“Penelope remembers having read that of all the liquids and fluids produced by the human body – sweat, semen, vaginal fluid, saliva – tears are the only one without any trace of DNA… Impossible to identify someone from their tears, we’re all identical when we weep despite the many different reasons we have for weeping, something like that.  Unlike unhappiness, tears don’t set us apart, they make us the same.”

Rodrigo Fresan, “The Invented Part”

Last week I spent with my four offspring at a cabin on the Pikes Peak Massif in Colorado.  Mostly I register grief and loss in my experience of living… but interestingly enough, the first entry of my vacation journal begins with the simple sentence “I’m happy.”  Unqualified, that’s it – myself + my offspring + a rich world reeking of “no service” and untellable beauty… “I’m happy.”  Here are some notes I made throughout the week:

Simple things innerheard during cabin stay:

The stars: “We can’t tell the difference: between light or dark, death or what remains.”

The streams: “Where have we come from, where are we going? / Where we have come from, where we are going.”

Growing things (grass, moss, wildflowers, mushrooms, wild berries, etc…): “Not yet, not yet.  Who knows?”

The rocks, the boulders: “Once upon a time.  Now.”

The mountain(s): “Maybe.  May Be.”

The cabin:  “Us.  Here.  We.  With.  Hold.”

Phrases of my children:

• “It’s good to live this way once in awhile.”
• “Why do we leave here, ever?  I never want to.  What is have to?”
• “Dad, everything here is your ‘favorite‘.

And me:

• “Nothing is like this.  Nothing… Belonging, I belong.  Time changes, it’s different here.  As if there isn’t.  THIS PLACE IS ‘BEAUTY’ TO ME.  THIS PLACE IS WORTH MY LIFE.”
• on climbing: “I’m a dad: we ALL make it, or none of us really do.”
• on love: “If I say ‘I love you’ – please don’t hear it as worship, as inordinate.  In love we see the ‘too much‘ of the other – that which is always beyond our own reach, the ‘too much’ in each of us we struggle with, and seem to be unable to assimilate or observe in mirrors of our own.  Perhaps this is one of the reasons the conundrum we call ‘love’ exists?

Addresses to my children and loved ones:

• To T: “Always beware of logic – our fabricated things.  What we may wish toward but doesn’t make matter.”
• To A: “Recall.  There are differences.  Beware.  There are openings for more life.”
• To I: “You have it.  You carry your own water.  Your own dreams.  Your own beginnings.”
• To O: “Heroes also may shrink you, diminish, contain.  You are deeply your own.”
• To H: “Never mind.  I am not the one who can conquer it in you.  I believe someone will.”
• To ?: “I love you.  Like literature: the possible of life.  Impossible.”

Thank you mountains, rocks, growing things, streams….