In the North our rain is white for six months out of the year and it changes things. I put on my scarf first, gloves, hat, two jackets and headed off to see people I hadn’t seen in years. The thing I noticed most is that these people have grown up, I wonder if I have? But their bodies and facial expressions were the same. I looked at Philip’s arms, the arms that grew up with my arms. The veins, hair, complexion, fingernails, were all the same. We laughed and talked, but mostly laughed, and the moments of awkward silence were priceless. Giving an effort to remember. And this morning the white hit my windshield as I drove the familiar street to my Grandma’s house. We sat by the fire talking about my life and it was so strange and familiar. I walked through her hallway and looked at her things, looked at her beautiful towels that are probably 30 years old. When we buy things like towels we don’t think much of it, but these little material possessions will outlive my grandmother. Will I get to keep one? Will I run my hands down the designs and smell her scent? Will I cry out because there will be nothing left, but things? Home videos and I haven’t changed, really. I have always been running around craving attention, trying to make others see things the way I see them. On the road. In the country, the little white flakes peacefully and gracefully tip toe on the ground and die as it’s nourishment. Nothing is left of them, but their memory. If each of these snowflakes is really different from the others and I am the only one on this lonely road am I the only witness of their life and death? Sometimes I feel like I am the only one watching life happen, and I am the one placing it all together, orchestrating in my mind. I conducted the chorus of white glory and experienced the coughs, the chokes of crying, but not the tears. I made the face but my ducts were dry. Yesterday a friend wrote in her hand writing a letter from a book that meant something to her. And she gave it to me. I took it to my car and placed it on my seat. I read it sometime later and these were the emotions of some other man being passed on to me in my little crappy car. I looked at the letter and thought about how I already cherished it. Thought about it’s place in my box of things that I can barely look at because of how important these things are. “I really am waiting for a rebirth of wonder” I thought as I passed the road that led to the highways that lead people from this quiet area off to places of adventure. A boy I love is heading down those roads in one hour back to the charming south. The part of the country that can make me feel like my body is feverish. I do still have a fever. I do. It’s hot and holds me down into myself. Deep deep down and I hope we are all born together and die together and I hope we can all look at things and touch them and smell them and remember each other. Watch it falling, 1, 2, 3. I am the director of a beautiful song.
