My trouble with writing is not knowing where to begin.  How do I name one event as the genesis of everything I am, my biases, likes, dislikes, prejudices, fears, loves?  Even writing that sentence suggests that now, at this moment, I have the perspective (the authority?) to name my reality.  Does one ever gain such perfect perspective on one’s life?

            After my mother-in-law died on November 8, 2019, I stayed in Atlanta to clean out her small apartment.  My wife returned to Seattle.  She is still employed; I am not.  I’ve been retired for several years, thanks to luck, perseverance, intellect, and white privilege, all those things.  It has taken several years, but I have become better at holding the tension in that last sentence, adept at maintaining a precarious equilibrium between guilt and anger.  Guilt over unearned advantages and anger at how those advantages tend to minimize the hard work and sacrifices I made to take advantage of them.  

            For such a small apartment, there was quite a bit to sort through.  The hardest part was not the few pieces of furniture and art worth anything, or the jewelry and china, or even the ten-year-old Honda Civic with only 38,000 miles on it.  The hardest part was dealing with the boxes of photographs, her original social security card, the scraps of paper on which Carol scribbled poems.  I felt good about giving the furniture to the employees who cared for Carol over the last few years of her life.  Carol’s brother-in-law took charge of selling the car just as he had taken care of her finances for many years.  The china and jewelry went to my wife.  We turned everything else into cash or gave it away, everything except those two banker’s boxes of photographs, poetry, thank you notes, love letters, her original birth certificate.  I shipped those boxes to Seattle, unable to sort through them or throw out bits and pieces of her life.  I rationalized my decision by convincing myself I would sort through the memorabilia when I returned to Seattle, create, I imagined, a lasting pictorial biography of a woman I had come to love more than I realized when she was alive. 

            Five months after shipping the boxes to Seattle, they remain on the floor of our T.V. room next to the antique secretary we inherited from Nana, Carol’s mother.  It, too, is filled with photographs spanning our lives, from our marriage through three kids.  Will these photos still be in that secretary when Melissa and I die?  Will our three kids box them up and store them in their closets or attics?  More than Carol’s death, more than the dozen times I have caught myself since she died, halfway to dialing her number to tell her something funny or to check in, more even than the spam email I received just this morning from Carol Watson with a smiley face, those photographs stored in boxes, filling that secretary, haunt me.  How do we throw out a life?  Or, do we catalogue it?  Sort and organize it?  

            I’ve been working my way through a book by Jim Holt called Why Does The World Exist?  An Existential Detective Story.  Even better than that title is the blurb about the author.  It reads, “Jim Holt . . . has written on string theory, time, infinity, numbers, truth, and bullshit, among other subjects…”  Among other subjects?  What’s left?  Reading his book, I come away with two thoughts: Holt is way above my intellectual pay grade; and, how much fun would it be to have a beer with this guy.  Although I admit to grasping only about a tenth of his material – a survey of the great philosophers and scientists who have attempted to answer that ultimate metaphysical question, none of whom, for Holt, have the definitive answer – I am clear on one point.  Holt is dead set against turning to religion for help in his quest.  God is not the answer.  For Holt, God is a cop-out, a crutch, intellectual laziness.  I don’t blame or judge him for that.  Sadly, for many people, religion and God have become synonymous with corruption, hypocrisy and hatred, and for quite understandable reasons.  Today, the words “evangelical Christian” more often evoke images of brain-dead, Trump sycophants, or money-grubbing snake-oil salesmen than devout, joyful believers in the Gospel of love.  So too, Catholicism, my original faith tradition, has become more aligned with misogyny, patriarchy and pedophilia than social justice. 

            I did learn one thing from reading Holt’s book, if learn is the right word.  It feels more like discover or connect with rather than learn.  Every great mind he interviewed about this “impossible-to-ignore” question, regardless of their starting point, regardless of their expertise – string theory, quantum physics, multi-universes, philosophy or mathematics – admitted that there is no sufficient answer to how something came from nothing.  We are no closer to the answer to that ultimate question than were our Neanderthal ancestors.  It remains, at the end of rational thinking, a mystery.  Yet all of these brilliant minds have their own word or combination of words to describe this mystery, words like cosmic void, Big Bang, ideal forms, and Infinite Mind.  When you really stop to consider it, aren’t the words “God” or “Allah” or “Yahweh” in that same category?

When faced with something we know must have a reality, but unable to explain what that reality is, we turn to metaphor, art, music, poetry, prose.  In these times of irrational reliance on – metaphorically speaking – the left side of my brain, I feel good about giving a shout out to the liberal arts, the underappreciated right side of my brain.  Of course, as I sit here writing, I fully appreciate how self-serving that last thought is.  Nonetheless, to stare in the face of a question like “why does anything exist?” elicits, after mind-numbing mental gymnastics, a surrender to humility, quickly followed by gratitude, and ending in laughter.  Yes, truly, where was I when God or the Big Bang created the cosmos?

For the time being, I’m not going to do anything with those boxes of photos and memorabilia.  I’ll let them sit there in the corner, and sometimes I will stare at them and laugh or cry and not feel the need to do a thing.  To surrender to a mystery, whatever name we place on it, is not a cop-out.  It’s an act of courage.

The sun finally came out even if the air still has that touch of winter in it.  Maybe it’s a reaction to the constant barrage of Covid 19 news, but I spent the last few days pressure washing every concrete and brick surface around my house.  I started with my little, ten-year-old washer until it became unavoidably obvious that the “pressure” part of its name no longer applied.  I held the nozzle half an inch from a patch of moss, and I could hear the moss singing like it was in the shower.  Such a display of impertinence.  An hour later after a brief foray on the Internet and a quick trip to Home Depot, I obliterated that saucy little patch of moss and most of the grout between the bricks with my new, supersized pressure washer, 2300 PSI, baby.  A man, a power tool, a sunny day.  My concrete surfaces have no viruses.

Giving in to the panic, briefly, I stocked up on extra food, at least the stuff that was still on the shelves.  No chicken.  Seriously, no chicken, not in two different stores.  I am standing there staring at the empty case thinking, will I be doing this in a month grabbing any damn cut of meat still on the shelf, even the one slightly past its due date?  Ham hocks anyone?  It gave me a real, deeply felt moment of what it must have been like for my parents in the Great Depression and leading into the shortages caused by WWII.  Throughout my childhood, my mother, age 89, delightfully and gratefully ate a poached egg every single morning for breakfast, something she could not get as a child.  

Life has changed, but that is not to say it has become unbearable or even terribly difficult.  In fact, Melissa spends the day at home teaching her classes online.  Right now, I am sitting with the sun on my back not ten feet from her half listening to her students discuss whatever novel they have been reading.  Yesterday, Melissa dressed up for an online class.  “What, I need to be on,” she said in response to my raised eyebrows.  Understand, I was wearing REI moss-spattered rain pants and a sweatshirt way beyond the “give-away” stage.  I had a date with some doomed moss.  I walked outside in my rain garb, protective goggles perched on my nose looking like some crazed owl.  I am king of my damn castle, buddy.

Not everything is one hundred percent.  We are anxious to get Meg home from Chile.  My heart goes out to the other parents whose kids were in Europe.  As things go, she should be better off than most of the stranded kids across the globe.  Some of her friends have flights that connect through Brazil.  Border crossings are not great right now.  Meg has a long flight, but at least it has two hops inside Chile before the long trek to L.A.  She’s moved through the disappointment into her Wonder Woman resilience.  She told me on Facetime yesterday in that not so subtle, but devilishly playful way that if I felt like making a pie, now would be a good time.  Maybe life really is a more dynamic version of a slot machine.  Every so often, a child happens to hit with the perfect combination of genes.  Of course, I would say the same thing about all my kids.  Maybe the better way to put this is that every so often a child, unfortunately, hits with the worse possible combination of genes, and then becomes president, or the CEO of American Airlines, who, to protect profits, has cancelled 70% of his airlines flights despite the thousands of people, mostly college kids, trying to get home.  

On Friday I watched the PBS News Hour, the last real news show on T.V.  David Brooks, appearing as he always does on Friday with Mark Shields, was asked for his take on the Covid 19 virus.  Brooks, a republican, called Trump a sociopath who cares more about “the numbers” than human lives.  Sadly, he is right.  Consider for a moment that Trump’s inability (or refusal) to effectively test for the virus nearly two months since the first case appeared will undoubtedly result in otherwise avoidable deaths.  If I let that fact sink in too deeply, I can’t deal with my rage.  Mark Shields reminded David that Americans found the courage and wisdom to pull together to get through the shortages and fears surrounding WWII as well as the polio outbreak.  For years those two thoughtful, respected journalists have civilly discussed about every divisive issue in politics.  I find hope in the strength of their relationship. 

The ski season has come to an abrupt close like most everything else.  Josh, like a pig in slop, wallowed in the slopes last weekend for the final hurrah.  I understand people in New York are still in a state of stunned disbelief that bars are closing, and this during the week of St. Patrick’s Day.  I don’t mean to make light of these changes.  It is disconcerting to say the least.  Yet, I wonder if this isn’t exactly the kind of two by four upside our heads we needed to stop already with the obsessive, incessant fearmongering and hate speech.  Maybe, cloistered as we will be, we will find a breakthrough, a moment of stillness, an awakening to the present.  Maybe we will stop thinking and feel how real and good it is to be alive, to be with family (even virtually), to remember what it is like to let go of the seething mass of ultimately inconsequential “urgent” tasks that have become a perversion of life.  Maybe we will feel the deep, rich, inexpressible joy of remembering that we love and are loved.  As we hunker down in our moss-free homes, let that thought fill us.  I do not understand why suffering exists, but I take comfort in knowing that in the worse suffering there is always a glimmer of joy, a redemption that confounds any attempt at rational thought, or any thought.  It simply is. This too shall pass, but I sincerely hope I don’t lose the lesson in it.

And now, there is the sidewalk that requires my attention.   

We did the whole daylight savings time thing again this past weekend, spinning the clocks forward an hour.  For what?  To see the sun set an hour later?  Great, but it means the sun rises an hour later as well.  I got up at five this morning.  It was dark.  I had no reason to be up that early.  I read the New York Times.  The stock market was plummeting as cases of coronavirus were sky rocketing.  As far as I can tell, the only thing switching our clocks accomplishes anymore is to throw off our collective circadian rhythms for a day or two.  Like we need that with everything else that is going on.  It’s like doing shots of Red Bull with coffee in the morning.

As much as I want to see the Democratic nominee beat Trump, and as much as I think the Democratic President should spend his first twenty-four hours reversing or eliminating every single one of Trump’ Executive Orders, I’d love to see the new President call it quits on the change the clocks absurdity.  He could get rid of pennies too while he’s at it.  Think about it.  Who would even notice?  Today, the newly elected President reinstated the DACA program, banned the separation of families at the border, ordered the Justice Department to cease investigations into debunked Russian conspiracies, reinstated the Obama-era rules on auto emissions, and eliminated pennies and daylight savings time.  You won’t get that extra hour of sleep this fall, and you’ll have to start throwing nickels into the tip jar of your favorite barista.  Deal with it.

Speaking of pennies, when was the last time you said to someone, “A penny for your thoughts?”  This curious question popped into my head this morning around 9:30.  I had already read as much of the paper as I could handle, folded the sheets that had been sitting in the chaise lounge in our bedroom since last Thursday, and ridden my bike while watching (for the sixth or seventh time) an episode of Game of Thrones.  Don’t judge me.  Each episode is about an hour long and it gets me on the bike.  Still, after all that, it was only 9:30.

Nick showed up to return the car before heading into work, but first he raided the refrigerator.  We sat four feet apart at the table eating breakfast – his first, my second.  After a few minutes of silence, I looked up from my iPad thinking I had been rude to ignore Nick.  His eyes, and presumably his brain, were trained on his phone.  It was then, in the awareness that we had been sitting so close in silence that I realized we no longer use that phrase, “a penny for your thoughts,” because we never see anyone idly staring into space, daydreaming, or zoning out.  What exactly does that mean?  Do we not have our own thoughts anymore?

In addition to the other things I had more or less accomplished that morning, I had forced myself, after being ginned up to the point of combustion, to take a few deep breaths, sit quietly and watch my thoughts parade through my head.  I tried to pinpoint the exact moment each thought popped into my head while simultaneously trying to extend the time between one thought vanishing and the next one appearing.  This is an exercise Eckhardt Tolle suggests in his book The Power of Now.  When I become intensely focused without judgment on watching my thoughts, a curious thing happens.  I begin to sense a difference between the person watching the thoughts and the thought itself.  That “gap,” that awareness, eventually stops the incessant parade of thoughts, like force quitting a program that refuses to shut down.  

Nick finished his bagel, said good-bye and headed out the door, with, I might add, the leftovers from dinner the night before.  We pay it forward, even the little stuff.

I’m sitting here now unable to stop wondering about what I used to daydream about. What did it feel like to drift off without noticing that I was drifting off?  Was it the same as intentionally watching my thoughts? I don’t remember, but I do remember my mom and dad catching me staring into space and asking, “a penny for your thoughts.”  And I remember never having a good answer.  I don’t remember what I was thinking, except that it was pleasant, a respite, a cool, long drink of cold water on a hot day.  

I will probably fall to sleep at a reasonable hour tonight. I will probably wake up at a more reasonable hour tomorrow.  And, I will inevitably turn on my iPad and read the New York Times.  But first, I think I’ll sit in a comfortable chair with a cup of coffee and drift off into a daydream.  

It’s been more than a year since Melissa and I jammed our hiking boots into the Patagonia bag, jumped in the back of a Lyft, and gripped hands in stunned, silent wonder at what we were about to do.  It’s been more than six months since we returned to Seattle still glowing with gratitude, our spirits sated and stilled by the glories we had seen and experienced. With the perspective of time, I recall our sabbatical, metaphorically, as one long marvelous hike, a journey that started out giddy with excitement and weighted with gear and expectations, but that transformed at some indeterminant point into a slow, gentle, unburdened amble devoid of a destination.  It is that feeling of being unburdened, of wandering in wonder, that I most miss. It was a state of being I can best describe in the negative — an absence of anxiety, or as Tibetan Buddhism would describe it, freedom from samsara.  The Dalai Lama, I think, would call it happiness.   

Meg left about a week ago for a study abroad program in the south of Chile, in Patagonia.  She called me yesterday afternoon in the middle of my workout, her face framed in my iPhone.  She looked lovely, a kind of quiet radiance.  She was in a coffee shop, cement floor, glass walls, a view over the water to stunning snow-covered peaks.  She described it as a nice youth hostel-like place.  We talked about her first week, her classes – not terribly rigorous – her posse – twenty-three students with no difficult children – her teachers – large, older white males that “took up a lot of room when they spoke” – and how much fun she was having speaking Spanish in a small, gorgeous town at the tip of the world in a place “you and mom would love!” 

 Every parent’s heart swells when they think of their children, but our hearts burst when we see them happy, confident, filled up with life.  After twenty minutes or so Meg was interrupted by a voice out of my view.  It was time for Meg and her friends to head out to the beach to watch the sunset.  We lingered on the phone a few minutes longer never knowing how to say good-bye in these kinds of moments, moments so pregnant with life we need the nearness of each other to absorb everything they contain. 

After my workout, my phone pinged with a text message from Meg to both Melissa and me.  She included a photograph of the water and mountains and setting sun.  She wrote, “I am so lucky.”

Gratitude, I think, is the doorway through which we find happiness.  I could see it in Meg’s face.  Her captivating smile stirred in me the same feeling I had Sunday when the sun finally emerged after weeks of cold, wet rain, the same feeling I had walking the cobblestone streets of Sancerre in search of a croissant.  Happiness.  Wholeness.  A reminder of who I really am unburdened by anxiety, free of fears. 

If gratitude is the doorway to happiness, then the only way I have ever found that doorway and managed to squeeze through is by letting go of those stones I picked up on the hike:  anger, outrage, frustration, self-righteousness, fear, worry, guilt.  Within six months of being back in the States, I have restocked my pack with all of that crushing weight.  I know exactly where I picked up those stones, exactly when I put them in my backpack as if carrying them around would make me feel better.  Those stones have names: the cowardice of Senators Murkowski, Collins and Alexander, the hypocrisy of Lindsey Graham, the moral emptiness of Mitch McConnel, and the naked, empty ugliness of Donald Trump.  

The phone call with Meg reminded me of what I had almost forgotten since returning from our sabbatical – the depth and power of true happiness, the moment when the hike to a destination becomes a wander through endless beauty, the moment when what is true and real and good does not depend on a destination, or a person, or an outcome.  I miss the mountains, the endless, empty beaches, the hauntingly beautiful blue of the Mediterranean.  Though I cannot live forever in those graced and glorious moments, I take from them the power to face the realities here in the States, the courage to drop those heavy, useless stones that litter my quiet, grateful amble through life.   

            The sun is out this morning in that slanted, impotent way that says winter is knocking on the door.  Still, it’s a beautiful brown and yellow morning, a goose bumps on the bare arms kind of morning, a morning when I can’t decide whether to sit inside and focus on work or go for a walk before winter stops knocking and bursts in.  The “I” that sits between these opposing voices in my head decides to compromise, which is a polite way of admitting to cowardice, the unwillingness to face my multiple selves and make a decision.  I drove to the store, did my shopping for dinner, picked up the laundry, and strolled to the barbershop, thereby mollifying the voice that demands productivity while providing some relief to the voice that craves beauty.  I got outside, and I did chores.

            While shopping, I bumped into my barber, a tall rounded guy with a handlebar mustache and receding hairline, the kind of guy who inserts the word “buddy” into virtually every sentence, like, “Getting the shopping done there buddy?”  He’s a good guy, and he’s been my barber for fifteen years.  I still don’t know his name, and he doesn’t know mine.  We understand the limits of our relationship, and, I think he likes it that way.  

            I climb up into the old-fashion barber’s chair, the massive thing on a swivel with the flat metal footrest, and wait for him to say, “So, how you want it, buddy?”  I suppose for people with a full head of hair there are multiple answers to that question.  In my situation, that is not the case.  I really have only one option, a buzz cut.  The only choice is the guard to use.  For the past ten years it’s been the same, a number two.  I am pretty confident my barber knows exactly what I will say, but he genuinely waits until I say it before reaching for either his scissors – a device that has absolutely no use in my case – or his buzz cutter.  I think there must be a confidential barber’s code of conduct never to assume anything about a head of hair, or in my case the lack thereof.  “I’ll take a number two and buzz it.”  Playing along is my way of letting him know I appreciate his fine manners. 

            His shop, squeezed between a restaurant and laundry, across the street from the QFC, has been in the same location for decades.  His father started the business. Father and son look exactly alike except the father – God love him – is completely bald.  His father used to be my barber until he retired and started painting.  Several of his works hang on the wall.  He was a better barber than a painter, although I am no art critic.  The only other item on the wall is a quote.  It says: “God only made so many perfect heads.  The rest he covered with hair.” 

            I sit in the barber chair by the big plate glass window looking out onto the sidewalk.  The other barber chair, the one his dad used, sits next to me like the empty chair at the dinner table reserved for the Holy Spirit.  The television hanging in the corner of the room is tuned to an “Avengers” episode.  I mistook the show for an old Star Trek episode, but my barber corrected me.  “No, buddy, that’s not Star Trek.  That’s the Avengers.”  Somehow, and I don’t recall if I encouraged this or it just happened, my barber, while buzzing my head, a process that takes approximately fifteen minutes, explained to me the plot of the program.  On screen, as he is explaining things, is a mutant, somewhat humanoid, green-skinned creature pointing a laser gun at a sleeping, fully human man dressed in what I mistakenly thought was a uniform of a member of Star Fleet Command.  The green humanoid is apparently experiencing a moment of existential crisis as he wrestles with whether or not to obliterate the human.  He doesn’t.

            “No, buddy.  They aren’t even in the Alpha Zone.  They got hit by a ray.  They’re 60,000 light years away in the Delta Zone.  They would have to travel at Warp Ten for ten years to make it back.  They can’t do that.  It would use up their dilithium crystals.”  He pauses to go gently with the razor around my ears.  “Plus, buddy, they’d have to stop for food somewhere along the way.” 

            I don’t know how to respond to this not only because I have only a vague sense of what he is talking about, but because he is so matter of fact, like he’s talking about restoring one of his vintage cars, that I start experiencing a wrinkle in my personal time-space continuum.  The next thing I hear, and I don’t know how much I did not hear before tuning back in, my barber is saying, “…because the Romulans and Vulcans are related, buddy, but the Vulcans decided to be all peaceful and shit.”

            The number two razor switches off, my barber spins the chair around so I can see his handiwork in the mirror, and I nod in a dazed and confused way that he accepts as my good to go.  Twenty-one dollars later I am back on the sidewalk trying to remember both what planet I am on and where I parked. 

            I’ve always known that a barbershop is to guys what the bathroom in a luxury hotel must be to a group of women.  It’s a sanctuary, a place of free association.  The rules of physics and logic don’t have to apply.  For at least the length of time it takes to buzz my head, Spock and Kirk are real, and one can ponder the philosophical implications of being stranded 60,000 light years from home.  Things said inside a barbershop are funny precisely because we are aware of how absurd they are, and, at the same time, how much fun it is to pretend the absurd is the real.  Where would they stop on that 60,000 light year voyage to get food?

            In exactly the opposite way, absurd things said outside a barbershop are not so funny.  Listening to Donald Trump or Rudy Giuliani or Lindsey Graham or Mitch McConnell feels like one of those conversations that should be taking place in a barbershop, but isn’t.  When men dismiss an unequivocal abuse of power as if it were idle chitchat at a cocktail party, there is no humor in their absurdity, only madness, a kind of madness that makes everyone uncomfortable because none of us knows where it leads.   

            I am not a big fan of marijuana.  I prefer a cocktail.  But lately, I walk around feeling somewhat stoned.  The fact that I use the word “stoned” is a dead give away of my amateur status when it comes to anything hip.  Nonetheless, as I was saying, I drift through these gray, wet fall days feeling stupid, my head wrapped in gauze, my brain spinning through annoying and random thoughts, dumb.  I can’t focus.  Last night, for example, despite getting a text from my son around midday reminding me to pick him up at the airport, I watched Chernobyl with Melissa and went to bed.  Nick had to take a cab.  I stranded my son at the airport.  I wish I had a good excuse.  I don’t.  I didn’t.  I even woke up around 1:00 am, wandered around the house for a bit unable to get back to sleep, and did not think once about my son standing outside baggage claim futilely texting me.  I had forgotten about my phone as well.  Even when I am fully awake, I hear the thing only about half the time.  

            This morning, Melissa found me asleep on a single mattress on the floor of our other son’s room – something I am prone to do when I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep.  She jumped on top of me to wish me a happy 31^st anniversary.  I had remembered our anniversary.  We talked about it the day before and decided to postpone celebrating until a non-school night.  I cling desperately to these little facts like the fact that I have not, as best as I can recall, ever forgotten our anniversary.  Melissa, pinning me under the comforter, demanded to know why I was not in our marital bed.  I fixed her coffee like I have almost every morning, another small fact I cling to.  We decided, while reading the New York Times, that we would sign up for another year (of marriage, not the Times), but no long term contracts, strictly a year-to-year status.  I don’t blame her, but glancing over my reading glasses at her across the room wearing her new outfit, baggie red pants and a tight, low cut “onsie” – an adult version of the baby onsie – I hoped she would re-up every year.  God knows I married up.  I’m not so stoned as to miss that fact.

            We’ve been home from our sabbatical for three months.  Melissa has returned to teaching.  We’ve reconnected with friends.  We have been home long enough that people no longer ask us where we’ve been.  The trip is a wonderful, poignant memory, something I hope we can do again because I find it too hard to call it a once in a lifetime adventure.  Funny though, as much as I loved the places we visited and the carefree life we led, the thing I miss most is time with Melissa.  She heads to work every morning by 8:00 am and returns around 6.  I keep busy.  Seriously.  Don’t ask me what I do, but it takes the whole damn day to do it.

            It’s those hours during the day that drug me.  I’m not lonely, or alone.  I work out.  I have meetings at Seattle University.  I visit with neighbors.  I see Michael selling Real Change outside the QFC.  He lights up when he sees me because he knows I am a reliable customer.  It’s the same line everyday, deep baritone voice like Larry Munson calling a Georgia football game: “I’ve been waiting on you sir!”  I hand over my two dollars, and he hands over the paper, which I never read.

            Inevitably, I forget the one thing at the grocery Melissa specifically asked me to buy.  Later, Melissa, in that endearing, borderline annoying teacher’s voice she uses with her ninth graders, cheerfully suggests I write things down. “It’s the only way I can manage,” she tells me as if the idea of making a to do list is an epiphany on par with divine revelation.  I smile and nod and agree and head back to the store to buy the forgotten item.  On the way, I wonder if she realizes how much it is not about forgetting the details of my day, but all about being drugged with the memory of having nothing to do except hold her hand and take a walk.  

            I’ve re-read our blog searching, I suppose, for the thread that holds it all together.  It’s not hard to find.  I may not have been aware of it when we were traveling and writing, at least not as aware of it as I am now, but it is hard to miss.  Regardless of how a random collection of atoms evolved into a unique and unprecedented arrangement sufficient to spark self-awareness, I can’t miss the miracle that we humans not only have the capacity to love and be loved, but to understand it, to feel it, to ache for it, to know that without it we would not survive. 

            In what feels like a past life, my time studying theology at Seattle University, I recall something I think Karl Rahner said.  He noted that humans were created to receive and understand the “Christian Message.”  Stripped of that loaded phrase, I think what Rahner was saying was simply that what makes us human is our ability to comprehend at some level the infinite power and beauty of love.

            I find this truth all around me these days – in the start of the school year with its emphasis on making your mark, in the work I am doing at Seattle University with its exploration of a hunger by people, especially people in the workplace, to feel a part of something bigger than themselves, and in the various political movements, especially the environmental movement by young people beseeching their elders to wake up before its too late.  That innate sense that life is bigger than any one of us is rooted in the miracle of our exclusively human self-awareness.

            I promised Melissa this morning before she waltz out the door in that adorable and sexy outfit (if I can use those two words in the same sentence without sounding creepy) that I would, in fact, make a to do list.  Instead, here I am spilling my heart on this digital screen.  Before she left, I told her I loved her and that she was the best thing that ever happened to me.  Somehow saying out loud something intimate and true fills the room, at least momentarily, with a sense of unity as if there is no I-you, only thou, one flesh, entangled atoms momentarily synchronized into one thing.  

            I hope she re-ups every year.          

I am up at 7:30, sitting on the stone pier in Collioure.  The water is flat and calm, the sun already farther above the horizon than the ancient clock tower rising solid against the powder blue sky. Pigeons strut about nervously, joined by twittering brown thrashers.  I hear the street cleaners making their run to wash and polish the cobblestones, as they do every morning.  The muted rumble of their engines ebbs and flows as they work their way up and down the lacework of alleys, edging ever closer to my solitary perch. The young man in ubiquitous ocean blue shorts and a navy shirt is methodically setting up the umbrellas over the chairs outside his restaurant.  Otherwise, this port is still and reverent, holding the glory of a new day.

During the past week, Collioure began to fill with tourists, mostly European, mostly French, but it is still not high season.  Only a half dozen boats are tied to buoys in the port, but shops that had been shuttered when we arrived are showing signs of life.  Yesterday, Sunday, the main plaza filled with people watching a circle of dancers in traditional Catalan garb step and hop to the polka-like music. Even the weather seems to know it is time for the tourist.  The days have grown warm enough to brave a swim.  The wind has retreated back to Africa or wherever it originates. But this fresh, clean morning is mine, or so it feels.  Most of the world is still asleep.  How is it that all of eternity fits so comfortably in this tiny, awestruck moment?

And such a brief moment it is.  Even as I type, the vans delivering fresh produce to the corner store begin to arrive, the roar of their engines disrupting the stillness.  The chairs on the wide esplanade are now neatly arranged around the small round tables.  The green, blue and red umbrellas are tied open.  I hear the low, distant clammer of the morning train, a beeping of the construction machinery starting up, the clanging of storefronts opening, and the bugle blowing revelry for the soldiers who train in the ruins of the fort high above the port.  The town is throwing off sleep. 

The cool early morning sun is disappearing, growing hotter as it rises above the fog, a smudge of gray along the horizon.  In five minutes I will be hot, the delicious cool morning breeze a thing of the past, just as my silence is now vanishing with the arrival of the street cleaners, the early morning swimmers, the first joggers, the conversations and greetings between employees arriving for work, the inevitable forward motion of time.

As my still cool morning slowly dissolves, a window in my mind, briefly opened to the sacred, silently closes.  I hold its opening and closing lightly.  Nothing shuts the window more tightly than grasping.  Tomorrow, if I rise early enough, if I sit still enough, it may open again, although it can be fickle.  It opens and closes according to the rhythm of some grace or science I do not understand.

The man in the blue shorts is smoking a cigarette now, leaning against the stone wall of his restaurant surveying his completed task, nodding his head in good morning to the trickle of his fellow shop owners moving through the memorized choreography of their morning.  The ocean sparkles with flashes of sunlight, diamonds tumbling on a rippled sheet of velvet blue.  The sun is hot.  The soft lover’s kiss of morning is a memory.  The window has closed.    

Like this morning, our sabbatical is coming to an end.  We are coming home, and it feels as if another window is closing.  We have our plane tickets (thank you Bob and Sabrina). We have our train tickets, two of the last three available.  We waited until the last minute, almost waited too long.  Was that intentional, or denial, or both? 

I feel this trip more than remember it.  I feel my rain-soaked body exhilarated in the primordial brilliance of the Milford Trek. I feel the electrical sting of touching infinity on the top of a boulder I should not have climbed, staring in triumph and awe at the impossible heights of snow-covered Mt. Cook.  I feel the warmth and intimacy of a quiet, star-studded night curled up next to Melissa in the back of a camper van, our breathing, like our heartbeats, synchronized.  I feel the loneliness and despair of the Killing Fields, the wide-eyed wonder of Angkor Wat, the dreamy semi-consciousness of drifting supine on a kayak on a river in a jungle.  

We lovingly shared our last week and apartment with Nick and Altinay.  Yesterday, after a long, wandering walk into the hills, we spent the afternoon swimming before dozing on the beach, the warm rocks a perfect contrast to the cool ocean breeze.  Around 7:00, with the sun hanging above the hills as hesitant to set as we are to leave, we walked along the sea wall to a bar terraced into the rocky hillside and ordered Mojitos, a Long Island Iced Tea, and a Dark and Stormy.  A few swimmers paddled in the water out by the sailboats moored to buoys.  At our feet dangling from barstools, the gentle swells seeped between the crevices in the jagged rocks and tiny fish floated effortlessly in the swishing current. We toasted the day, the view, the endless blue ocean that melts into an endless blue sky.  Altinay said what our hearts were feeling, “I live my life for this kind of blue.” 

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Later that evening, after dinner, we sat on our rooftop quiet, happy, and drenched with the delicious fatigue of a packed day, a day too full to hold.  Twilight loitered like a love-struck teen by his girlfriend’s locker. A tree on the far horizon at the top of the hill above the vineyards began to glow, backlit by an unseen spotlight. Moments later, our eyes fixed on this anomaly; the full moon, huge, bulbous detached itself in slow motion from the horizon.  Altinay means “golden moon.”

We are coming home to family, to friends, to a memorized rhythm of time that we hope will not mesmerize us.  We are coming home sated with joy, tenderized by unearned beauty, full of time and memories and love.  

The dog walkers have arrived. My computer is too hot in my lap. It is time to buy croissants, return to the apartment, and greet Melissa, Nick and Altinay. The morning is well past. Yet, as I walk up the alley to our apartment, fishing for the keys and biting into the soft, lightly crunchy goodness of a croissant, I smile at my foolishness.  There is no window, no separation between the sacred and profane.  My quiet, beautiful morning did not disappear.  It is all around me all the time.  There was never a time when it was not, and there will never come a time when it is not.  The illusion is the window, my words on this page, their naked inadequacy in the face of a golden moon.

Still, I am sad to leave.

Before launching into this post, a warm, loving hug to my dad (rest in peace) and my father-in-law. I love you both. Happy father’s day, one dad to another.

A week ago, Josh completed his semester abroad in London, said goodbye to his host family, had a final pint (or two) with his mates, and caught a flight to Barcelona.  Melissa and I had hoped that all three of our children would, simultaneously, spend some time with us at the end of this sabbatical, but our three children are not really children anymore.  Their lives, like meteors that briefly orbited the home planet, are beginning to break free of our gravitational pull and explore new trajectories.

Josh, however, was up for a few days with the parents before heading back to his Seattle world.  He is kind to us that way, indulging us.  When I told him I had found some good flights from London to Barcelona, he said, in all seriousness, that he would “just get a bus.”  Josh hates airports.  I can relate. I bought him a plane ticket.  

Melissa and I caught a train to Barcelona to meet Josh.  His flight did not get in until almost 11:00 pm, which left Melissa and me with most of the day and way too much of the night to explore this incredible city. Barcelona is Paris, London and Los Angeles tossed in a salad, at least the tiny slice we saw.  Our hotel sat at the intersection of three distinct neighborhoods: the Gothic Quarter, a labyrinth of narrow alleys anchored by a soaring Gothic Cathedral; El Born, a kind of medieval New York, a twenty-four-seven haven of trendy bars and restaurants; and, an unnamed beach community complete with open air markets, Venice Beach Bros in sleeve-less tees and a host of people hawking every conceivable tourist trinket.  

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We spent the day walking the Gothic Quarter, making it to the roof of the Barcelona Cathedral and continuing on to the famous (or infamous, depending on your artistic sensibilities) Gaudi Cathedral, officially known as the Basilica of the Sagrada Familia. This monstrous structure resembles a cathedral only in the most abstract way.  When I first glimpsed its drip-castle-like spires piercing the blue sky, my mind struggled, first, to acknowledge that such a thing could exist, and second, to understand exactly what I was seeing.  Simultaneously, Melissa and I looked at each other and said, “it reminds me of the White Temple in Chiang Rai.”  Only two people who have travelled together for six months would possibly understand this statement or appreciate just how much we have begun to think each other’s thoughts.  We have become the mental version of people who begin to look like their pets.  For me anyway, this is a step up.

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When Josh finally made it to the hotel, Melissa and I, running on the kind of adrenaline every parent who has not set eyes on their child for months understands, managed to stay awake until midnight to hear about Josh’s semester.  The next morning, we had brunch at a fabulous, tiny restaurant tucked into the side of some ancient building in the Gothic Quarter, and then caught a train back to Collioure.  Because of the train schedules, we did not get in until early evening.  We spent the next three days together, walking the beach (while Josh scaled the rocky cliffs), eating and drinking, playing cards (Melissa became obsessed with casino), skipping rocks at dusk, and silently bursting with a parent’s mixed bag of pride, joy, love and tenderness for a kind, decent, intelligent young man that, even after twenty-two years, remains one of three miracles we did nothing to deserve but were nevertheless blessed to receive.

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Josh’s departure not only ignited the inevitable letdown of saying goodbye, but also triggered a fire drill when, on the morning he was scheduled to depart by train to Barcelona, we discovered that his flight to Charlotte had been cancelled.  I managed to book him on an earlier flight, but it was fifty-fifty that he’d make it to Barcelona on time.  Nevertheless, he wanted to try.  His friends were picking him up in Seattle.  There was a certain young woman involved.  It was his decision.

He missed that flight. Melissa and I felt that empty, anxious place in the pit of our stomachs that mysteriously materializes whenever one of our kids, no matter how old, is stressed, unhappy, or in a difficult situation. As I write, fortunately, Josh has landed safely in Seattle.  The black hole in my stomach has closed.

At dusk on the day Josh finally caught a flight home, Melissa and I brought gin and tonics to the beach and sat on the huge stone jetty leaning against each other, delighting in the soothing warmth of the stones.  A handful of children waded in the cold, blue water on the rocky beach, periodically squealing at everything and nothing.  A few dozen people sat at tables on the esplanade sipping beers and aperitifs.  The landscape glowed in the fevered light of the setting sun.  Without saying a word, we both felt the tension and stress of Josh’s departure drain from our bodies.

Dusk is our favorite time of day, especially in Collioure, a soothing massage of the mind and senses that lingers impossibly for hours.  Experiencing that healing moment after the tension and drama of Josh’s departure made me aware of how challenging it is to live in the United States in this time of political, economic and environmental dysfunction.  Maybe I am preparing myself to return to Seattle.  Still, I can’t shake the simple, stark truth that the only way to let go of anger, anxiety, hatred, bitterness and resentment is to, simply, let go of it.  From this sheltered distance, I read the dire predictions of a Trump victory, I scan the nervous articles describing a Democratic party tearing itself apart, and I want to ask my Democratic friends and Trump supporters alike, “aren’t you tired of being angry?”  

I am not naïve about what is at stake in this coming election.  I do not think dreamy evenings with a gin and tonic will make everything better.  Yet, as I re-enter the turmoil that has become the new normal in America, I hope to do so without anger or fear.  I will do whatever I can to defeat Donald Trump, not because I want Democrats to retake the Senate or vindicate the last election’s defeat, or because I want to hold it over those that disagree with my politics.  I want to defeat Donald Trump, because he has become for me (and I believe, for America) a white-hot coal we clench in our angry fists.  I am tired of being angry.  It’s time to unclench my fists and drop that burning coal.  I hope there are others, Democrat and Republican, who feel the same way.   

Tomorrow marks five full months since we left on this sabbatical, and I am asking that same question everyone I know asks at least ten times a month: “Where did the time go?” I feel as though I am clinging desperately to some detritus bobbing and weaving on the tops of rapids in a raging river hurtling towards an encounter with something I can’t avoid, but am afraid to face.  That helpless inner image could not contrast more starkly with my surroundings: a quiet, bohemian apartment in the middle of Collioure, a few steps from the Mediterranean under a sky so deliciously soft and blue I want to scoop it out with a spoon and lick it up before it melts.

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A few days after Melissa and I arrived, our friends Mike and Cindy, who had been travelling in France, joined us for five days.  They left several days ago and already the memories blur and mix.  I remember our excitement the day of their arrival, Melissa insisting we needed more flowers, and, more importantly, a new vase to put them in.  We will probably not be able to bring the vase home when we leave.  It will be an anonymous donation to our absentee landlord.  Who washes a rental car?  Who buys things for an apartment they don’t own?  

I remember getting caught up in Melissa’s enthusiasm and succumbing to her infectious insistence that I buy a beret and man-scarf to match her orange, country French skirt and matching orange bonnet so that we would be properly attired when we met Mike and Cindy’s incoming train.  I remember the look of delightful awe on Cindy’s face when we walked under the big stone arch and she took in the magnificent crescent beach and rolling indigo blue waters washing against the nine-hundred-year-old battlements and clock tower.  The sight makes me catch my breath still. 

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The four of us settled quickly into our apartment.  Melissa and I took up residence in the fourth floor bedroom that opens onto the rooftop deck. Mike and Cindy moved into the bedroom two floors below us.  In the middle, we hung out in the kitchen/dining area with the French doors opened onto the precariously perched balcony that overlooks our narrow alley draped with curtains of jasmine, bougainvillea and ivy.  When the wind died down after our first day together, we took to the roof top balcony for happy hours, drinking Rosé and eating brie, blue cheese, chevre, toasted peanuts, olives and an array of aged ham sliced paper-thin, some of which we wrapped around ripe melons.  If there is a more sublime combination of salt and sweet, a more velvet feel of ripe melon and mouth-melting ham, I don’t want to know. I think it would kill me with bliss. 

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As Melissa and Cindy dissolve into yet another spasm of laughter, Mike makes us all look up at the hilltops cultivated with vineyards, rising gracefully to a sky that has magically mutated from azure to cobalt to cerulean.  The ancient stones of St. Elme Fort in sharp relief against the horizon smolder like glowing embers in a dying fire.  To be in love for thirty years with Melissa, to be in love with friends who, like catalysts in a chemical reaction, produce still more joy from an experience saturated with joy, washes me with gratitude and opens a place so tender, so fragile and vulnerable it is hard even here to expose it. 

Our days with Mike and Cindy were both packed and mostly spontaneous.  One glorious day, Mike chartered a motorboat, which he piloted for us along the undulating coast, docking for the bulk of the day in a fabulous port with soaring cliffs and startlingly clear waters.  Before turning for home, we continued south because, as Mike said, Cindy is a “let’s see what’s around the next corner kind of person.” We made it to Spain before heading home. Cindy had never been in Spain before.

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On another day, we started walking along the coast until we landed at the next town in a restaurant with sangria.  Even the trudge home, drowsy with wine and food, seemed almost effortless, our conversations delightfully diverting us from the physical effort.  After dinner, Melissa and Cindy sat on the warm, rocky beach while Mike and I, suddenly twelve again, skipped stones or competed to be the first to hit the buoy.  We were middle-schoolers showing off for two cute girls.  When the lingering twilight finally turned the water to slate and our sailing rocks became invisible projectiles except for the splash in the otherwise quiet waters, we wandered slowly back to the apartment.  If it were not for the fatigue of walking almost eight miles that day, we could have stayed up all night. 

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Five wonderful days of walks and food and laughter and shared intimate, precious thoughts blinked into memories too quickly eviscerated by that voracious, unrelenting nemesis — time.  

Melissa and I wanted to end our sabbatical rooted in a place for an extended period with no agenda, to sync with the indigenous rhythms, the ebbs and flows of an unfamiliar place. I suppose I hoped we would, for once, slow down time and discover the mystery and beauty of being fully present to the present.  Is such a miracle actually possible?  In every dissolving moment, there is the joy of being alive and the sadness of the moment lost.  

When Mike and Cindy left, Melissa and I clung ever more tightly to one another, missing our friends, wishing them well, yet deliciously happy in this terribly intimate space we have found together on this sabbatical, or that has found us.  I don’t know which way that works.  We ambled among the cobblestone streets poking our heads into the numerous art galleries, comparing our favorite pieces, imagining them hanging on a wall in our house.  In one small shop, the artist and gallery owner, a lively, short, beaming man launched into a delightful and informative “lesson” on Fauvism, a style of painting made famous by Matisse and others in the early twentieth century.

His monologue continued unabated for twenty minutes, focusing on the Fauvist’s desire to push the boundaries of colors and discovering how a color is not a thing unto itself.  Its brilliance, its very essence depends on and is influenced by the colors around it, not unlike the way we were influenced, enriched, made more bright by our time with Mike and Cindy.

A moment before we left, he slowed his pace as if suddenly aware that he had been sprinting through a lecture to complete strangers.  In a sudden, serious change of mood, he revealed to us that he suffered horribly from dyslexia.  Art was his way of relating to the world, but he became an artist, someone at peace with his dyslexia, when he discovered through his efforts to understand Fauvism, that he had to embrace the shadows in his life.  As he said, it is the shadows that give meaning to the colors. 

We walked home anticipating Josh’s arrival in a few days, again filling with the inexplicable joy of anticipating a reunion with a part of ourselves that is also somehow a remarkable, unique, independent self. 

According to Buddhism, time is an illusion, and every tangible thing is merely a mutable, finite form temporarily housing the true, interconnected nature of being.  In these past few days, and, indeed on this entire sabbatical, I am coming to understand and find my peace with the rapids of time.  The light and dark in each moment, the fleeting nature of grasping at the infinite, the unquenchable desire to know and describe the ineffable, all give way to the stillness of joy, a Matisse blue sky, the warmth of Melissa’s hand in mind, the laughter of friends, this moment of tender remembrance.

If Sancerre, with its medieval architecture and cobblestone streets, is the quintessential French village on a hill overlooking the Loire Valley, then Collioure is a version of the same thing but tucked into the foothills of the Pyrenees where rolling green hills tumble into the deep blue of the Mediterranean.  Nine months ago, planning the tail end of this sabbatical, I sat at my desk using Google Maps to scroll across the European continent, searching for that perfect out-of-the-way spot to plant ourselves for a month and dissolve into the ether and mystery of a few weeks without a to-do list.  I had in mind an impossible task: a quaint fishing village, undiscovered by Americans (except me), but with enough interesting things to keep us occupied in case my romanticized vision of doing nothing proved less than romantic.

After hours of searching, I centered the map on the French coastline where it meets the Spanish border. As usual, nothing that matched my vision appeared until, for reasons known only to neuroscientists, psychologists and God, I happened to zoom in at precisely the right location for the word “Collioure” to materialize.  I clicked on the name and knew immediately that I had found our final resting spot, in a manner of speaking.  I booked a house for a month and paid in advance, telling my anxious alter ego to simmer down and, for once, stop obsessing about the what ifs.  

Getting to Collioure from Sancerre was a bit trickier than I had imagined.  I assumed we could take a train.  I had been told, probably by Melissa, the Francophile, that trains run everywhere in France because, as I have mentioned before, in Melissa’s mind, everything in France is as close to perfect as we humans get.  Trains do indeed run from Sancerre to Collioure, but they take over eleven hours to get there.  In the end, we rented a car and drove south, seven hours, dropping the car in Perpignan.  Collioure does not have rental car companies.

After an hour wait in the Perpignan train station and a twenty-minute train ride, we found ourselves, roller bags rattling behind, walking with a half dozen other travellers (all local) down a hill towards a plaza and a small port.  We were hungry, tired from the drive, and trying our best not to imagine the worst.  The evening sun was setting, turning the stone streets of Collioure the color of fresh-baked bread.  In our state, we overlooked this daily miracle.  

Melissa is not a fan of using navigational devices in small French villages, not because they rarely work while winding through the labyrinthian streets, but because she believes with religious fervor that it is possible in these unique and magical situations to find whatever we are looking for through intuition.  We eventually asked for directions to our apartment.

In an alley narrow enough for two people holding hands to touch either side, we found a Hobbit-sized wooden door wedged into a four-story stone wall with a weather-worn number “7” nailed above it.  We did not notice the art galleries lining the alley, or the tapas restaurant with two tiny tables squeezed against the sides of the alley, or the ivy and flowers hanging from the second story balconies, or the sections of the stucco and stonewalls painted lively shades of tangerine, lime, lemon and peach.  Even after nearly six months of travelling, transitions are still challenging.  We found something to eat, intentionally postponed unpacking until we had our bearings, and fell into bed in what we vaguely perceived as a small, dark apartment on a narrow, dark alley.  Melissa, being incapable of hiding her emotions, especially after our spacious, light-filled apartment in Sancerre, said, before turning over to fall asleep, “Maybe we can find some flowers to brighten up the place.”

Lying next to Melissa, I watched my reaction to her reaction to our new home.  I saw (and felt) the resentment; I heard the rising chorus of voices insisting that this was not my fault, that I had done everything to plan the best possible trip, that she was being ungrateful, that I had, maybe, possibly, screwed up.  Silenced by this cacophony of insecurity, I sensed more than heard the voice of wisdom telling me to be still, to get some sleep, to see things fresh in the morning.  I fell asleep holding lightly my discomfort.

In the morning, I woke, as I usually do, much earlier than Melissa.  We needed coffee and orange juice as well as something to eat for breakfast.  I was determined to forage for these essentials and have them in the apartment by the time Melissa got up.  Somewhat bleary-eyed (I mentioned we did not have coffee) I stumbled out of our alley and onto the main cobblestone road, which looked, in the bright light of morning, magically transformed.  A winding, graceful walkway lined with merchants: several clothing stores (including one, at which I would buy later in the week, a beret and a “man scarf”), a boucherie, a boulangerie, a store with a mouthwatering selection of gelato and an entire wall mounded with fresh baked cookies in every variety imaginable, from coconut and pistachio to chocolate-dipped shortbread.

I bought croissants and a baguette in the boulangerie from a young woman who smiled at my vain, but sincere attempts to communicate and wished me a good day when I left.  I would visit her many times in the next week and she would greet me with a knowing smile and a delightfully sincere, “Bonjour, Monsieur.”

I continued my morning walk to the end of the road and a quay where traditional wooden fishing boats (like a page out of a children’s book) were painted the colors of a box of crayons and moored to giant iron rings set in the ancient concrete.  Along the quay, a string of restaurants opened onto the water, with chairs and tables set under umbrellas. 

Across the street, the plaza had been converted, as we learned it would be every Sunday and Wednesday, into an outdoor market featuring everything from soaps and clothing to cheese, meat, seafood and fresh produce.  Amidst the sights and smells, in the warming sun and gusting breeze, one stall in particular trapped my gaze and forced me to smile at God’s perfect sense of humor.  The stall overflowed with a cascade of fresh-cut flowers.

When Melissa woke up later that morning, we had coffee, orange juice and croissants.  We had fresh-cut flowers that Melissa separated into vases and placed on the multiple floors of the apartment.  The apartment is four stories including a rooftop deck. We had a different outlook.  Our eyes were no longer clouded by fatigue-fueled emotions.

Like a kid at Christmas, I all but shoved Melissa out the door and into the intertwined alleyways. We ventured up one street and down the next before tumbling onto a rocky beach sheltered from the wind-whipped waves of the Mediterranean by a nine-hundred-year-old castle and clock tower, the soaring stone walls of which plunge directly into the inky blue waters. We discovered trails leading up the hills through the green vineyards to, of all things, a Don Quixote-like stone windmill, and farther up, a star-shaped fortress perched like a sandcastle on the highest peak overlooking the port.  The rolling hills give way at the horizon to the snow-streaked peaks of the Pyrenees.

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Collioure is the town to which artists such as Dali, Matisse and Picasso came to paint because of the unique quality of light.  Matisse remarked, “No sky in all France is as blue as Collioure.”  Because the wind blows out to sea, Collioure has few clouds. Because the Mediterranean has virtually no tides and is therefore always a deep, majestic blue that contrasts perfectly with the rolling green hills, another artist said, “Collioure has no shadows.”  

The light of a new day splashed a new coat of paint on everything.  Although potentially poetic, I do not think that statement is accurate. Beauty surrounds us daily if, as the prophet tells us, we have eyes to see.  I think this sabbatical has taught me many things, but the one I hope to carry with me is the wisdom to focus, in all situations, with the clarity of stillness, and to hold lightly the ceaseless ebb and flow of emotions.