An old friend came to visit yesterday. He didn’t knock or ring in the more conventional way. It was via an obscure Facebook feed in a private writer/wit/tomfoolery group that I’m an esteemed member of. That’s his picture up there above these words.
His name is Bill. He’s one of my best friends (the man, not the cat). This photo epitomizes his incredible sense of humor and the endless fun we’ve had over decades of friendship, with a shared bit of madness and mirth in our humor. I remember when the photo was taken several years ago (spoiler: the cat was photoshopped). Was originally titled: “Opening Day of Zucchini Season“, and not surprisingly went viral.
Of the countless memories in our decades of friendship, it seems worth sharing a note on one particular visit. What could, years later, send us into splinters of laughter by the mere mention of This Old Corral.
. . . . .
So it is that, once upon a time, I lived in the mountains of Northern New Mexico. It was a bit of a homestead under the brilliant New Mexico sky, with two much loved horses among the dogs, cats, chickens and rabbits. There was always something to take care of, repair, feed, pet, clean up after – and appreciate. It was a labor of love and truly my bliss, but at times I really needed help.
Bill came to visit one summer. I recall he was there a week or so, tho it seems more than that for how we filled the hours. He was a grateful source of handyman/helper/humor for the many tasks calling for more robust muscles and extra hands besides mine and my otherwise involved teenage daughters and our less than burly statures.
Muscle is most appreciated in such settings, but I’m inclined to add that, as all things do, it comes in different forms. Redressing the fragile image of our petite frameworks, I thusly remind what you learned in kindergarten – it’s what’s inside that counts (I think I can, I think I can...). What’s outside is the showy stuff, surely valuable but still mere dressing. It’s inside where the real juice is. And so, I believe, (or so I’m told) it is with me.
My brute is a force of will, armed with the bulk of grit and determination – unloading hay bails in a single toss (or a push); braving bold encounters with angry rattlesnakes; running interference to chicken dinner missions of wily coyotes on cold, snowy nights. (Really, I did.) Oh, and fixing water conserving toilets all by myself. Both of them.
So, now that you are mightily impressed with my puffed up, pioneering super powers, let’s get human. Showing up and managing life’s business ourselves is vital, and noble, but help really is a good thing. A friend to lighten at least some of the more cumbersome tasks. For me, about that time anyway, was at the barn or, more notably, the corral panels.
The panels needed major rearranging with extra ones to add. If you’re not familiar with corral/fence panels or have never moved, connected, or picked one up, let me educate you: they are 10-12 feet long, designed to connect together, constructed of moderate to heavy steel bars for the task of containing 1000+ pound animals into the designated areas (or corrals) that we humans deem desirable. Moving and attaching these panels is a hefty task. I have done it on my own but overall it goes much better as a team. So, Bill was my enthusiastically muscled ranch hand. And, comedian. (Often more comedian than muscle.) Another essential asset.
In spite of the frequent distraction of laughter, we did get a lot done in those days, including much with those panels, sealing themselves in infamy in our had-to-be-there unscripted, unrecorded and self-titled life chapter – This Old Corral. We probably would have accomplished more (work) if he wasn’t so damn funny. But made it more memorable. No one has ever made me laugh as hard as Bill, playing off each other seamlessly. I recall buckling over beside those panels more than once in that adventure, from uncontrollable laughter. A memory we’ve both relished – and revisited – with more peals, and tears, of laughter. And that’s just one memory. For every This Old Corral, there are a dozen others close behind. I’ve equated him to my personal Robin Williams, truly as original and quick.
The timing of his calls, texts, and visits have been impressive, like now, riding the ebb and flow of life’s rip tide as I have in recent days (Months? Years?? .. enter “thinking” emoji). It’s had a grip on my attention most nobly, testing my mettle in wading thru some heavy waters. (I know.. aren’t we all, in some way right now?) The bonds of those we hold close are tonic – ever – and surely at such times. It’s a human thing. People (and animals!) who really get us and reserve a front row seat as the captain in our personal pep squads. They love us. Make us laugh. Distract us. Feed us. Hug us. Kick us into action. Inspire and pull for us to succeed, to be happy.
In the scarce availability of human contact these past years, tho, we’ve had to get better at self-soothing and paddling, navigating our fence panels solo, as it were. We haven’t all done it willingly or as our shiniest moments. I can certainly say that it’s been a hard, less than appealing go around my campfire but I am recognizing something remotely akin to .. growth – on better days – some creeping sense of inner ease as a result, I think.
But don’t be misled. My cats are witness to my lesser moments in getting here, and a wise woman knows that feline allegiance has shifty conditions (at best). As an audience of strictly indoor dwellers, these whiskered friends are front and center to my days, but as one of them skitters under the bed at the first sign of human contact (besides me), my story is safely and gloriously mine for the telling! Not for sacrifice or show, mind you – and not always pretty – but, perhaps, a noble serving of grace.
Or something close.
And there it is.. grace. A thing I’m kinda hooked on. Lofty and illustrious is she in our well-dressed thoughts, its rhetoric, and most worthy a pursuit, for sure. But be it known – the frothy curl in her arrival can be messy, scrappy even; not the thing we’re conditioned to expose or frame on the wall, over our corrals. We want to show the pretty ending where the butterfly of grace emerges in its glory, but not the mushy mess we go thru to get there. I tend to tuck in and reflect at such times in my own chrysalis, out of sight. Make room. Hermitize. Taste the opening in the mess and damn the torpedoes of pride in its private wake. It’s what these housebound felines have witnessed in this peculiar Age of Madness To Meaning and seals my allegiance to them with a regularly stocked pantry of roasted chicken treats.
In getting thru such times, I can’t carry the burden of overdressing things (anymore). Or so I’m learning. How heavy and elusive its load and our conditioning to accept it. (Bah humbug) And, that – right there – is where I think the sensibility and magic lies. The ease beyond the need to hide our stumbles, our blemishes, behind the highlight reels and choking illusions of perfection. It’s a bar to strive for, and most certainly celebrate, but the truths in our foibles are the texture in our character. Banging against the edges of expectation and its grip on our greatest freedom inside. I’m finding that message in the shade of this tempting ease. Where levity lives. With inspiration. And the beingness of real love in its courage and vulnerability. Inside first. Then, out.
Why does this matter and what in the Hell does Bill have to do with it?? Well, I’m glad you asked and I’ll tell you.
Because as you’ve learned, Bill makes me laugh. And has made space in any moment, conversation, or visit to allow what’s Real. His imperfections have been part of his great feast in tasting – and sharing – the greater riches in life, in his humility with it, the thread where mirth and madness are freedom, and why he has such a beloved legacy with so many. It fertilizes the heart and soul so we can cut thru the BS and better enjoy these hours of life.
And, even in those imperfections, or because of them, he has been easy to trust, befriend, and love. It’s a reflection I want to see when I look in the mirror. Such a liberating concept! Learning to be okay with that – to be okay with not being okay when we’re not.. okay. Redefining it, and its power.
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Hmm. My mantra so often, anymore. A preferred place of intentional silence. (Yes, it happens.) Hmmm.
It’s serving me. Ushers me out of the yucky scripts of judgement in my head, or getting better at it, anyway, to keep my balance even when things fall around me.
We’re all greeting the day anymore, it seems, with some measure of, “hmm,… what kind of unforeseen madness – or pleasure – might we encounter today?” My vote is for the pleasure part, or pleasured madness. Hanging out at the beach, toes in the lapping ripples of water’s edge; refreshing adult beverage in hand, served in a coconut shell, a slice of pineapple and little pink umbrella parked on its lip. Well, that’s on my vision board anyway, so I’m just sure it will come. In the meantime, I’m working out the wrinkles that balance (imbalance) and life are serving up and moving the veritable fence panels where I need them.
Such are the times, perhaps. Quite so.
And there I find the belief that the more we ride the frothy, rumbling waves in life, the more seasoned we become at trusting our instincts and the growing center we are here to cultivate. That’s fancy talk for what happens, I think, when we strut our cool on the easy stuff, raising our confidence when, invariably, a monster wave rolls up and launches us thru the air.
And, then what?
Well, in absence of the art of flight and aerial super powers (also on my vision board, yet manifested), … basically, we breathe – before, during, after. Ride our way to the shore and engage the becoming for all that impressive learning we’ve done. Flexing the inner muscle. It’s our odometer for the miles travelled; coaching myself with a bath of the words and wordless befriended in the tucked away hours. Let them pour over me, absorbing the mastery of the shallows and simpler propulsions of her life waves. It helps me keep my center, going only as far as I can see. That’s wise counsel and it works. Sensing beyond, and aiming, but in meaningful doses. And then again, and again. From each there, we can find our trust. And its rhythm.
Whatever this world is doing these days, it seems to be on its head. Certainly on its way somewhere that the skins of grace aren’t camouflaged (…vision board), but still, here we are. Now.
In the crowd of my personal tribe, a fellow writer posed a prompt, asking how it is that I go about the reinventing, adjusting, in life and these times? It plucked a string of contemplation and reflection (something I’m not usually short on) and, with the landing of Bill’s photo, this spot in my blog library.
And so, to that, a piece of thinking rose in the prospect of life and her pivots, its perception, that none of these waves – whether timid or unruly – are headed out to the vastness of a dark, landless sea and its potential to be swallowed up or lost in her waters – as it can feel. They are headed to the certainty of the shore where the water ultimately touches and delivers herself.
The notion that any wave has potential to knock us off our safe boards is a scary, powerless feeling, calling for meaningful shifts in perspective. We can’t stop the waves from coming, so we need to get really good at surfing, centering, and trusting the shore ahead.
(Hmmm.)
In this ride, when we really grasp the gift of attention, we sense a flow, with helpers and friends and maybe some etheric buddies stepping in to give us a nudge. A hug. Or a laugh. For the rattlesnakes, maybe, and coyotes; water-conserving toilets, life politics … fence panels. We get better at believing in ourselves, but we’re still in this together.
That’s what happened to me yesterday, when Bill came to visit in that obscure Facebook feed. Right on cue.
Not a text or a knock on my door to mark his visit. That would be a stretch, even to my thinking (tho, then again…). Bill retired from living – passed away – several years ago, not long after this photo was taken. So good it was, then, to see him in that feed, like the endearing, life-delving, belly-laughing Sunday phone calls I used to get from him.
No one in the group knew Bill, or the delightful history behind the photo that was posted. Or, that he was – is – my friend. And, that’s okay. I knew. Someone just came upon it and shared with the group, (with a different caption, albeit almost as funny as the original) years and miles after it first debuted, like the message in a bottle rolling up on the shore.
This crowd was simply entertained – as he would so appreciate – by its humor. And no one better than my dear friend to deliver, reminding me that grace has a meaning all her own, and arrives in the least expected forms.
Very good blog post. I absolutely love this website. Keep writing!