Drifts of Perspective and a word

The sun shines pretty hard these days as it works to fight off the cold that has gripped the Pacific Coast. Cold always wins, and all heat fleets, thus it was, is now, and shall be evermore. I took a drive up to Ashland Oregon on the weekend to visit some good friends and meet new ones at a coastal house with a hot tub on a bluff, a journey that was decided upon one minute and began the next minute. Two cars left at the same time from two different states, planning to meet at a bar on a Christmas-lit street in the middle, in Ashland, sometime after midnight (Q: At what speed was car A moving?). Turned out it was a ridiculously quick drive in the end, which makes this entire country seem smaller and distances between friends far less, thank goodness for that. But we did hit snow in the high passes, a fact that brought out the SHIT HOLY SHIT YES's from my co-pilot the snowboarder, and instilled slight fear in me because the roads rode like mashed potato beds and the sky filled with shooting stars of white aimed directly at our windshield. Yes, snow certainly is exciting.

It will be a long December. There is much to say at the end of this year that I will never post in a blog, though my mind swells with thoughts and realizations, explanations and words that rise and fall like the wind or the tides. Only with action will better words come that move forward and take all the good of the worst of life into an unknown future. I'm thankful this thanksgiving for an 83 year old father who hears his son coughing from a few late nights in a row and silently lays a shot glass of schnapps next to the laptop, "for the cough." I'm thankful for friends and family who love me no matter how much I screw up and continually tell them about it. I'm thankful for perspective and the knowledge that it won't be the last time I screw things up, but also for the lessons that keep me from making the same mistake again. And I am thankful for hope and love which are all that stand once those words of emotion ebb and flow. I know hope and love in my heart, and no matter what the future holds I will have nothing else but that regarding her. Lots to say. Lots to be thankful for today.

I hope that December and 2007 to follow bring one thing to all of us - community - including but not limited to the neighborhood/political variety, more the wide variety of people that surround you in some form, in multiple forms. What else is there when you break down your joys and sorrows, and who is it that you most want to share these with? What keeps you from being alone whether you want it or not? What keeps you from destroying yourself? What is renewable, and what swells and shrinks yet is always there in some form? When you land somewhere on a lonely patch, what is the first thing you search for, and which searches for you? And if you were to comment on this and leave a one word answer, I know there would be about 100 funny and intriguing words, and only a few of them would be community. So go ahead, post 'em. (Yes, even you, Neil).

But for now, here's to our individual communities, and may you each be enriched and emboldened by the mere fact that people love and support you without having to tell you nor you asking for it.