Thoughts from the past pull me down. Can’t look at this stuff. I’m older now, with more awareness. Sure, I’d do things differently in an impossible world. The horror is misplaced, in other words. I imagine something that never could have been. There is no crime! Women are better at this, I think. More present.
“You chose this,” she says, but without rancor, like noting the year the big holly tree broke its roots and fell against the house. “You can do absolutely anything you want.”
I can’t believe I’m not in jail. The bars are so familiar. The cot, the toilet, the way the room smells. Everything a-jumble on the frontier, living in the cabin of the plane we crashed in. Thinking of the big black dog.
John Hamilton Farr lives at 7,000 feet in Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico, U.S.A. As New York Times best-selling author James C. Moore tells it, John is “a man attuned to the world who sees it differently than you and I and writes about it with a language and a vision of life that is impossible to ignore.” This JHFARR.COM site is the master writing archive. To email John, please see CONTACT INFO on .png)
I took a photo on WED evening, also. Yours is great! Sunset was memorable.
My understanding is that the sunrises have been even more spectacular. But I wouldn’t know about them. 🙂
I am a woman and I am not better at it.
Back when I had four (insanity) little kids, no running water, etc, living in 600 sq ft…. my aunt responded to my answer to her question of “how are you?” with: “Well, you chose this, didn’t you?”
I still feel the anger rising in my throat thinking about that.
My wife wasn’t speaking like your aunt, of course. (I had an aunt like that!) She was communicating that she bore no grudge, that I had nothing to feel guilty about, and that I should put no bounds on my desires. It came as something of a surprise, since I grew up learning to duck.
Very satisfying writing this one. Love the way it ends.
Oh yes, I was not clear. I just meant that I am not so good at living in this moment. Stuff comes flying out of the past. When you said – “you chose this” I was suddenly that young lunatic bristling at my aunt all over again.
I loved the ending, too.
You are so blessed to have your wife and not my aunt!
I understood what you meant! And I think we had the same aunt, BTW.
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