Collected

Imagine that I could weave knowingly through faces blurred, collected

lightly touching but not committing

dancing over investments and plans and knocking things over here and there

holding on to the hem of your shirt as you walk away

is that it? are we done?

Imagine my ark of the familiars, my ushering in of the great ones, the ones that looked me in the eye

so they are within arm's reach

and would come if I called, in seconds.

See it as a house with no right angles, where I am surely supported by lattices of hands and elbows where it is not frowned upon to sip whiskey from a coffee mug

and the strung-together words tumble out too quickly for anyone to really understand, but we get it

oh, we get it, yes! of course

It is important to be fast here, so fast, to deliver the message in time

because we are slipping by so quickly, unmoored almost as soon as we arrive, the perceived urgency of purpose making us into equal and like charges.

here we are, and we are beautiful, and we are so hurried, needing, perpetually about to leave.

I have touched and hugged and, at my worst, waved

to too many of those who are about to leave.

and did we cover it all? I'm not sure, I'm never sure.

I will stand dependably and happily nearby, watching

bewildered, because it seems like in the space between two heartbeats

against the white noise formed by the shuffles of feet on wood paneling

and the muffled creaks of bodies settling onto cheap furniture

we all acknowledged that this expires, this belonging

we tacitly sold this moment to memory.

Morocco

On that cold Sunday morning, cold enough so that it felt justifiable to stay in bed past 10 o'clock, because it was soft and warm and electric underneath the blankets, the blinds drawn against the reluctant grey of the late autumn sky, I learned that the only woman I had ever really believed I would die for was going to walk out of my life the same way she had entered - like a sudden gust of wind that blows the screen door out of reach, like a strong wave that finds you tentatively wading, stronger than you were ready for, whose spray is so cold it makes you gasp.

She didn't even have to tell me, it just occurred to me there, watching her smile and cry. I was perplexed momentarily, twirling a strand of her hair around my index finger - I couldn't think of a reason she might have to be upset. Some mornings on my commute, when the heat is tuned just right on the train, when my mind can't help but sift through memories fading at the edges, I can still recall how her breath felt on my cheek, and the particular way she used to place her palm against my chest. Yes, she had those freezing cold fingertips.

“Of course,” I thought to myself then, the realization only slightly raising the speed of my heartbeat. This explained the little mysteries that dotted what I knew about her, the desperately little I knew. Why she had told me she was selling her perfectly functioning mid-2000s Honda Civic, the car she picked me up in twice, in which we made love parked along the cul-de-sac down the street from her parents' house. Why she would change the subject when I mentioned spending New Year's together. And yes, she skipped to the next song on the mix CD I made her when she recognized “Boots of Spanish Leather.”

Well. It's funny and sortof pathetic now, but yes. Of course.

The lump was building in my throat; I was beginning to feel like I would shatter at the slightest touch, watching the tears plot curves down the bridge of her nose, her fingers gentle icicles on my collarbone.

“I'm sorry, I couldn't figure out how to tell you. I'm sorry.”

“You're the only one who has ever made sense, though. Don't you see it?”

She winced. Those magnetic grey eyes, the way she would gaze at me, relaxed but intent, when we talked. Fuck, she *got it.* She was so much smarter than me, more articulate, more defiant, no trace of lethargy. She understood how profoundly sad the simple matter of life is, and at the same time, how wonderful. I had not, and still have not, felt more alive than I did during the week I had with her.

“Where?”

...

“Morocco.”

Morocco.

I am older now, and my life has built up a regularity and security that I appreciate, for the most part. I do valuable work for people, and pay the bills, and walk my dog, and vacuum my apartment once a week. I spend 36 minutes on the train on weekday mornings, and when I can't shake those eyes from my thoughts, when I remember how our bodies fit so perfectly together, I feel like a little kid again, getting yelled at. I have to shift my weight uncomfortably, and glance around, clenching and unclenching my fists. In those moments, I'm quite certain that when the doors open on my stop I'll run towards the eastern horizon, you can't see it through the skyscrapers but it's there, and I won't stop, until the city gets smaller, until the sidewalks turn to chewed up empty lots and snaking overpasses, until my lungs and arteries burst, and I know I'll ignite, and the wind will blow my ashes East, over the ocean, out, out of here. To Morocco.

NJ Transit

Human beings stand and lean and crouch and squat, arranged nearly unconsciously according to their preferences for personal space. These are clumps of tangled molecules ordered miraculously in a configuration permitting blinks, blood flow and higher brain function.

Unfaltering gazes rest on screens suspended from the ceiling of this chamber, which rumbles faintly and seems to ceaselessly bustle. Some screens are mounted on pillars. They are waiting for The Number to appear, which upon its blinking into being will indicate to where they should briskly accelerate, herding through a doorway like lambs.

Many of them are well-dressed, neatly buttoned and zipped, veritably packaged. It's likely that this happened this very morning, the packaging. It is a prerequisite for the privilege of trading in acceptable social currency. Handshakes, nods, glances, how are you, doing OK, great, that's great, that's wonderful. Start slipping in this area and you notice that your personal space expands quickly.

The people watch one screen or another, sometimes craning their necks to and fro between screens in two different places, in case one is more up-to-date than the other, in which case The Number would appear there first. All of the screens show exactly the same list, which includes the names of places that are in various ways not The City.

The people lean against railings, pillars, friends, and luggage. They sit on steps. They are multi-colored. If you were to ask, the consensus on how their day went would be some degree of Pretty Good. These watchers, gathered here together for a few minutes, have pasts and futures that spread in all directions away from now like spilled water on the floor. They have achieved this and that, have slept in strange places, have hurt badly, have managed to wake up every day so far, their veins and arteries ferrying blood circuitously day after day, as they will continue to do until reluctantly forced to stop.

There is a man in wrinkled jeans leaning on his child's stroller as he waits for The Number to appear. His gaze is tired but abiding, patient. Patience in The City usually follows fatigue and resignation rather than effort. Here, it is simply built into this particular routine, because The Number always appears if one waits for it.

A student, a girl with thick dark glasses and tights, sits on the steps and watches, out of the way, her knees and toes turned in. Today, she has consumed slightly over two-and-a-half cups of coffee, thirty-seven minutes of NPR, and the passing glances of one hundred and eleven men between the ages of 17 and 58.

An older chinese woman in a red coat with red luggage walks, looking, then pauses, then seeing the directed gazes, takes up her post. She has two grandchildren, which is plenty, she supposes.

A young man and his girlfriend stand supporting each other, her arm around his waist, his around her shoulders, watching, murmuring, but both watching.

I am watching for The Number too, having ricocheted through my own confusing series of events, which is apparently called Life Until Now. We have each pinballed here, off of failed relationships and paystubs and Things-That-Almost-Were, and we watch the screens. We are here. It occurs to me that our waiting for The Number is a shared purpose that will dissolve in as wonderfully automatic a fashion as it assembled us here, unacknowledged.

For these few minutes, we are a cult. We could join hands and exalt The Number, could sing hymns, could dance ceremonially, could hand out pamphlets. We have things in common, I know.

And then, The Number is there. An exhalation rustles through the people in the chamber, followed by the clicking of hurried footsteps, and the rhythmic tap of wheeled luggage on the tiled floor. Pockets are patted, tickets clutched, coats thrown over shoulders. And we file out of the chamber, and disperse, swept into other trajectories, our clocks more or less accurate, our eyes straight ahead.  

Banner

And a banner will unfurl atop the solemn parapets of your fortress, and eager hands will stretch it taught against the winds in which it billows, grasping for purchase, and held at such an angle that the shadows leaping forth from the setting sun, clotted red in the west, recede reluctantly, so eyes for miles straining, blinking against the settling dust of day's end, when turned toward the patch of cloth on stone, settle upon the letters emblazoned, reaching, gasping, turned out before the dusk falling on your kingdom, laid bare:

WELCOME HOME.

Zodiac trip report is up at ST:

http://www.supertopo.com/tripreport/tripreport.php?articleid=12552

Remember

Remember that this weathered face of stone has occupied its place, here, for countless years prior to your showing up to climb it.

Remember, too, that after you are dust and the wind has scattered you across the map you once had memorized and "you" are nothing more than an out-of-focus face in the dreams of your grandchildren, it is overwhelmingly likely that it will, in fact, still be here, largely unaltered.

Thus, please embrace the meaninglessness of this peculiar endeavor before you tie in.

Consider what you are about to do as optional punctuation in the story of this place, and the question of whether you will send as a vaguely unfamiliar word that isn't quite worth looking up in the dictionary.

Yes, it is interesting, maybe even exciting, that your life is routinely saved by small pieces of aluminum jammed into minuscule wrinkles in the skin of a cliff.

No, it is not interesting or exciting in the slightest to those who do not take part in this peculiar endeavor.

The rock affords you a comforting solitude if you look for it. This is rare currency, and it is accumulating compound interest. Cherish and protect it.

If you must tell your tales, use a whisper, and choose your listeners with care.

Realize that not long after you get up and off the route, even the most vivid and demanding sequences will begin to blur together, your recounting of them requiring approximation and more platitudes than you would prefer. Consider that this might not be a bad thing.

This could be because on a good line, you are too busy living to record, or associate, or doubt, or compare.

Look at your partner. See the body and soul that are tied to you with knots in a taught cord. You have both decided to do this thing, which is meaningless, thankless, and thus wonderful. You are both here. Moving slowly over the same small chunk of earth, connected. You have found no comparable bond elsewhere.

So, climb.

Feel the weight of your body. It is yours. The only one you get. Stand on a millimeter. Appreciate that good footwork approximates surgery. Yes, that is your breath. Yes, everything gets easier when you remember that. No, there are not many sounds more soothing than the gate of a clipped carabiner shutting over the rope. Here is a crack in which your stacked fingers fit numbly. Here is a rough spot for your left foot, finally.

That is your partner's voice, encouraging. He is wearing a smile that you cannot see.

And fall, too. Slip, overreach, take, tremble, flounder, flinch, botch the sequence. Abide. Here is the source of your humility. Here is a benchmark for upward progress.

Be a student of the stone. Remember that on a winter afternoon, in intermittent sunlight, in a breeze blowing from an ashen sky, you can press against this rock, your adversary, your lover, and it will be warm. It gives.