The House Of Bliss Forest

The trees are thick along the running trail through Bliss Forest. Encompassing, towering, and seemingly endless; the thicket of trees and the layers of plants and foliage blanket the forest and cage the sun through thick wooden fingers. The rangers maintain the running trail exquisitely. The path through the forest is prominent and routinely trampled. Athletes and running groups are only a fraction of the traffic on the running trail through Bliss Forest. Characters of all sorts wander the forest for reasons of exercise, tranquility, escape, and thought. I have a black and white tuxedo puppy of the Blackmouth Cur variety and I love showing her the world through the spiraling wonderland in the forest. We will be there again soon. The leaves are changing. My puppy and I will escape through the rustling of the fallen leaves and explore the Autumn colors while she smiles brightly and drinks from the cool streams. We will trot with no particular purpose and receive smiles from joggers and walkers alike, and we will march to the tune of adventure.

It is in this adventure that we will immerse ourselves in the dense dream of Autumn. The dream is surreal and centers deep in the forest, upon an old brick house with one lonely light emitting through a small window on the ground floor. The house is pushed against the woods, perhaps not more than a hundred feet from the running trail. The front of the house appears to be facing the long dead-end of a neighborhood drive. Although a part of a small subdivision, there are no neighboring houses in sight. The house along the Bliss Forest running trail has made the forest its community instead. Smoke plumes from the chimney and the solitary light in the tiny window begins to glow just before dusk. The house along the running trail has no backyard or patio of any kind. That is to say, the forest itself clings to the back door.  The neighborhood grows away from the forest. The old brick house is rooted with the trees. The roots are potted in obscurity, speculation, and oblivion.

My puppy zig-zags along the trail, incapable of staying to one side. She leaps and crouches in surprise of the bicyclists whizzing past. She runs ahead of me, occasionally looking back to make sure I am still with her, and she is lost in her own world of wonder. The forest is home to much of her imagination. She barks at the harmless rustling of hallow clumps of leaves off the beaten trail. She barks and then she smiles. There is not much she is willing to slow down for. When she does slow down, her nose twitches and dances in the air. She senses my fascination as we slow down in unison in the distant sight of the old brick house. We smell the sweet wood burning in the fireplace. We step closer, slowly, together. My fascination grows and her ears are perked and her tail is alert. There is no cause for alarm. The house is solid. The house is solitary. The house has no interest in the world beyond the forest and the trail. We are in no danger and our fascination is growing. We are alone now. We have not seen another trailblazer in over half an hour.

It is an unassuming house with no theme at all but a cozy, lonely house in its own haunted milieu. The chimney plumes and we stare. Foliage crunches around the bend of the trail and the hairs on my puppy's back stand firmly. An elderly woman in a cheerful sweater with two elderly dogs, wearing mangy sweaters of their own, trundles around the bend and my puppy relaxes her fur and wags her tail in delight. The old woman walks with a smile slowly towards us. The old woman eases in to a stop by our side and my puppy eagerly pounces in the faces of her dogs. I apologize and give a gentle tug of the leash. The old woman giggles and assures me it is okay. She asks us if we are admiring the house. I tell her we are. The friendly old dogs take a seat on the trail and my puppy sidles in next to them. The dogs smile together and catch their breath from the excitment. The old woman and I stare towards the house in silence for a few seconds.

The old woman asks if I am enjoying the fall colors. I tell her I always do. I confide in her that October is my favorite month of the year. We talk of October and Halloween. She tells me how she dresses her old dogs in ridiculous rags and eagerly waits for the trick-or-treating children. She loves to see the children taking to the streets in spooky merriment for candy. The parents trail somewhat closely in their own groups with beer and wine thermoses. I wonder if the children will be rapping on the door of the house along the Bliss Forest running trail. I wonder this aloud. The old woman tells me the children always frequent the house for Halloween. The old woman says that her house along the trail is an old-time favorite of the children. The children love to see her and her dogs in costume rags.

The only thing my mouth can say is that her home is lovely. My mind is racing with questions, but my mouth keeps it simple and polite. She does have a lovely home. The old woman must be going. Her dogs struggle to regain their footing and then they are slowly moving once again. I say my goodbyes and I take my attention off their departure for a moment and they are gone. We must be going, too. The sun is setting soon. We were lost in October. It is time to make our pilgrimage back through the forest before the beautiful fall colors disappear in darkness.

The sun sets quickly. We follow the remnants of light, scurrying back to the parking area within the entrance of the forest. The sun leaves us for the day and the headlights on my car are the only light in the forest. My puppy jumps into the passenger side of my car and I roll her window down halfway. She pops her head out with a smile and bids her own farewells to the forest she now loves. We take a slow scenic drive through the forest and out into the neighboring subdivision. We drive slowly through the neighborhood, amidst the scattered herds of trick-or-treaters. My puppy hangs a paw and her head out the window, shouting playful barks at them. The children wave and some of them even bark back at her and laugh.

We cruise through the festive suburban street, under the shines of street lamps, reaching the cul-de-sac at the end of the neighborhood. We ease in to the loop, around and pass the old woman's house in front of the forest. The old brick house welcomes an assemblage of trick-or-treaters to its secluded doors. A patch of eight large pumpkins with carved glowing faces brighten the otherwise darkened porch steps. Treats are given, laughter is shared, and tails wag under frumpy costume rags. The old woman looks up to see us passing by and she waves an excited hand. We exchange smiles and we must be going once again. There is a silly dog sweater for the purpose of Halloween waiting in our home, still in the bag with the price tag on it. There are bags of candy still needing a bowl. There is a marathon of 90's horror films and cold drinks in the fridge. Switch on all the outside lights. There is still Halloween.

We knew the house as the house of October and I wonder if the old brick house, somewhat separated from its subdivision, assumes new identities for every season and holiday. From the falling leaves, to the blankets of snow, the spring rains, and the calm summer nights, surrounded by the forest and entrenched in its own imagination; the house along the Bliss Forest running trail is a story in October, another in December, and another in April, and another in July. The house changes with the changes in the air. October was the time and moment for us. October was a wonderful time for stories and imagination. The house will provide more stories throughout the seasons to come. Explore with your dog and simply look through the trees.

Two More Fantastic Years

As of October of this current year, I will commit to my cozy home in the quiet and lesser-known outskirts of Chicago for two more years. It has already been one terrific year in our home. I was married while living in this home. More recently, my cat and my dog welcomed a new puppy in this home. I also established my first writing office in this home. Since its conception in October, 2013, my blog now has an actual office to launch from. There are portraits and memories of California on the walls. I cannot believe that in just three short years my life transformed from sunny California to a distant hideaway in peaceful suburbia. In the winter time, I like to don my thick robe and sit by a snow-crested window in the glow of my fireplace with no electronic distractions and smoke quietly, watching the flames dance as my mind wanders through the fantastic things that occurred in those three years between there and here, and I imagine the fantastic things still to come. A fantastic year indeed; a marriage, a puppy, and my first short story. And, still, two more fantastic years.

It is windy today. The blustery winds whip through the backyards of my neighborhood. There may be only a week or two left of summer and the heat. We are rapidly approaching October. The grocery stores are rolling out all of the Oktoberfest goodies. October has always been a special or significant month for me. Sometimes it has been both of those things. A week or so ago, I was reminded of an occasion from three years ago practically to the day. I found my 'starting over' point in Southern California abruptly interrupted by the disbanding of a townhouse I shared with friends in Covina. It was a beautiful, quiet, private, and spacious townhouse just off a major boulevard and across the street from a late-night In-N-Out Burger and a 24-hour donut shop. It was January of 2013 when we moved in and it was a glorious time. It was exactly what I needed on my new life path. It was a time in my life when I was starting over in every possible way and I enjoyed nine months in my Covina home. I thought for certain we were going to enjoy several years and holidays in that townhouse. It was September of that same year when the news came that my main cohort could no longer endure a fellow roommate and his tardy payments and his touchy, isolated behavior and that he was pulling out of our lease. A motion was carried to abandon our rare find of a home. I had until the end of September to find a new place to live. My cozy, sunny, happy fresh start was coming to an end. I was panicked and devastated. I found no enjoyment in September. October was coming and I was miserable.

When the day came, it was actually a week or two before the end of September. I will never forget standing in the middle of the empty living room with my small amass of furniture and personal belongings — a lost, yet determined feeling. My now-former roommate and I loaded his pickup truck and he gave me a ride across town to my new abode. He helped me get my writing chair down off the back of the truck, bitched about his bills and made other negative, depressing statements and then he drove away. I haven't seen him or heard his voice since. I took lodging with a man four years my senior and he was able to put my emptiness into perspective. He was a failing alcoholic who consistently shut out his closest friends and neighbors. Both of his parents were dead and his wife had left him for another man. She had the kids. His only companion seemed to be his on-and-off toxic girlfriend who spent most of her time at the house nagging him, complaining, arguing loudly, and stealing money from his wallet when he would pass out. Sometimes she would disappear for weeks on end and he would be on a tumultuous bender, swearing her off for good until her inevitable return. My new landlord was quite friendly to me and he completely left me to my own devices. There would be the occasional smoke on the front porch together, but for the most part I kept to myself in my small room. My small room was attached to the side of the garage and had no heat. The washer and dryer were in the garage, along with the ruins of a once-great era. There was what used to be a fairly impressive bar in the garage. It was once the local watering hole for the neighbors on our street, complete with oak wood bar, neon signs, bar stools, tables and chairs with ashtrays, and a dartboard. It was hard to imagine the possibility of allowing something like that to run down. It was easy to picture all the friendly, neighborly good times had in that garage all those summers ago. The garage was a disaster. Broken items, dead leaves, debris, and old clothes everywhere. All of the bottles were empty and strewn, the neon signs faded and decayed, the keg taps clogged with mildew, and the tap handles chipped and worn. The bar was covered in layers of dust, cobwebs, and faded memories. Every time I did laundry in there I thought about those classic summers, how nice they would be now, and how I would not be very likely to see them repeated. My room had a twin bed, my writing chair, destroyed carpet, and the room came with a corner TV stand that was desperately supporting a large, heavy, boxy television from the early 90's. It worked beautifully and I had four or five channels to watch on it. There I was, one block away from old-town Covina and a short bus ride from busier West Covina, and I was more intrigued and anxiously excited than I had been living nine months in my former townhouse. October was coming and things were getting interesting.

Settled in, location observed, and routines established, I was one week away from the start of October and an old friend convinced me to start a blog, in order to shake out some short stories while I ponder the birth of a novel. I launched my blog on October first, after returning from a brief stay in Santa Barbara. October was coming and I was excited. I was much more lively during that time than I thought was possible. I was exploring my city more. I traipsed the bustling boulevard of old-town nearly every night. I was dining about town more. I had a regular seat at the old folks patio table at Starbucks. I was writing more. I was reconnecting with an old love. I was establishing the kind of fresh start I wanted in the first place. Everything was brand-new and strangely better. I was in awe of the situation. As the fall season rolled on and the holidays approached, my blog continued to publish stories I had no idea were there, and I finally put together the idea for a small novel — the very novel that is in completion stages today. Sometimes I actually miss those witching-hour writing sessions in that small room, relaxed in my soft writing chair with a comforter wrapped around me for warmth, watching Alfred Hitchcock Presents on the clunky television, writing letters, and writing my stories. It was in that interruption that I discovered the journey was longer than expected. The end of the road was not the arrival at some swanky townhouse on the fringes of contentment. I was discovering new things about myself. I was discovering what mattered and what did not matter anymore. There was still the same sunshine in the same California in the new circumstances, and the day eventually came when it was discovered that the journey still had a few thousand miles left on it. I remember telling my new roommate and strange friend that I would have to be moving on. He looked defeated and dead in the eyes, he smelled of stale screwdrivers and cigarettes, and he did not say much after telling me that he understood. I didn't know if it was the booze, or if he was going to miss the small amount of cash I gave him every month, or if he was just broken from another person leaving him. It was hard to watch in any case. I mailed the old boy a postcard from Nashville on my way to Chicago, the gist of it being the best of wishes for him and his happiness. I never heard anything. A year in Chicago, I tried to fill a lazy Tuesday afternoon in the office with a phone call to him and see how he was doing. The slurred voice of an afternoon drinking buddy answered his phone and told him who I was. I could hear his drunk voice in the background. It was barely one o'clock Pacific time. The old boy took his phone and hung up on me. I haven't heard from him since.

October is coming and I am ecstatic. I have a lot of time at home in October. I have a lot of events in October. I am pulling all the stops for Halloween weekend. I am going to bask in the anniversary of my blog and the next stages of my novel. I am going to look joyfully ahead towards the next two years. The wife and I are still due for a honeymoon. I hope the new puppy doesn't get too big too fast. I enjoy reminiscing, but I will never look back. Letting go in the wind, I was carried on a journey ripe with new beginnings and unforeseen possibilities. I never imagined it this way. My whole world was interrupted three years ago and it has been absolutely wonderful. Frightening at times, yes, but not without love, assurance, vision, and accomplishment. There is still a ways to go yet. Pull down the hoodies, stock up on the pumpkins, polish off the fire pit, put the apple cider on the stove, and take in every ounce of the Autumn scenery. I can already smell wood burning in the wind. October is here and here is to two more fantastic years.

Le main du hiver

The winter is over. An end to the frightful and constant reminders of death. This place, in the gray and in the cold, is not my home. It will be my home soon enough. For most of the year, this place is my home and my happiness is in the blue and the orange, the warmth and the eventual Autumn colors. When the tinsel fades after New Year's, the hand of winter takes hold with a grim, icy chill. The dooming sadness ripples with the goosebumps and an irrational panic tells me that there is no escape from the death that surrounds me, and that soon it will be me. Flecks of lights sprinkled among the homes buried in the frost, holding against the wind, signal that I am not all that remains in the dismal season, but it is hopeless. It will soon be them, too. I had hoped to record my accounts during the sub-zero gloom, but it, too, was hopeless. There is only layers of clothing, fear for the outside, and a shaking panic for the inside. Speechless and terrified. There is nothing and this place is not my home. The hand of winter grips tighter.

Autumn is the final hoorah. The summer slows down -- and what a summer it was. Autumn brings relief from the heat and the endless nights. The colors and festivals are spectacular. The cold is inching in. There is a festive moment in the arrival of the cold, bracing for the darkness to come. The cold is decorated with colorful lights, music, and cheerful spirits, and the snow and the frost has a celebratory purpose. But soon, the bottles are empty, the presents are opened, the New Year ball drops, the neighbors go home, and the merriment burns out. The city rips off the lights that bore joy, leaving only what still clings to the houses. The once festive lights are buried in the rubble of the blizzards. The logs burn in the fire, but they can only burn for so long. Huddled with remaining hope by the fire, burning Netflix seasons with the logs. They, too, can only last so long. It is the only thing that helps. Distract. Don't look outside. Remember palm trees and blue skies. It is hopeless. The wind is the terrifying howls of a psychiatric ward hallway, unnerving, maddening, disturbing. You are not going anywhere. Trapped with the panic and the madness. The gloom consumes the sky and the frost consumes the home, and the howls consume the sanity. Panic and fear. Try to hold on.

The room is getting smaller. The horizon is stretching farther. The isolation is different this time around. No one can hear me. No one knows I am here. The days are too short for anyone to look and no one can. The gloom has consumed the others. I want to come out of this. I wait to see if the others will come out of this. No one comes out for days, even weeks. The sun is fleeting and time is scarce. The hand of winter grips tighter and I cannot breathe. I am changing in the darkness and I am scared. I fight to keep my eyes open under the blanket of cold. I fight for the fear of never opening my eyes again. I want to feel the sun again. I want to go home. You can only laugh to yourself for so long. The fire dwindles and my eyes are heavy. My eyes close and I remember sunsets over mountains....

I slept. I was never so tired from sleeping so much. I cannot recall the months of routines I sleepwalked through. During the calm, I made efforts to emerge. The images were despairing. The howling was more maddening when it touched you, bit you. The frozen catacombs lining my street. I wanted the others to emerge. I could not go looking for them. I knew better to stay close. The sky spoke of more to come. It was then that I knew why no one looked for me. The sun visits briefly, wounded, and there is still more to come. Inside the dusty mausoleum, I wait for more to come. Throw more into the fire. Do you wish to continue watching? Click yes. Wait for the relaxation to dissolve in the water. Soon it starts all over again. The cycle of madness renews and, one night, I dared to open the upstairs curtains in the master bedroom, pacing the floor in my strangling panic, watching a couple of bunnies scramble in the flurries. The flurries were swirling and a complete white-out engulfed the community. The bunnies scrambled as I paced. They were as lost as I. I hoped we would see each other again in the spring. I always feed the birds and bunnies in the spring. I just wanted to make it there. It lasts forever here. It is frightening and it is depressing and it is draining. I just want to go home. This place is not my home. I am scared and I am tired. Here it comes again. I will not make it. A day will come if I do make it. Everything falls apart. The walls are crumbling and the appliances are dying and I did the best I could....

A day came when it was not-so-suddenly over. The worst was over, gradually, but an apprehension still hung in the air. The hand of winter still dangled in the clouds, rolling its fingers slowly. The birds and the bunnies were as reluctant as I. I wanted to untie the patio furniture and live again. I wanted to lay out the feed and I wanted my life back. I wanted California. The dangers of the west were nothing compared to the isolated fear I experienced here. Cold gloomy days turned into gloomy rainy days. Gloomy rainy days produced patches of sun. Patches of sun showed days of warmth with chances of showers. Sometimes the showers never showed and the bunnies and the birds showed instead. I saw the bunnies. They made it. I made it. They stayed with me. There will be light again. I do not want to do it again. I cannot do it again. I will have to do it again. I am strong. The hand of winter is strong. I will have to be ready. I will live in the short months of sunshine and laughter. It will be my home again. The hand of winter rests before snatching my home again. The hand of winter rests and waits. The hand of winter is silent and crippling. The hand of winter is real.

The Royal

It was mid-morning on a Thursday. The faceless meteorologist on my phone promised me that the past thirty-six hours of rain and gloom would come to an end, that it would be a nice sunny day. A nice day for strolling downtown. There was a cop parked in front of my building when I stepped out into the parking lot. I took the time to be nosey and it was clear by his annoyed facial expression that he could care less what anyone was doing. He simply did not want anyone to find him. I thought that was just fine. Nobody ever enjoys talking to them anyway. I pushed my car out of my neighborhood and crawled to a red light. I sat at the light with the windows down, staring off into the direction of my approaching left turn, and I wished that I was wearing something warmer than a thin hoodie. It was cold, it was windy, it was gray, and the gloom berated me with threats of more wetness. I moodily decided to stop checking the weather all together. It appeared that no one was getting it right.

I was melancholy, spared only by the excitement of a rare task I set for myself. The idea was to be the man with nothing to do and peruse the antique shops of downtown. The drive into downtown was a slow-paced and dreary one. I slopped through wet streets, smoking a cigarette, listening to the radio and driving a few numbers below the speed limit. Only a couple of motorists wanted to ride with me. I wanted to park my car and walk the sidewalks of the shops and restaurants in a dippy, lackadaisical manner that drives busy people crazy. I wanted to meet antiquaries selling vintage typewriters. I sure found one. The only one in town.

Husband and wife shop-owners living in the city over twenty years, selling rare and campy antiques even longer. The single-story shop sat on a busy two-lane intersection in the thick of downtown. The bar-stool-bound wife sat behind a small, square glass counter that was shelved with small jewelry. She greeted me with genuine cheer when I eased myself through the doorway fog of old, stuffy well-to-do ladies with too much money and not much of anything else. My inquiry was clearly a welcomed shakeup for the wife, and she hollered across the shop to her husband who was arranging beer steins in the sidewalk window. The husband was a well but slow-moving, thoughtful man of golden years. He was in no hurry to make my business final. He could afford to give me the once-over. It appeared everyone wanted his treasures.

He was curious about what I wanted, then interested in why I wanted it at all. I told him that I was looking for a vintage typewriter so I could write. There was to be nothing ornamental about it. The husband heaved a gesturing arm over his shoulder as he walked away from me, and we trundled through a busy adjoining room with racks of vintage clothing and accessories, and past a small nook of book shelves with stacks of dusty books with no jackets. At the end of the hall he took me into the last remaining room on the left. The room was a hodgepodge of every department in the store and there was only one other occupant, a nervous and confused middle-aged woman who was more than happy to let me take her place in there. There was not room for many in the room, and I supposed she felt I would have better luck in there finding a memory than she had.

On the floor, in the corner, with more than one sticky-note forbidding you to touch it, was a Royal typewriter. A Royal typewriter from the 1920's in stunning condition. What Paul Sheldon knew to be misery, an ancient typewriter in complete originality, functioning on mere paper and modern ink ribbons. It smells like bookstores and there is a careful craftsmanship to telling a story with it. I lugged the heavy steel up to my apartment and arranged it on the desk in the bedroom. The desk hangs on a generous window, overseeing a quiet piece of nature hidden away in the city. I wanted the Royal so I could practice more care in what I am saying. The words and letters freeze in the meticulous snapping of the cold metal keys. There is something so wonderfully tangible in the permanence of the pages.

The Royal offers expression without batteries, electric cords and wifi. There is only reverie with a view. The view is cloudy and wet with a guarantee of gloom. It never got any better outside. It is 102-degrees in Casablanca this afternoon. It is also six hours ahead into the evening there. Casablanca is an old-fashioned notion for an old-fashioned hobby. The Royal cements to its window like a tree stump and I will sit in the local color, and absorb the tone of the day. I wanted to write someone a letter. With each careful clack of metal, I slowly built the walls around me.

Anniversary

One year, three residences and a non-stop mixture of business and pleasure throughout Santa Barbara, Chicago, San Francisco, The Pacific Coast Highway, Ventura Beach and Nashville. The first chapter of an exciting new story quietly trails off, satisfying the need for wonderment in any good story, turning the page once again to Chicago — where the next year is born. 

Barreling through an entire year, stopping for nothing, satisfying a reckless gusto in an ever-changing setting where the calendar pages mirror the cluttered sheets of any entertainment magazine. A vivid parade of 365 consecutive days with only short-term, chaotic adventures throughout gives measure to the motivational jargon we read all the time — those gleeful pins that prompt us to live each and every day of our lives in absolute wingding.

Emphasis on a literal calendar year was crucial to the survival of the time. Moving every day together, sliding the days into the next with absolute purpose constructed a boxcar adventure that was crucial to the plot, and the significance of marking a calendar year served as the perfect framing device for such a story. When measured, and performed with tailored style, the significance of 365 days between two marks of time is powerful enough to lead your life into a completely foreign and unexpected world. A world worthy of starting a whole new chapter for.

That particular year introduced me to a growing counter-culture of thirty-somethings starting brand-new lives for themselves in brand-new worlds. Over the course of that year and across the country, it became commonplace to meet young, thirty-something guys and gals fresh in the beginning stages of their new-era lives. Sometimes, you meet the people who made major decisions at early stages in their lives; and other times, you meet people like me, people who had not made any decisions at all. Regardless of direction in the fork, any direction leading to this particular time period is drawing people of my age range to explore reinvention. It seems, in some degrees, the theory of "Thirty Is Twenty" is practiced in the reasoning that life can begin again in your thirties. If you are by far from being old, you are still pretty young, assuming. Excitability and passion are still hot enough to warm desire for anything new and imagined. Staying a course through the shaky unknown with courageous anxiety is the only way to give fate and new opportunities a fighting chance at all. For an entire year, I anxiously sifted socially, professionally, creatively, and unassumingly in my own participation of the wayward thirty. I was taking a chance at starting over again and I watched many others my age do the same. The movement did not seem to discriminate. I shared this social happening with single people, relationship people and parent people. This genre exists in our culture today and the common thread is merely an age demographic. Terrified participants take something monumental from it all. I learned that it is okay to want everything different. Initially, when I started this blog and set my sails to sea, the only thing I knew for certain was that by the time October came around again everything was going to be different. Nothing was going to be the way it was ever again and that was the only thing I was asking for. Excitable terror has permeated my life and now it is quietly slowing down, entering another October, ending that momentous first chapter of recalibration on the soggy banks of a gentle duck pond in the crisp autumn of the midwest. The next chapter calls for more settled stability, however, the stories for the coming seasons are the challenges that must keep the reader guessing and holding tight with fascination.

The new setting reveals a particular stillness. A stillness from the ponds and wildlife that reflects a permanence in the coming pages, where the characters and story plots grow on a scanty stage. The suspense and the uncertainty never staggers when re-sketching the bundle of blank pages that came with everything you asked for. The crisp air returns to where it was a year ago, this time autumn casts a grander spell, illuminating the shanty stage with the appropriate edge to delight just as well as any Second City scaffold. October will always mean something when it whispers with the leaves every year. The wingding carries on in the settled furnishings. The satirical euphemisms about it all are helpful in the processing of new beginnings. Believing that what you are doing is apart of some delirious adventure entices those dreamers and their dreams to live for the world to see. After all, the quaintest of settings tell surprising stories.

The sun is setting. The waters calm and the unruffled fowl nest before their reticent night swim. I join the mallards in nesting, actualizing the steadiness in the new, quiet ambience. Heavy rain and thunderstorms are predicted to oversee the twilight and follow midnight into the one-year anniversary. I sit in a recliner by the open french doors of the balcony. My mind is dizzy with relief and memories. I closed my eyes to remember more clearly. Nothing moved at all. I slept through the night.

The Barista They Loved

 The early sunrise of Wednesday morning in Chicago was muggy. It rained heavily overnight and the expected high temperatures of the day spread humidity and mist throughout the historic district of a small town long outside the city that you have never heard of. There were no parking spaces in the all-day parking for the main street shopping, and the three-hour parking was supposed to be plenty of time. It was not.

A bundle of letters is what all the fuss was about. A bundle of letters inked with last-minute desperation by the hand of todays typical fool was in my care, and they were returned to the sender because no one knew what to do with them. Neither rain nor snow, nor sleet nor dark of night shall stay these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds, but the vanishing of those who clearly do not care to be found are somewhat beyond their means.

A small bundle of letters sent to recapture, only to return with shattered hope smeared over the stamps. I was asked to take those letters to the one and only place left where hope could possibly be salvaged. I did not ask why my services were necessary -- the reasons for a go-between are always painfully obvious when letters are involved.

I lazily parked my car where convenient after I patiently searched the parking lot looking for better. I finished a cigarette and a song on the radio while gently drumming my fingers on the envelopes bound by a thick produce rubber band. I locked up the car for no practical reason and my destination was a coffee shop on the corner of the district. I felt uneasy about my parcel but they gave me a sense of importance for being in an unfamiliar setting. The uneasiness always come with a job entrenched in romantic motives. Sometimes the mark will open up to you with tears and accept you as free therapy, often times they chase you with a tire iron as though you were the very extension of their former love.

I stood in line with moody suburbanites and ordered my coffee with more courtesy than my predecessors. I moseyed towards the end of the bar and chose smiling over speaking. I smiled when anyone behind the counter looked at me because I felt they could use it.

I released my anticipation through soft drumming on the bar counter. I wanted to talk about the girl who worked there -- the girl I had a bundle of letters for. During that brief moment where people with important places to go wait for their drinks, I leaned on the end of the pickup bar looking at name tags for the name of the girl I came to see. No luck. My latte was presented by a young girl with drooping glasses and a sloppy apron. I asked questions about a particular young woman and I got my answers in the look on her face. The barista I came to see was no longer there. There was an avoidance of sadness in the way she spoke of her, but I have spoken with too many sad people in my life not to notice it. I turned to leave, tapping my parcel on the bar and nodding my head with a silly twist of my mouth.

It was a beautiful day all of a sudden and the coffee was actually good. I smoked a cigarette on the sidewalk outside of the shop, staring at nothing and absorbing the news. People nonchalantly walked around me without grunts or a glance. Probably a million out-of-luck private guys stood in that district smoking cigarettes in the middle of sidewalks all the time. I remembered that I was still holding the letters.

The morning rush of townies going to work passed and I went back inside and sat at a high-top table against the sprawling windows that made walls of the north side of the shop. I sipped, I stared, I thought, I wondered, I declined every incoming call and ignored every text on my phone. The young girl with the drooping glasses from earlier was making the usual sweep of the empty floor, wiping tables, changing creamers, stocking sugars, daydreaming unto herself until she finally slowed down and she approached me the way one approaches another with something in common. She pretended to sweep around me while asking me how I liked the coffee and how I knew the girl I came to see. I told her I did not know her, rather I had something that belonged to her -- tapping the letters on the table. She looked at them with a curious expression and after an awkward start she began to tell me about the coffee shop closing its doors for good, and about the barista everyone loved who apparently did not want to stay for the closing. She told me the barista had been sad for quite some time and that the closing of that very shop was the final cue to get her life moving again somewhere else. Perhaps somewhere far away.

The silly young girl leaned on her upright broom, twisting the bristles into the tile, and the more she spoke of the ghost of the kind and vibrant barista, the more her eyes drifted from mine -- slowly floating towards the window walls and losing focus beyond the shops and apartments, as though looking for her former companion where ever she was.

She reminisced with a growing smile how the cafe's favorite girl was never on time, how she would fashionably burst through the door with trails of snow and wind, towing behind her excitement for the day, and how her vivacious stomping between the tables and through packs of customers would instantly flip a switch on the ambiance. She brought something new with her everyday; something unique and indefinable that was not on any of the menus, and the young girl knew she was the reason foot traffic doubled and that the personality of the characterless shop transformed overnight when the barista she loved came from nowhere to nest in their shop. The silly girl met my gaze again and confided in me with wet eyes behind those drooping large glasses that she wished she would have told her all those things herself when she had the chance. I knew that she knew that the chance to do so was one never to present itself again. I just smiled with sympathetic eyes and kept my mouth shut.

The cafe doors opened with a dinging sound and the silly young girl excused herself to return to her register and the drip coffees behind the counter. I told her it was nice talking to her and I sat still, sipping my coffee and wanting a cigarette.

The dinging of the doors introduced a pre-lunch crowd of business men, soccer moms, a petite old woman, and a couple of twenty-somethings wearing the polo shirts of the local mom and pop businesses in the district. One husky gentleman in particular joined the climax of the rush during the rise and fall of the steam wands and the banging out of dead espresso from the portafilters. He was slightly sweaty and dressed in yuppie casual, and he had a worn, large hardcover book in one of his fat hands wearing a wedding ring that was barely holding together. He stood in line with a smile and cordially placed his order with the silly young girl, and proudly displayed the book in his hand while he looked around behind the counter. No doubt he was looking for her. The smile dissolved from his face as he listened to the silly young girl tell him that his worn-out book would not take a passage of borrowing today.

He accepted his coffee and fumbled his goodbye, and he staggered through the aisle with an expression and movements as though he was suddenly lost in some uncharted jungle and the hope of being rescued left him long ago. He trundled outside and situated himself into a chair with all the ease of parking a school bus into a compact parking space. He took a package of cigarettes from his breast pocket and smoked in mourning, and I grabbed the letters and followed him outside. I put a cigarette in my mouth and I asked him for a light. He obliged and the ice was broken. I apologized for my eavesdropping and told him that I was looking for a particular girl and that I had something for her, indicating the letters. He deliberately told me the same thing I told him, indicating his book. He apologized for himself and invited me to sit down. It was worth a chance asking where to find her but a chance is all it was worth. No one had a clue where she might have gone, but no one that day was short of amazing things to speak of her. The husky gentleman told me that men were drawn to her and so were their wives. She captivated a busy and bustling audience with a sophisticated beauty backed-up by an intellectual and humorous mind. She made the lonely feel loved and she was simply adored for her endearing character. He started to say something else about her, but stopped suddenly. He decided he had nothing more to say.

He excused himself, taking his book, and I thanked him for his time and his memories. I watched him walk the sidewalk with his head down and I felt sorry for him. I knew he and his wife would continue to frequent the shop simply out of routine until the day it closed, and that they would sit in silence of each other and nothing more would be shared at the old oak tables inside. I wondered what they would do with all the tables when they closed the shop. I lit another cigarette but I did not like the taste of it. I put it out after the first drag and took my letters back inside. It was time to leave. There was nothing more to do there except learn what happens when the sun stops shining in small towns.

Her charm and her rare personality were the coals burning in the heart of the shop, warming the customers in winter, lighting the bulbs in the morning and steaming the milks every afternoon. Her eloquence practically demanded a cover-charge at the door, but she never would have allowed that. She was a lighthouse for anyone in the drab small town that eventually broke her heart when they decided to close the doors to her sanctuary. She will take her broken heart and mend it somewhere far away -- somewhere that will take better care of what they have.

At the slowest and lowest point of my day, I had a brief and quietly unassuming conversation with a petite and spirited old woman who clearly lived the decadence of her generation. San Francisco in the 1960s was her own era of wander and hopeless romanticizing. She told me how that pretty and exciting girl returned to her the ability to remember what it was like to live boundless of the world. The old woman saw in the barista she loved everything required for an incalculable life while there is still time.

She had always wished in silence that one day all of this would happen -- that one day the barista would go far away to a bigger world, much bigger than the disappointing one that would never be big enough for her.

The old woman wished often, but was still unprepared for the collision of elation and loneliness that is wrestling in her twilight years.

I asked for a refill and the silly young girl was happy to accommodate. She removed her apron and tossed it into a heap of towels in a corner and told me her shift was done for the day. I told her I would walk her outside.

We walked to the door without conversation or meaning and she stopped in the doorway to show me an employee group photo on the community bulletin board by the door. It was an eight-by-ten black and white photo at a picnic in a park. The elusive barista was on the far left but she may as well have been the only one in the picture. Her grace was captured so beautifully and colorfully -- even in black and white. I stared and reenacted the stories of the day in my head with her image until the silly young girl cleared her throat and reality took me out the door.

Her car was across from mine only she had acquired better and longer parking. I walked her to the driver's side door and thanked her. She started to get in and I turned to leave only to be called back to her. She stood with one leg in the car and told me that she had been thinking all day. She said that she had a pretty good idea about those letters and she asked me to do a good thing and let her friend go on without them. I just nodded my head, said nothing and walked to my car. It was my turn to walk with my head down.

I had not found the girl I came to see and I had not delivered my parcel. Someone else managed to make a delivery of their own. I had a parking ticket on my windshield.

I was the best Sunday driver there ever was as I drove slowly down the retail boulevards and the side streets of historic homes. I was surprised to learn later that the only thing standing between myself and a nice Victorian home in that part of town is half of a million dollars. I did not have half of a million dollars. What I had was half a million words in assorted envelopes that I had no idea what to do with.

I did not know what to do with those letters. No one seemed to want them. That silly young girl seemed to think that they should be forgotten. She seemed to think that I was lugging around a lot of heartache when hearts were doing just fine. I was starting to agree with her. I felt that the door had closed on those letters and no one had any business trying to pry open a window. I also knew that it would haunt me for my lifetime if I did not look for myself at what no one else wanted to look at. I stopped for lunch at an old-fashioned carhop and in the privacy of my car I opened the first letter.

The handwriting and condition of the paper were evidence of frantic desperation. The paper was carried everywhere, you could tell. It collected days of hand sweat and travel because I genuinely believe it took him that much time to express what he was unable to say. For what I can only assume to be a hellish forty-eight hours, in his pocket and in his car he carried a dwindling rescue fire. I wondered why he had such a hard time saying anything at all.

I only got halfway through the first letter and that was enough for me. It was a hodgepodge of the kind of regrets that no one should ever have. I could not find a reason to feel sorry for him, or perhaps I just did not want to. Perhaps I wanted to extinguish any reasoning that would cast doubt on my judgement of him. I wanted to believe that the door was closed and he simply had not been careful enough. I wanted to believe that the silly young girl I spent my morning with was right. I ripped them up and threw them away in a public trash bin on the corner of a busy intersection where I smoked and lied. I told him that I found her with less than ten hours before she was leaving town for good. I told him that she accepted the parcel politely and without emotion, and casually walked back into her world without a word. I told him that was the last I saw of her.

He visibly died inside and that was the last I ever saw of him.

The last I saw of her was in the winter of that year. I found her long before, though, and was just waiting for any reason to be in the Pacific Northwest. Finally, I found one. Perhaps I had to find one or it would always itch around the office. Scratching hard enough took me all the way to Portland, Oregon.

She was in a coffee shop on Powell. I assumed she had a small and charming apartment above the many shops along the boulevards. An apartment decorated in cozy eclectic, beautifully chaotic with scattered pieces of a busy and exciting life. Maybe I wanted to believe it that way. The cafe was bustling and the scene was unlike anything she left behind. I stood in line with hipsters and squares, and I observed a powerful and beautiful presence that was the stuff of urban legend two-thousand miles away -- and very much worthy of it. I ordered a single drip coffee with all the nonchalant, casual civility there is. I answered her random questions politely -- occasionally with a chuckle -- and I smiled whenever she smiled. I did not force any unnecessary conversation, I just smiled like a stammering simpleton and let her hypnotize me. I thanked her and threw a fifty-dollar bill in her jar when she looked away, then I carefully shuffled outside into the rain. She was absolutely alluring. Her unique, violet eyes seared a look into me that lasted long after my return. Her heart was happy and her presence was bursting with her excited vibrance that spellbound her customers as well as her community. I am not sure I would have been able to see her any other way than the way I did. I needed to know that what I did not do was okay. From the sidewalk, I glanced again at the woman in the window and I knew that she was never going to look back.

Going to her is still one of the craziest things I had ever done in my life, but I had to. None of it was ever going to go away. I would always wonder what gave me the right to do what I did. I was convinced in my own judicious way that she never needed to know about a world and its inhabitants that would never be any good for her. Being in her colorful and vivid presence was everything I needed to peacefully let go of the whole affair. She was glowing again, and all I had to do to help was go away.

I went away and I never involved myself in anything like that ever again. My task hung me among the ranks of those who can never again get close to the barista they loved. I never had a door or a window of my own, and my own sordid business guaranteed I never will. Sometimes, on bad rainy nights when I am alone in the office above the boulevard, I lean out of the open window, stare blankly at the city and think about that with brooding liquor breath. Everyone loved her when it was too late.

Everyone loved her, and she loved just enough of herself even more.

Personal Settings: Location

It is cold today. It is a thirty-four-degree difference from the beautiful and current climate of Southern California. There is a windy cold-snap that is unusual for the area at this time of year and the bright sunshine is deceiving. My new location is Nashville and my reasons for this relocation are personal and many. I felt that the creation of a bubble for stories and art was essential to maintaining my wits outside of my familiar geography. I find that my new private work space in the middle of nowhere serves its purpose, but the lure of the open road and of places unknown is too difficult to ignore. I went for a drive outside of my private bubble with no clue where I was or where I was going. The short cruise to anywhere rapidly evolved into a full-blown tour of the Midwest. Over six-hundred miles of unfamiliarity, and a blending scenery that left me with bland visitor centers off of poorly maintained two-lane highways along with my own rapid thoughts.

My thoughts began to wander back to California, and whether or not I was going to be able to accept the surroundings outside of my new bubble. I chose the perfect time to relocate; spring and summer are both in the works. As a Californian, it appears that I need constant sunshine and crowded noise to function. Spring and summer are preparing to deliver in Dixie, but eventually the leaves will fall and the miles of untouched nature will die in the transformation from cheerful warmth to a cold, gray melancholy.

Location is the primary objective for anyone in real estate. With stories of mystery in mind, a looming mystery of individual location lurks in the background.

Leaving my bubble vacant for a moment, the open road leads to a reconnection with family, and a personal exploration of what it truly means to pursue new goals in a brand-new environment with absolutely no one around -- at least not anyone familiar. My thoughts and emotions regarding location and the comfortability within, and its possible importance to the individual spirit, become increasingly erratic. I can only keep driving -- pushing further away from the new location while calling it a holiday. The return came after an eventual 1,296 miles in a circle around the Midwest. The cold snap was gone, post cards were stamped, everything was exactly as I left it except for an unexplainable sense of urgency in the air that was not there before -- a need to make a tangible point of the sudden up-rooting.

It is so quiet and very tranquil in the peaceful town twenty minutes outside of Nashville. Community activity moves a little slower, the birds make commotion at normal hours and I am always taken aback by the random salutations of the friendly people who share my community. Southern charm, they call it. There are rolling hills, highways through mountains and large lakes with bathing suits and boating, but it is just not the same. I keep telling myself that the point is for it not to be the same. I remind myself that it was I who decided it necessary to move closer to loved ones and to complete my anticipated works in a reclusive Hemingway fashion. Location is more than the little blue dot on the map in your phone. Location appears to be something internal, something personal beyond literal maps. The little blue dot only informs you of where you are, not where you are going. Location is a state of mind, content in the standing and looking towards the horizon.

The sun sets west -- everyone knows that -- and I stare in that direction long after the sun sets. I suppose it is because I know that it will still be two long hours before anyone on the coast has the view that I just had.

I sought new possibilities and personal opportunities in a new location, and I still could not help wandering. My feet are planted firmly in a foreign land but the location of my mind migrates slowly, following the sun westward. My location settings are located and locked, and the little blue dot is not going anywhere. An introductory time period in this new location will reveal whether or not my mind will settle with my feet, or continue to follow the sun. My current location will remain somewhat the same, consistently making small and normal changes all by itself. What then?

I understand that the question of "what then?" will come in time with experience after the fact. What I find most troubling is the anguish that comes with trying to answer the question, "What Now?"