For Evelyn

I am sitting outside as the moon sets; a huge, bright, bulbous full moon shining down on this page like a lantern from olden times.  I wonder how long it will take pen and paper to be relegated to the category of "olden times" and fulfill the prophecy of planned obsolescence.  How funny;  already before I even finished the page my pen ran out of ink!  How long since I sat alone and wrote (not on a computer) during the magical moment between dawn and morning - the time Steinbeck called "the time of the pearl."  So precious, fragile, opalescent and impossible not to revel in. 

This is one of the many things I promised myself I would never lose; we all have that list of things we will hold on to as we get older.  A way of reassuring ourselves we are not "ordinary" but marching to the beat of our own "drum" or electric guitar, or saxophone; we hear the music that no one else can.  I was young and full of life;  getting older would never foreclose on my precious mental tree house where precious nuggets of childhood were hidden away.  This was one of them:  never let the full moon go unnoticed in the sky; to not creep out at dawn and capture it in all its glory and perfection, and, finally, to hold on to the spirit of something ineffable and much bigger than myself moving through me as I felt special and truly a child of the universe.  Now, the arthritis in my hands makes it almost painful to write; I am stubborn, however, and stay outside though I want to go in. 

I never wanted to go in before and I start a mental list of all the other things I promised to never lose.  I would never leave a path in the woods unexplored.  I would never stop climbing trees. And, most importantly, I would never run to get out of the rain.  And you know what, the two latter things I keep to.  As far as the trails in the woods; the developers took care of those.  I have my dreams though.  I keep to them.  And, someday, somehow, you may even find yourself reading this.