Wordless Wednesday: Eye of Murre

We Are Everywhere

There's nowhere we are not.

(Click on the sailboat photo to see who is sharing the sea)

The Story of Finding Someone w/Update

A few weeks ago my older brother found some old photos. His partner scanned them and emailed them to the family. It was an interesting set of four photos, truly a snapshot of a very particular time, but there were two that really set my heart beating: one of my father when he was the age I am now; and, one of my siblings, some old friends, and me after a little hike in a southern California canyon.
Some of you have already seen this photo. I posted it on Facebook a couple of days ago. Here's what you didn't know, it's photoshopped. I took out the friends through cropping and cloning, and concentrated my attention on just on my siblings and me. Here is what it really looked like.


This pre-photoshopped image is the one that stirred us. The two women on the right were new friends we had made after our family had moved to California in 1970. It's the bearded guy on the far left, though, who tugged at our hearts. Our best high school buddy, Martin, who we had lost touch with more than three decades ago. Martin, our poetic painter brother. It was so good to see his face after all these years. Way back in 1971, he had driven across country with my twin brother Michael in the volkswagen van they named Oddfellow. He came and lived with my family in southern California for the winter. In spring of 1972, Michael, Martin, the girl in the gold shirt, and I drove up to Oregon and rented a 14 acre farm about 20 miles south of Portland. We were naive, sweet hippie dreamers planting our first garden, baking our first loaves of homemade bread. Our little house was always filled with music and dogs. We lived our vegetarian lives imagining ourselves in perfect harmony with the universe. Even if we didn't believe in heaven, it was heaven on earth for us.

Who can remember how things happen? I fell in love with someone and moved out to live with him. Michael and the girl in the gold shirt split up. Martin went back east. Our lives shifted. It was tectonic. We lost track of everyone. Life ensued. Marriages, jobs, university re-entry, divorces, and marriages and jobs again. Our high school days were more than years behind us, they were light years and galaxies away.

But somehow this photo brought it all back.

So, a few little keystrokes in the friend finder on Facebook and there comes a face that I don't even recognize as Martin. Michael says, "Oh definitely, that's Martin. Let's write him a message." And so I do. We're giddy. We can hardly wait. A few days go by. Nothing. No response. Then, it arrives. The note that confirms everything: the love, the memory, the warmth. We found Martin.

He sent us a link to his website. We took a look around and really appreciated seeing his artistry once again. This is the artwork of a man, not the teenager we knew all those years ago. He's quite an accomplished figure painter. His work takes our breath away. After being sidetracked by all of that, we stumble on these words on the site:

For updates on Martin's condition
and information on Acute Myeloid Leukemia...

WTF?

Martin is in a hospital with chemo-resistant AML. He's awaiting a bone marrow transplant. Both Michael and I have called him and talked, really talked. So, now after all these years, we wait for news and updates from his partner. Today, if all goes as planned, he'll be receiving a little laptop that my family sent for his wi-fi hospital room. It has a great webcam and a built-in link to Skype. We're hoping for a glimpse of his face in real time and an opportunity to commune once again with a very well-loved old friend. We can't wait to say hello.


UPDATE: We said hello hello hello. Tears and joy. He said, this connection is good medicine. Yes, we think so too. Oh if love can truly heal, it surely will. This is Martin with his lovely partner, Jeania skyping with us from the hospital.

On(going) Static

We have static on our phone line. So, our dsl has crapped out on us. I waited home last Tuesday for twelve hours, and ATT did not show. They can't even give us a more reasonable time frame, say morning, afternoon or evening. Nope. Somehow it is impossible for them to look at their schedule and determine if our name is first or last or somewhere in between, and make a rough estimation. That's simply too difficult a task in our 21st century lives. So, I'm posting this from a unsecured wifi connection that belongs to one of our neighbors. Hey, neighbor, thanks much.

Right now we miss the woods. This beautiful Caspian Tern lifts our spirit, but only so much. In the background not much beyond the splendid curve of those magnificent wings is a tourist town that leaves us full of longing for the things that shell necklaces and tee-shirts simply cannot fulfill. Sigh.

Supposedly on Monday between 8:00 AM and 8:00 PM the ATT wizards will come and do their magic. Do we believe that they will show? What do you think?

UPDATE: They came at 10:30 and fixed it! The problem was a bad wire that was their responsibility to repair. Woohoo. We can use our telephone and have our DSL back. Oh folks, let me tell you it's the little things in life. It's the little things.

That Dreamy Look of Love

California Dreamin'

I said to Roger the other day, "In three years, you know, you're going to be 70."

He said, "Yeah, and I'm homeless."

We laughed.

But it's true. Well, not in the tragic sense.

We have a splendid roof over our heads where we see these magnificent and silent pterodactyls from our front yard.

But we have no place that we call home. All of our stuff (we can hardly remember what most of it is anymore) is in storage. Stuff we packed more than a year ago. Stuff. And except for photos, all of it could disappear, and it wouldn't matter. How's that for a lifetime of collecting.

Here's what we miss: a garden to tend; the work on it that makes us weary to our bones; the quiet and night-time darkness of the countryside; neighbors who have been around and plan to stay; knowing which birds are local and which are the seasonal migrators; the place where the bobcat comes through the yard; the howl of the coyote; the moth at the window; the wildflower in the grasses. The familiar, and the thing that will catch our eyes.

So, our search for a home continues. Saturday and Sunday we went back to this place. Roger walked up into the redwood forested hillside to see the meadow from above. There's plenty more than this photo shows. Two more structures to my right, an acre of meadow to my left, a big old barn beyond the little building here, a creek and the private bridge that connects this land to the road. That's me there, dreamin'.

We're making an offer Tuesday morning. It's California, so nothing can be counted on. Wish us luck.

UPDATE: Roger spent the morning at the county building researching this property: what would it take to make any of these structures livable; which structures were permitted and which were not; the condition of the septic, etc. Turns out it would be outrageously expensive for us to undertake such a project. It might as well be raw land, and in that case it's way out of our price range. These four beautiful acres are on the market for $383,000.

Here are a few conversions to give you an idea of what $383,000 US dollars means:
430,745 Canadian Dollar
273,943 Euros
240,335 Pounds
488,157 Australian Dollar
415,247 Swiss Francs
18,238,792 IndianRupees
5,028,057 Mexican Peso

So, it's back to the drawing board. Still dreamin'.

San Francisco Bound

It's been a busy week. Family stuff. Real estate stuff. All that stuff of life. Today we are driving up to San Francisco to have dinner with Elena (Roger's youngest) and her partner Jimmy, and his WHOLE family, plus Roger's ex and her two wonderful children. Jimmy is graduating from San Francisco State this weekend, and Friday night's dinner is a celebration of that milestone.

Here's the cool thing about driving up to San Francisco for dinner: We get to drive up the coast. Seventy miles of beautiful country side. We'll pass Ano Nuevo where the elephant seals come to mate. We'll drive by at least three state parks. It's pretty the whole way.

When we get there, we're having dinner at Metro Katmandhu. Imagine that. A little piece of Nepal right there in the city.

Jimmy has been accepted to graduate school already. He's planning on studying to become a special education teacher. He's really quite a guy, and we're just so happy to be heading up to the city to drink a toast to his dreams.