coming from some place deep down, for a change that lower place isn't a pit of fear and despair. Don't get me wrong, there's still fear. And there's definitely still a shadow of despair. But if the wounds aren't completely healed, they're at least scabbed over enough that I'm not in immediate danger I'm getting an infection from some particularly nasty germs and losing a limb.

This is something of a novelty for me; I would really like to get used to this.

Yes, I am coming out from a deep place, but it feels like warm damp Earth that is encouraging a seed - one that is survived a particularly harsh winter - to germinate. It's a cheesy metaphor, but it's the best I can do before my third cup of coffee.

And I'll take germinating over germs any day.

So, where do we go from here?
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Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my pseudo-philosophical pontificating.

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Well, here I am again.

Exactly, here I am again. Of course, you've already guessed what comes next; I have no earthly idea where - or what - here is. This is not particularly unusual for me, as I spend a large part of my life in the state of non-understanding. But I can feel it. Something is happening.

I'm here, and it's not for the first time.

So much has happened since I last put finger to keyboard to blog, that I won't even bother trying to bring you up to speed. And that's not because it's not interesting. Trust me, it's been interesting. As in the Chinese curse, "may you live in interesting times." The Inn of Infinite Sadness gave away to the stately home of infinite dampness, which in turn gave way to the international journey of infinite stress, which gave way to a trail of tears with my tail between my legs. And now I find myself on the periphery. And again, in keeping with the theme, I'm not sure the periphery of what, but a periphery nonetheless.

But I am here.

And I feel like something is happening.

I don't think here is a place, although I'm definitely in a better one than I've been in for a long time. And I don't think that here is a state of mind, although again, I'm in a better one than I've been for a long time. Maybe, and I mean just maybe, here is a feeling. A feeling of not being "there." And although there's no way I could describe to you what "there" is like , I can still feel the spiny tendrils of there finding their way along the ins and outs of my soul, entangling and binding it to the dead stump of my former life.
Maybe I don't know what here is because it's been so long since I've been to the there that is here.

Maybe here is a feeling.

Maybe, just maybe, oh God just maybe, here is hope.
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Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail that thinks this guy is pretentious, crazy, or more likely, both, and doesn't deserve any sympathy at all, but should get every bad thing that's coming to him. Please excuse my brevity.

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Tap tap tap... Is this thing on?

I think it's at least 6 years since I've last visited the Inn of Infinite Sadness. And in that time I have had ups and downs, and downs and outs, and outs and ins.
Right now its downs and I'm in Palm Springs, at least for the next few months.
And there's a cricket in my bathroom.
Welcome back, everybody; at least this time there's air conditioning.
Sorta.

--
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

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When I see this...

I makes me think I did pick the right subject for my PhD.

Sent from my HTC PURE™, a Windows® phone from AT&T that still wonders if it was worth eight friggin years, though.