Have you ever gotten a phone call so out of the blue that it seemed that the very best of your past phoned you up from a time machine just to say "I remember you"?
My stomach has re-discovered butterflies.
My soul has wings again.
All because of an old friend--the oldest calling up, seemingly because of divine intervention. I have been found--even though before I had no notion I was lost.
This was the reason I came back here, to be found. To find that oldest friend one last time before our lives diverged again.
I'm engaged and moving to Tokyo in the fall.
He's off to defend the country...but maybe just now we can see each other again, after years of being in different countries always--and soon to be so again.
Life feels more vibrant and worth living all of a sudden. Not that it wasn't wonderful before--I've never been more at peace with where I am in life, especially who I am with--the man who I look forward to spending the rest of my life with. All the same, I feel more complete now, more whole--the past can rest easy now, because I am found again...the nagging feeling of something far off missing isn't there. My best friend has come back to me.

I friend sent me this poem this morning, and it struck a cord in me. I thought I would share. Not that I'm dealing with Disappointment myself right now, anything but. I'm currently standing on the precipice of a great adventure, at this point even returning home is indeed an adventure, espechially when home is no longer that. Tell me if you understand.



Disappointment
-Tony Hoagland

I was feeling pretty religious
standing on the bridge in my winter coat
looking down at the gray water:
the sharp little waves dusted with snow,
fish in their tin armor.

That's what I like about disappointment:
the way it slows you down,
when the querulous insistent chatter of desire
                    goes dead calm

and the minor roadside flowers
pronounce their quiet colors,
and the red dirt of the hillside glows.

She played the flute, he played the fiddle
and the moon came up over the barn.
Then he didn't get the job,----
or her father died before she told him
                    that one, most important thing----

and everything got still.

I'm looking forward to nesting with you!!!

I live in Panama with my parents. This is at best a temporary arrangement. Our house is white with a corrugated steal roof (I never knew what it was called until two years ago when I designed a set for a Tennessee Williams play set in Mexico, but that is another story). Across the street lives a drag queen.

Actually, let me be more precise since I was trained once upon a time on the political correctness and niceties of gender switching etc. She is a transsexual. Probably post-op (though know one knows for sure), having grown up as "Paul" (or Peter, I can’t remember which) in some middle class suburban hell near Miami only to make a fortune selling over priced beach-side real-estate to aging Jewish couples who had probably never before left New Jersey and then blow the money on a synthetic uterus and a pink 2 bed room house with a decent view. She’s stayed up late every night for the past 4 years having parties with god knows who (Panamanians being VERY socially conservative on the whole are blissfully ignorant of a transsexual in their midst—the blissfulness is from their perspective not me own). Did I mention she has 6 dogs?

She drives my mother absolutely crazy. Not that my dear ‘ol mum is at all judgmental about gender confusion and out of the ordinary sexual persuasions (again, I remember coming out of the closet age 16 only to be confronted with the rather surprising fact that my Mother and her best friend were in fact former lesbian lovers). She is just completely noise intolerant.

The transsexual throws her parties all night long, still up and playing samba at a decibel beyond the capacity of most human ears even when I creepy into the house like a burglar coming back from the bar at 2 am. And then, when the music finally stops (or at least reaches the level where you can’t hear it from half a mile away) and the cars filled with their mysterious partygoers pull out of her driveway as the sun creeps over the edge of the volcano loaming in the distance—then, and only then, do the six dogs begin to howl, bark and create every other imaginable noise known to canine kind.  

Did I mention my mother suffers from insomnia anyway?  

I’m sure you can imagine now how the situation has escalated over the past four years.

There was a brief period where that gap could have been bridge and peace and (sometimes) quite could have reigned in Alta Lino. I believe, however, that such a possibility has long since been left in the dust. A road lies between us now, filled with crazy drivers, pedestrians in their traditional Indian clothing carrying the ever present 3-foot long machete, and even the occasional chicken. We live on our side praying for the quiet that almost ever comes, left only to wonder what she’s thinking and doing at 3 am when the samba stops and Cher begins to wail out a gypsy tune.

Right now, I'm sitting here, listening the unushual absence of rain in the afternoon and thinking about you.