The sky is as big as memory. The light is open like hope. And the mountains surround thought so that all we are is right here, driving home. We are listening to Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette listen to each other and spill blessed unrest into song. My two are in the backseat, looking out their windows at the world we are passing.
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Next week a friend of mine heads to Mammoth Lakes for a memorial for one of his good friends, rock climbing master, John Bachar. An international rock star of the climbing world, Bachar was known for his soloing—unroped climbs—and his uncompromising self-reliant style. His poetic purity of vision—one body, one rock—inspired generations of climbers. He died, alone, doing what he loved.
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Tonight my son and I have the evening to ourselves. We walk down to the corner Mexican restaurant for burritos, take a long loop home through the neighborhood, bake a batch of peanut butter cookies, play two rounds of cards while they bake, and with an hour left before bedtime he says what he’d like most is to sit on the couch together and listen to his favorite record, the wide-sweeping full orchestral Hans Zimmer/James Newton Howard instrumental soundtrack to the Dark Knight. He’s never seen the movie, of course, but he loves batman, and he loves scores, and this 74-minute cd addresses both.
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It is Wednesday night. We are at an outer southeast Portland grade school, after hours, holding the poetry group for refugees and immigrants. I’m wrestling with the days, each of them, this month, loss and sadness my clenched fists won’t release, and fear at the realization that hope seems closer to the horizon line than to me. I almost don’t go, I am too tired to teach, to figure out childcare for my two, to even go through my files and find lessons. And I don’t know if anyone is going to show up. Sometimes the chairs are filled, sometimes not. I’ve been leading writing groups like this one for years now, off and on and on my own time, because I believe in stories and in the telling of them. Some days I think that’s all I believe in.
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