Looking For The Long Ride

Is it any wonder why us bloggers sometimes go weeks between posts and then seem to hit a mother load of thoughtful stuff to ruminate about. Then it is hard to keep ones fingers off the keyboard and those “can’t sleep through the night” moments seem less painful and more useful than not.

It is 3 am and I am thinking about the word “passion”. I often think about words and am fascinated by their power to define an emotion, feeling or state of being. One of my favorite writers, the apostle Paul, wrote in 2 Corinthians that “…we have this treasure in earthen vessels” in part describing his personal knowledge of the power of the indwelling Christ.

From what I have read of Paul, I can say without hesitation that he was a “passionate” man. By this I mean that he was powerfully compelled to follow Christ to his eventual death during the reign of the Roman emperor Nero.

When I thought about the word passion this morning and how that word relates to my life, I was reminded of a book i was given by a friend several years ago. Even though I never finished the book, Marcia Sinetar’s, “Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow” the concept of it was quite compelling. In a nutshell, she postulated that if a person followed their bliss (i might be extrapolating this with another book as well) they would eventually be rewarded with monetary success.

At that point I had to wonder how many of us are really following our bliss or what we are passionate about. How many of us are actually in jobs that we can’t wait to get to in the morning—that the time seems to fly—and before we know it, it is time to go home and eat dinner.

Passion is partially defined as: 1 – any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling, as love or hate or 2 – a strong or extravagant fondness, enthusiasm, or desire for anything: a passion for music—the origin of which is 1125-75 Middle English and related to Christ’s sufferings on the cross.

It is a complex word that has a long history and is not used as much in the cerebral sense as it is the sexual side of things.

When I think of a passionate person I envision one who is strongly motivated and has a good sense of where he or she is going in life. Along with this, a passionate person knows why he or she is on this earth and this knowledge has for them, become an anchor for their soul. They are following a path that is sometimes well defined—sometimes not—and that excites and motivates them through the daily trials ad tribulations of life in general.

And herein, for me, lies the question and contradiction of this word as it pertains to me in general. I like writing, but in and of itself, the act of putting words to paper or cyberspace, doesn’t fulfill me to the degree that I could say that I am passionate about writing. That when all else fails, the sheer act of expressing myself through writing can get me through the hard spaces that life provides on a regular basis is not an anchor for me. Maybe I am just lazy and don’t make the time to allow writing to take me to that place of passion.

The dream is of course to find joy and happiness in the journey of living daily—to know why you are on this earth and finding your passion—is another question entirely. Not mutually exclusive but part and parcel of the same idea.

It is getting late—I may be able to go back to sleep now having delved into one of my life’s most interesting mysteries. Maybe today will indeed be the first day of the rest of my life!

One of my most read posts is one I wrote last February entitled “A Bit Of The Past – From a Piano Perspective” in which I shared my fascination with and joy of pianos. The story recalled a memory from the late 60’s which, as those of us who lived it remember, were times of extreme joy and also sadness and uncertainty—much like the place many of us still inhabit on a somewhat regular basis.

But that is another story for another time.

Of course much has happened in the years since the sixties but one thing has remained more or less constant: my love of pianos and certain types of piano music.

When I talk of “certain types” of piano music I mean mostly improvisational jazz of the kind played by Keith Jarrett, Thelonious Monk or George Winston, although I certainly enjoy J. S. Bach and Beethoven spliced in between my daily routine.

Fast forward to a week or so ago when I walked into the office of a co-worker and saw that she had her digital Roland piano propped up against the wall. Since it had been there for a week or so (maybe more) I asked her if she was thinking about selling it and was told that she hardly ever played it any and that I could take it home for a while and mess around with it. It is about 12 years old and has 77 weighted keys and features two grand piano “voices” along with harpsichord, organ, strings and choir sounds as well.

In technical/book learning terms I can’t “play” the piano. If you asked me to play Amazing Grace from a song sheet I would not be able to. Yet, what I can do is, sit down at the keyboard and play notes that sometimes fit together and sound good enough to make you think that I can “really” play. Yes, there is a certain amount of logic and math that went into the construction of the piano and our western harmonic scale—and it is this same series of patterns that I see when I sit at the piano. They are sometimes fixed and sometimes very random patterns that get expressed—and then it is just a matter of training your fingers on both hands to do what your brain thinks that it wants them to do.

When I took up the violin several years ago, I asked my music store owner friend Stephen Rydell, why it seemed that kids seemed to learn to play instruments quicker than adults. He told me that learning to play an instrument and muscle memory go hand in hand and that the younger you are, the less “roadblocks” there are to getting your fingers to remember where to place themselves in making chords and so forth. In other words, adults have more “indirect” routes to learning something and therefore the training process, as it pertains to learning to play an instrument, comes to us in a more time consuming fashion. We have to go 20 miles to get to the same place that it only takes 5 for a youth to travel. Anyway, it made sense to me that day he explained it and it still does.

I have often thought about savants when approaching my piano playing. I am talking about those people who wake up one day and can play serious piano without any training what-so-ever. My theory is that all that I need to know about piano is locked up inside my mind and all that I have to do is get rid of the roadblocks and my fingers will flow over the piano keys like they have taken lessons for the past thirty years. And there are moments at the keyboard when this really seems like a possibility. In the midst of playing, a pattern or rhythm may occur that I begin to have an awareness of and can then repeat to begin to add to as one might begin another verse. When I become aware of this, the flow generally stops and I am back to repeating something that my fingers are already familiar with….so the possibility still exists but I have not inhabited that place for any length of time.

The bible tells me that as a man thinks, so he is. I remember that one day I was a cigarette smoker for twenty some years and in a matter of minutes, I was not. To me, at that point, it was a matter of how I saw myself and then living in that awareness. There are still some kinks to be worked out in my philosophy of life—I know that there is more freedom in being a Christian than I have yet to experience for any sustained length of time.

One day it may all be clear—I will wake up and notice that I have become that which I had only seen in the distance of some great vision. The work getting there will have already taken place and I will be the beneficiary of all that went before me—including all the practice that went into learning how to get there—if that makes any sense at all.

I the meantime, I am going to keep exploring the piano and all the other instruments I have surrounded myself with—remembering that the goal is to enjoy the journey and not keep looking for the end of the road. That’s a ride I am sure we could all get into taking.

As I look back over the past 30 plus days in my life, my only totally concrete thought is “Where has the time gone?” I am sure that we have all shared that same thought—as if life is something that we collect pieces of along the way for display on our bookshelves or coffee tables.

I entered this period of time thinking that I had answers for some of the questions that have nagged me for some time only to realize that I now have more questions than ever before.

I thought I had a freshman grasp of economics only to find out all the theory books are being re-written even as I write this entry. Wall street is up one minute and down the next—bail-out is epidemic and doing the right thing doesn’t really seem to make much difference anymore.

For those of us who did everything “right” and still saw our 401-K retirement plans vanish into thin air after years of saving—maybe the Obama government will bail us out right after the big three get theirs.

Once upon a time I seemed really ready to believe in a “big plan”. The leaders of the church I attended for many years felt it would be good for the church to pay off its mortgage in order to free up funds for more “spiritual” things. For months following this great presentation we were encouraged as a group of people to give a little extra each week until our building was paid off. As we were filling the collection baskets with our cash, I often stopped to wonder if my mortgage would be the next one paid off and that that plan would proceed until all of us parishioners were “debt free”.

They had the big plan (pay off the church mortgage) and I had the little plan (pay off my own). As far as I can remember that church has no mortgage and I still have eight or nine years left to pay on mine.

I know that this might seem like a little thing—maybe even approaching that state we call “whining” in North Carolina. But the point I am trying to make and the thought process I am still trying to work through is this: what can we know is real and what can we know is not. Was God behind the church in question becoming “debt free” and once that was done, left the rest of us to our own devices—some of which were more successful than others.

I really didn’t see all of this coming. I truly thought that by this time in my life I would have had it all figured out and things would be sort of settled down. That I would have had the faith to move mountains and that friendships, marriages and mortgages would all have taken care of themselves—in other words “fallen into place in the grand scheme of things”.

That they and a million other things haven’t speaks directly to my lack of understanding and/or naivete.

Was McCain or Obama God’s choice for our nation’s troubled times. I can’t answer that question—although at one point a few weeks ago I might have made an effort. I have listened to many on both sides proclaim their revelation about each and can’t say that either side has the whole truth and nothing but.

I guess part of me just wants to get something out—as a creative person, not blogging or writing or reading much for the past month has been like an extended trip into the desert lands of sub saharan Africa for me. I was born to have a point of view and feel a bit dull at the moment and caught standing in line for something that I already have in my pocket. Yet I have no feeling that anything is in my pocket less alone my life at this present moment that is the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Like the big picture. Wherever that may be—whenever it may occur.

It is way past fall in the mountains and almost fully winter and getting colder everyday. I have a bit of wood that might last and might not. I am waiting for today to be over and for tomorrow to begin—I am waiting for a miracle in all of this: that I might finally understand today and let what is past rest in peace and move fully four steps forward without taking 3 steps back.

It is not the long ride—but a moment along the way.

In light of recent postings about my anniversary trip to New York City several weeks ago—and because my mind is on vacation and I am in process of finding out where—I thought back to my initial introduction to the city in the late 60’s.

I had just quit high school and was under the “teenage” impression that my life was going nowhere. Since I seemingly lacked the capacity to plan ahead like most high schoolers— I thought that the only way out of my dilemma was to introduce a change of scenery into my otherwise dull lower middle class life.

So, during that tumultuous time, I quit high school and hitch-hiked to New York in order to find that which I thought was missing from my small-town life.

And in some sense, what I found in the late sixties is not that much different from what Sandi and I experienced this past September. Yes, things have changed in New York—the subways are no longer covered with graffiti, the bums are not wrapped around the fire hydrants at night in the Bowery and the cardboard box city that lined 5th avenue in Central Park is no longer there. Times Square is also mostly devoted to upscale theater and shopping and entertainment rather than the sleazy triple x shops of the late 60’s and early seventies. Take it from me— I saw all I ever wanted of that other New York and am very pleased with how far it has evolved.

But underneath all of that, the city is still the same place that it always has been—a place where people travel far distances by rail everyday to do a job that will put groceries on the table. Day in and day out, stores and deli’s open their doors to the mass of people who work in the city in order to service the needs that this group of several million people create.

I would postulate that many of the sidewalks that I traveled in the late sixties and subsequent trips after that still remain—gum stained and smooth after the footfalls of each succeeding generation. That Sandi and I have walked many of the streets I traveled as a youth is no less a siren call today than it was two or three decades ago.

There are as many different levels of openness to the city are there are to one another. It is hard to explain, but the sheer act of walking up Broadway Avenue is not that far from what I experience through the function of tilling my garden in preparation of spring planting. Granted, it is not the same by far—but the experience in and of itself is stimulating and sensory to a high level of memory and response.

During my first trip to New York I lived in a 10th floor walk-up, cold-water flat on 11th street between avenues B and C. I mingled with the Puerto Ricans that sat on the summer-time steps in from of their buildings. For all practical purposes I was a New Yorker and therefore was not a threat to them and they were not a danger to me. I remember walking the streets of Harlem at night and being one of the only white boys in the historic Apollo Theater during a performance by B B King or somebody of that same stature.

One of the reasons Sandi is able to have a good time in the city is knowing that I can find my way around and hardly ever get lost. She tells me what she wants to do and I find out where it is and figure out how to best get us there. We are like two peas in a pod as we navigate through the mass of humanity that find themselves on the avenues and streets each and every day. Sometimes it is overwhelming and other times it is simply stimulating—but we plow through and in the midst of the storm find a calm that only a long married couple can claim.

Yet somehow, In saying all of this and remembering all of that, I have to admit that this past trip to the city was not one of my best in terms of relaxation and total enjoyment. Yes, I had a great time, but it was one of those trips where the memory of it is just a little better than the actual experience, if you get my drift. For some unknown reason, I was never fully able to settle into the “here’s me and my wife in the big city” persona. I fully enjoyed my time with my wife but returned feeling that there could have been so much more but have not really figured out what it could be. It is like  a part of me never arrived—or got there and never left the hotel room—or left the hotel room but spent the day looking inside and not at everything around him.

And maybe in that revelation you can relate—I certainly don’t want to live forever in that place but do occasionally find that I am not allowing myself to fully feel the moment—as if I have somewhere else to be but haven’t taken the time to find out where that might exist.

It is a melancholy moment for sure—knowing that even in the midst of the most vibrant city on earth and with the one that I love the most—there are still times when I don’t fully connect with what is around me. I can only hope that I will be able to begin to enjoy each day’s ride just a little bit more and that the weeks ahead will fall gracefully in front of two feet that can rejoice in them to their fullest.

That is the ride that I want and also wish for you as well.

Last night—actually early this morning—I awoke with a poem in my head like I often awake from a dream. I was tired and all I really wanted to do was to go back to sleep. But the more the words ran themselves across the pages of my mind the more I realized that I would never remember the thought come morning and at that point slowly raised myself out of bed and into my chair in the living room.

The poem in mention is still in process and not quite ready for prime time—but here it is.

As I lie in bed this early morning
unable to sleep—I listen in the dark to the early autumn rain.

And now, as the evenings grow cooler,
how nice it is to sleep underneath the sheets—the windows still open, but only slightly,
the weather outside not invited in as in summer,
but left to its separate season, alone and growing ever colder,
until the bedroom windows are tightly closed against the hand of winter
and all that frozen time.

After writing that in my journal, I read a new poet I discovered in New York during my recent trip to the city. The poets name is Lisel Mueller, a German-born American poet, essayist, and translator.

The word used by the reviewer on the back cover of her book “Alive Together” to describe one of her poems and the one that struck a chord in my mind is: crepuscular

—and is from the French and means, according to the Oxford English Dictionary I received for my anniversary:

1 Resembling the twilight of morning or evening; dim, indistinct; not yet fully enlightened. M17.

2 Of or pertaining to twilight. M18.

3 Zoology. Appearing or active by evening twilight. E19.

Right away you can ascertain that this is not a word that you or I would have used in the last several months in any conversation that we might have had. Yet it is a word that in and of itself penetrates the barrier between what we think on the surface of our everyday lives and who we are underneath all that we model to the world around us.

I often feel that I am not yet “fully enlightened” and that the world that surrounds me is sometimes “indistinct” and somewhat “dim”. What a perfect word—although hard to pronounce and remember during those intense lunchtime conversations with co-workers.

Even 1 Cor. 13:12 tells us that… “For now we see through a glass, darkly…” 

I suspect that is precisely why we need each other—no one has the full picture of the future or what is seemingly happening around us at this present moment in time. Obviously the current slate of politicians are at a loss as to how to fix any of the current crisis we find ourselves in as a nation.

They are not yet fully enlightened and I have it on good advice that wisdom comes from above—we are not going to fix things by simply adding a room to the foundation of what has already been built and seems to be rotting away as we speak. We need some new foundations—some new words to define and direct our paths into the future of you and me and yes—America.

We are in a twilight of sorts and need direction as to how to proceed. It is not a Republican or Democratic thing—but a challenge to every person and believer in this great nation.

In light of recent events and all the political garbage I see slathered across the pages of our papers, I had this thought: what is the truth in all of this that is happening around us—and can we know truth since it seems that everybody seems to have their own version of it. Then I thought of the Declaration of Independence and was reminded of a time when some very different people seemed to agree on the truth of a couple of very important things. The verse…”We hold these truths to be self-evident” rang out in my mind as an awareness seemed to build of a “truth” that was once held dear and agreed upon.

I know this has been a stretch, but in closing I will remind us of the first few sentences in that document that was signed on July 4th, 1776 and add that it is time we quit being the victims and start living the overcoming life we were no doubt designed to live.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted
among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
— That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these
ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to
institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and
organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely
to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate
that Governments long established should not be changed for light and
transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that
mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to
right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably
the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute
Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such
Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

And this seems to be the polar opposite to the definition of crepuscular….it is not indistinct and not dim but very direct and to the point.

This is our heritage and this is our poem.

I know we have all had thoughts or ideas that when first “hatched” seemed like the perfect answer to whatever question we had that produced the thought in the first place. In my own life, often after the idea is birthed, I marvel at it for a moment or two and then let it slide into that place where these types of things seem to get stored or stuck—seldom will it ever see the light of day again.

I have wondered in times past if this is one of major differences between me and someone who is a millionaire—just having sold his little business idea to a bigger company—and that is the fact of taking further action on the thought or idea itself. I guess that is why I like blogging so much—I can develop an idea in a few short paragraphs and then move on to the next thought or idea—never having fully plumbed the depths of what I have opened up. Sounds a little familiar, doesn’t it? Almost scary!

Yet I digress.

While on my recent train ride to New York City, I was witness to what I perceived to be the decay of what was once a vibrant industrial complex—a complex that during its time, touched every area of our lives. It was the train that opened up mass markets and rapid transit and in so doing allowed us to become a nation that every other nation in the world wanted to emulate—at least financially. I am not a history major—my high school class was taught by a football coach—and I may be off base, but I do believe that America, at one time, set the pace for everybody else to follow.

At the end of my last post, I posed this question: what do FDR, Lady Bird
Johnson, the World Trade Center and global warming have in common? Carey and DED, friends and readers of LFTLR, took the challenge and offered up their best inventive guesses. And both get “A’s” for effort and aplomb. After hearing their answers I had to admit that even the question itself was vague and that often I have no idea how thoughts seem to fit together in my mind and therefore should not have expected anyone to go where I wasn’t even to sure I was going myself.

As I looked out the train window into an American landscape that was sometimes much less than lovely—I had this thought—and here is where I try an explain how it all fits.

America is in crisis and needs a vision that we can all take part in and benefit from. Just as FDR created the New Deal, which was—”…the name that United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave to a sequence of programs he initiated between 1933 and 1938 with the goal of giving work (relief) to the unemployed, reform of business and financial practices, and recovery of the economy during The Great Depression”—and Lady Bird Johnson created the Highway Beatification Act which: “…called for improving landscaping, removing billboards, and screening roadside junkyards”—so can we create a means of restoring America to its former beauty.

As a people and as a nation we are very short-sighted—we only buy fuel efficient cars when the cost of fuel rises above the comfort level. Our re-cycling efforts don’t get much push and as for developing alternative energy sources, we are content to sit back and let the free market create them—and as we all know, until there is substantial acceptance and profit in so doing, not much will happen that will help us out of our current crisis.

And in light of our most recent financial flareups, I have to ask, as an aside, who is really looking out for you and me? Greed and avarice seem to prevail and our substantial sub-prime woes have just about brought his once great nation to its knees.

As I viewed the wasting of America I also thought about FDR’s New Deal and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a work relief program for young men from unemployed families, established on March 21, 1933, by Roosevelt and designed to combat unemployment during the Great Depression. The CCC became one of the most popular New Deal programs among the general public and operated in every U.S. state.

In rapid-fire-fashion I thought about the tenacity with which the cleanup program progressed at the World Trade Center following the 9/11 attack. Granted, the quick cleanup had more to its method and scope than just getting rid of the debris (I can still not fully understand the utter devastation in building and life), yet the process that was used showed what an organized effort could produce in very short order.

So here we are: Houston, we have a problem. What do we do about it. And in this sense, it is much like global warming—scientists say we will face dire consequences unless we do something about it—yet the effects, like the prospect of high gas prices years ago—are so far away as to allow us to simply ignore them. Yes, if they are right, we will pay—yet not in our lifetimes. People knew the levies around New Orleans would fail—it was jut a matter of “when” nature would point out that building below sea level might not be such a good idea. Yet we will fight for their “right” to build there and then are expected to pick up the bill when it all goes berserk. And I am really not that political—yet a chord in my heart has seemingly been struck.

My proposal is this—and I know there are many obstacles to its fulfillment—create a new CCC and hire unemployed people to clean up America, tear down all those old buildings and plant trees, flowers and grass and create parks for people to gather together in to discuss our collective future. I can see neighborhood cookouts, music festivals, yard sales and small children learning to ride their two-wheelers.

And as Carey has commented, I will so end this thought:

“Good night, America, how are you?
Don’t you know me, I’m your native son,
I’m the train they call The City of New Orleans,
I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.”

Thank you Arlo, Carey and Ded.

My wife Sandi and I have been to New York City several times during the past 10 or 12 years. Each time, except the first and last, we flew out of the Greensboro Airport and into New York’s La Guardia airport. Our first visit to the city was on an overnight bus trip with a student group from Appalachian State, who the day before they left for NYC, told a friend of mine they had several seats on the bus left and that they were open to anyone with the forty dollars the trip cost.

Needless to say, Sandi and I quickly signed up and then scrambled to find a babysitter for however many kids it was that we had at the time.

I am happy to report that we had a great time even though we slept in bunk beds at a  dumpy loft that ASU had on the lower west side at that time. I forget the exact date, but do remember that the World Trade Center was still standing and that we took the elevator to the top and sat outside/open air, in a little alcove and viewed the entire Manhattan profile from our lofty perch. It is a scene I vividly remember to this day.

But I digress. With energy prices the way they have been the past several months, as Sandi and I were considering a trip to the city to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary, it became apparent, Travelocity style, that airline tickets were going to cost way too much and that other means of transportation would have to be investigated.

I had overheard someone mention Amtrak over lunch one day and later looked up the cost online from Raleigh to New York as a whim. I was surprised to find that the tickets were about half of what Delta or American airlines wanted and kept my eye on both for a week or two. After I had secured a hotel we could afford to stay at, I then began to actively persue our transportation. When it became apparent that flying would cost way too much, I booked us onto the train and in so doing budgeted an extra couple of days, vacation-wise, that it would take to accommodate the long train ride to NYC.

And in so doing, I much confess that there is a big back-story to this whole adventure.

Many, many years ago, as a youth, I had taken the “Cannonball Express” train one summer from Detroit, Michigan to Terre Haute, Indiana to visit my grandfather who also happened to work on the Pennsylvania Railroad his entire life. Maybe not entire but you know what I mean.

During my visits to my grandfather and mother, I would go to work on the railroad with him. He was sort of a big shot in charge of switches and signals and we often found ourselves in the middle of nowhere following the tracks in order to get to a signal box that needed to be fixed and or checked for functionality. He had a truck that had small railroad wheels that could be dropped down on the tracks enabling it to ride the rails from one crossing to the next. Talk about cool—that was the top of the line for me.

I guess you can begin to get the picture that I had forming in my head as I booked our Amtrak tickets—Sandi and I back on the tracks that I had symbolically traveled as a kid—not the same tracks but the same adventure through the same type of rural America that I had traveled, lo those many years ago. Expressway travel has reduced our sense of place and history and sterilized our lives to the degree we hardly know about the places that originally birthed the American Dream.

So, it was with much anticipation that I approached our trip north. And I will say this up front—I was not disappointed by what I experienced. Our travels took us through the abandoned warehouse wasteland of what was once the pride of a quickly expanding nation. In between lush open spaces and verdant farmland, I was witness to the decay of our industrial complex—large tracts of land consumed by huge gray buildings, broken-windowed and graffitied—left to rot by landlords who had long ago abandoned them.

It is my theory that when we depended on rail transport for our goods, complexes were built close to the tracks and towns developed around this plan. When rail transport began to give way to 18 wheelers, much of that original landscape became the other side of the tracks and the rest is what we have today—large landscapes of rotting track housing and slum cities that can only be viewed from inside the safety of a railroad coach car. My heart broke as I considered life and living inside these almost forgotten zones. Poverty perpetuates poverty and it is hard to rise above when all you see around you is abandonment and dead-end streets.

These are places that most of us will never see.

So, after having been in NYC for four days, and on train ride  back I had this thought (and I will end this with this)—what do FDR, Lady Bird Johnson, the World Trade Center and global warming have in common?

It is certainly a long ride that I am on—with all its curves and subtleties. I hope you stay tuned for the next ride.

What can I say about New York City that hasn’t already been said by a thousand different people in a thousand different ways—and no doubt many much better than anything I could add to the legacy that is NYC.

It is big, it is loud, and it is filled with an energy that in my opinion can’t be found anywhere else on earth. Of course I haven’t been to Paris or Tokyo or Buenos Aires—places that come to mind when I think of excitement and sight/sensual allure. Maybe in another lifetime, as the saying goes.

Sandi and I went to the city this past week to celebrate our 30th anniversary and in our four days there were not disappointed. We walked at least a hundred miles, ate Mexican, Italian, Vietnamese and amazing thin crust pizza from a shop off of 6th Avenue. I had the customary hot dog with sauerkraut from a street vendor on the avenue that led us to the Cloisters in way upper Manhattan.

Sandi bargained her way along Canal Street, where Asians of every shape and size sell their wares from little closet sized shops that line both sides of the busy street adjacent to Little Italy and Chinatown. I plotted our course from Ground Zero to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and then through Times Square and back to Washington Square Park—and that was only part of one day.

On the train ride back (another interesting story), I thought of how hard it would be to describe to a New Yorker the kind of place where we spend most of our days—the lush forests of the Appalachian mountains and the narrow, windy roads that lead us to our country home of 23 years. To those who pound the pavement every day and catch the subway train in musty underground stations and rarely see the sun or moon (obscured by high-rise buildings), our life would only be understandable if found in a picture book especially designed for city dwellers.

Maybe I can take a few pictures of our rural life with my digital camera and get invited to do an art show at the Museum of Modern Art—that might help in the translation. Yet from what I surmise, the working people who populate and staff the deli’s and bodega’s on every city block, don’t get to see much art—they are to busy getting from point “A” to point “B” and then home after a long day, to visit the galleries and other attractions that NYC offers—much of which is definitely tourist oriented and survives today in large part due to the strength of many foreign currencies.

What struck me this visit was the way many people seemed to “sleepwalk” through their ride on the subway. Most people carefully avoid eye contact and many are plugged into ipod’s, newspapers, books or cellphones. Taking the train is something they have to do everyday and not an interesting part of an anniversary vacation. In my naivete I think that meeting new people on the train is an interesting way to pass the time—or that they even give a flip. Yet I wonder how long I would be able to hold out before I also signed off and entered my own personal world during my daily “train-time”.

Of course I could go on and on about our four days in the city and all my “mountain man” observations—and no doubt I will in blogs to come. Suffice it to say at this time I am glad that we went and I am glad to be back—happy that our pushing sixty good health has allowed us the freedom to tackle such a daring feat—I am not going to say we won’t visit again but for now I am satisfied and my mind is already beginning to process what is before me. Hopefully the adventure will continue for many more years and I can allow the bumps in the road to soften my perspective and bring my sometimes fretful attitude under divine adjustment.

And that’s today’s “long ride”.

As the days, months and years of our lives pass by ever so quickly, I am once again reminded that there is nothing more “God Ordained” than the covenant of marriage. Having recently celebrated my 30th wedding anniversary with the wife of my youth, I am grateful for every day that we have had together and know resoundingly that it would not have been the same 30 years without her.

Sandi and I met in mid 1977 in East Lansing, Michigan, where she was a 3rd grade teacher and I a bookseller at a popular local bookstore and meeting place. To make a long story sort of short, I was more than a little tired with the dating scene and my place in it and had begun to look for what I still refer to as a “real” relationship.

Most of my friends parents had gone through divorces and my own parents had called it quits by this time—so I didn’t hold out much hope for ever being a part of a lasting relationship. In spite of all of this, there was still something inside of me that held onto a hope for something more than what I had seen played out in front of me for most of my life.

Looking back, I actually remember meeting my wife to be twice. The first time was when she was waitressing in a local Chinese restaurant. I was alone in a booth eating lunch and complemented her on her shapely legs. It sounds crass at this point in life but at the time was sincere and not really intended to get me any place other than maybe a little more fried rice on my plate. To me the truth was the truth and I was just trying to be a little more than the guy who came for lunch a couple of times a week.

The second time we met was some time later after she had taken an after school job at a health food store and restaurant that I often frequented. She was wearing a green wool, a-line skirt and a light purple Danskin top with a hand-made dragonfly pin fastened just below her left collarbone.

I must say that I was instantly intrigued by her look and the great big smile that met me at the store’s front counter. I remember telling her that I thought her outfit was exceptional (time has taken away the exact wording) and that she carried herself well or some other observation my free-association mind came up with. It was all true and from what she has said, that was really the beginning of our knowing one another. She remembered the leg thing but didn’t hold it against me and for that I have been grateful.

In the months that followed we spent some more time together and often would walk the campus of Michigan State University and talk about the stuff that made us happy. I think by this time I was on the third of fourth revision of my life’s philosophy and was also in the process of figuring out what I wanted to be when I “grew up”. But more importantly, what was going on was I was finally coming into contact with someone who appreciated me for who I was and I believe that she felt the same way—at least that is what we have written down in our collective memory banks.

She was very real and I was putting up a good front (only a partial truth) and in process of learning what it meant to be me in every way.

As we ate dinner at the Storie Street Grill in Blowing Rock on our anniversary evening, I couldn’t help but remember that it seemed like only yesterday (yes, I get to say that) when we met and that the past 30 years had been such a whirlwind of blessing. We have lived through four children with their attendant broken bones, broken hearts and minor car wrecks. We have sometimes struggled financially to make sure everyone had what they needed be it braces or partial college tuition. We ate dinner as a family almost every evening—Sandi was able to be a stay-at-home mother and we made it a priority to find a cheap beach house and go to the ocean for almost 13 straight years as a family.

And those are just a very few of the highlights that 30 years together bring to the table.

Sandi and I have had a couple of fights during this whole time—mostly around finances, kids or how birthdays or Christmases are spent. It has been a great ride with the boat being in the water most of the time and not much of the water being in the boat—if you get my drift.

We have had friends and family pass away, as most people have, but I can truly say that most of the time we were never down at the same time—usually one of us was strong when the other needed us to be.

And yes—I could go on and on and on—but I will end with this: What God has begun He will finish and I hope we have many more years to discover one another in. If this isn’t the “long ride” I don’t know what it is.

One of my most recent thoughts that I have been having a hard time getting my head around is the aging process and subsequent thoughts on life and mortality. Aging is one of those processes that is one thing to read about and another to live out. And its not the fact that I know we all get old and die that seems to have me in a quandary but the feeling states that surround my actual calendar age and what I really feel inside.

If someone were to tell me that I am 59 years old today, I would have a hard time actually affirming this based on my perception of myself. I am sure these thoughts are not unique to me and probably there are several books that have been written about this phenomenon.

Who we are inside and how others picture us has always interested me. When Sandi and I moved to North Carolina in 1978, one of the first couples we met lived just down the road from where we took up residence. We had moved into an old “home place” that had been abandoned shortly after the husband had passed away. There had been a small fire that had gotten hot enough before it was extinguished to have left all the windows broken. The living room, where the fire had been started, was somewhat charred and there was an ashy indentation in the middle of the floor which we later painted and covered up with a throw rug. Even after our seven year stay, the fire smell had not entirely gone away.

Anyway, we were re-claiming the house—room by room—and partially living on the big front porch. In the mornings, we would get water from where the spring line had been cut and bring it to the porch where we would clean up—Clampett style—as people drove by in their cars and trucks and waved. There was a big dresser on the porch with one of those swinging mirrors attached and I would shave and watch the people go by.

It was a time of adventure and we felt young and daring—each day was lived out to the fullest. The couple down the road had a very nice house, two brand new cars and for all intents and purposes, looked the part of a young couple on the road to success. However, although we were about the same ages as them, they sure acted a lot older than we did—very proper and almost high collar if you know what I mean. I guess it was their Baptist background and growing up in the mountains or something to that effect.

Over the course of time we became very good friends with them and we were able to see them loosen up and let down their hair on many occasions—though they still seemed much older than we did. It has been the same with many couples we have known over the years—with age came maturity and with maturity came a way of presenting oneself to others and the world.

As I enter my 60th year today, I know that I don’t feel like I thought 60 would feel when I was 30. When I was thirty, I guess I thought I would not exist at this age—the prospect of it seeming so far away and all. Plus, almost everyone I knew that was 60 when I was 30 acted and often times looked “really old”. All they talked about was their surgeries and the medicines they were taking for this or that condition and on and on—I know that you have met the type. I know that this can sound vain and judgmental at some level and I assure you that is and never has been my feeling or intent.

We are talking about perceived states of reality and where we find ourselves at any given time—and at this point I have to admit I don’t seem to fit what I thought 59 would be. If somehow I woke up—Rip Van Winkle like—after many years of sleep and someone asked me how old I was‚ and before I looked into a mirror, I would possibly say 40 at the most. And I guess I will go with that today although there is likely some kind of Einstein theory that can explain this phenomenon and the perception of reality that accompanies it.

The old saying goes, “You are only as old as you feel/think” and that will have to do for today even though it only seems to scratch at the surface of what would otherwise be called an itch. Only God knows how old I really am and how many more years I have left to wonder about all this stuff. Tomorrow I am going to take a good long bike ride and I know that I will feel a lot younger when I finish than when I begin—enjoy yours as much as I will mine.