Castles and Barns

A life’s journey

I’ve been a squatter, sometimes a gypsy, content anywhere, a long time wanderer who spent much of my life rootless, not collected at birth — but since collected. I became adept at conjuring people’s love for me, carrying only what I wanted, or supposed, from place to place.

The first half of life is spent acquiring possessions, the second, getting rid of them. I started on both journeys late. I am letting go of nothing.

In my head and heart, I am building a barn. Big, redwood, huge enough to hold my lifetime. I’ll build it. I will. It’s the last big dream [until the next one] and I’ll make it happen. A barn. Imagine. Three stories high with lofts to store all my dreams, my memories, my promises, and my maybe’s, my hopes, some yet to be recognized, and of course, my cats.

It won’t be a castle. I learned that lesson, saw it dissolve, become dust again. No, it will be a barn, rugged as hell, a place I can get through the day, and where the night won’t make me nervous. The night does make me nervous. Not for any reason, except maybe that it catches me unaware and follows me the way a woman does when she wants something.

I waited through the ruins, maybe for a face — kind, fresh, encircled by a halo of cascading hair; a face, the beauty of it passing without a hello spoken would break my heart, stop my breath.

I know that life hangs on, but only long enough to get through the day’s lies. So, it is important my words stay largely private, unrecognized, except by those for whom, with age, truth has become a way of reconciliation.