The first time I caught wind of this story, it made perfect sense to me. It wasn’t her running from the store that night: it was me.

From the womb I knew those lights, that music, those rapid changes in temperature were wrong, all wrong and I needed out of there and hers were the only legs that could make that happen.  Unlike my mother, I have yet to regain my ability to grocery shop with anything but a sort of steadfast anxiety.

Seeing as the grocery store is one of those “have to” places we all must eventually go, a bit like death really, I have had to come up with creative ways to endure this aspect of living.  I always shop at the same store at the same lightly peopled time, taking the exact same route from produce section, past the meat counter, through dairy, down the bulk food, up through frozen food and straight into check-out lane 5.  Every time.  The pattern never changes.  An entire weeks worth of groceries procured in less than 15 minutes from the time I walk in the door until the time I walk out. Whew. If I have something specific that I need to get, say ingredients for a dinner with friends, I will make a list and write it in the same order I plan on walking through the store, visualizing my path as I approach the door.  It gets terribly daunting and emotionally overwhelming when they, gasp, move something in the store and no meal can’t do without an ingredient or substitute if the store doesn’t carry it. There is no time to “look,” or heaven forbid “shop,” just simply go without.

Highly efficient, extremely neurotic.

This was the case until I discovered the fish guy. Admittedly it took me awhile, perhaps close to a year, before I picked my head up to even see life happening around me, let alone notice the fish guy.  Now, I walk in the store, make my first left, grab a basket and look straight at him before heading for stop #2 (the mushrooms, first stop in produce).  Then as I’m heading to stop #5 (eggs), I watch whatever scene is playing out, moving slowly, maybe read the ingredients on a bottle of salad dressing to feign interest, while listening to the conversation happening in front of me before I move on.

The fish guy is actually 3 different guys, but they all kind of look the same and there is always some starry eyed, cute, ultra-fit, mountain-town girl asking about the salmon or something.  She starts the conversation out rather innocently and then launches into various flirtations.  I’ve heard the fish guy discussing his “other” life outside of fish with the cute girl, although I can’t figure out what that is exactly, I imagine its artsy– glass blowing, metal work, something like that.  The cute girl always looks absolutely captivated.  Captivated.  Every word uttered.  Every rote philosophical concept explored.  Captivated.

I’ve now begun my circuit by picking up the basket looking to see which fish guy is there and then look to other side of the counter to find her: the cute girl.  Sometimes she hasn’t quite built up the courage to engage in aimless chatter, so you see her loitering at the salad bar, looking over her shoulder strategizing. The conversations are pretty dull and at times cringe-worthy, but its the unspoken communications– the flinging of hair, the uninterested questions about cuts of halibut in an attempt to gain eye contact– that are especially good, entertaining even.

It’s such welcome and fabulous distraction from not wanting to be in that horrid building for any more than the few minutes I have to be.

I went to bed filled with heaps of promise.

I woke up two days later in a world split in two, unable to stand up straight, trapped in an unsettling nightmare.

How quickly promise seemed to dissipate.

Just like that, literally overnight (two nights, really), my life would start over.  I would lay there in a coma while a reset button was pushed, shoving some part of me to the end of its life span and awakening another.  The scar of the entire strange journey was left in my heart, details of the events are buried in the mess that would become my thoughts.

And my thoughts are a complete mess. Months of doctors, hospital stays, diagnostic procedures, therapy (cognitive, occupational, physical, psychoanalytic) and wrestling with insurance over it all.  Months of sobbing daily.  Months of a constant deluge of harsh reality and sleep. Oh sweet wonderful sleep without you I could not have endured this horrid chapter.  An ode to sleep is yet to come, but for now…

Strings of my messy thoughts are being pieced together in an attempt to straighten up, put things in place.  I have hope of stringing the strings together to write something coherent. For now, strings are the start.

String #1: Rapid Aging

To most people strokes are an inevitable reality of aging and as a result I was thrust into this absolute desperation to keep a grip on my age.  Just 35, only 35.  Repeat.  This mantra, this small but critical phrase needed to be chanted several times a day, everyday.  Lost are the exact numbers of times people would stop and apologize for this unfortunate “thing” happening and then inevitably share tales of the stroke their grandmother suffered and her victorious survival and recovery, but with only a few permanent losses in cognition. Somehow, this made me feel worse.  Just 35, only 35. I felt like I needed an anchor to grip on to, keeping me here, this side of 70, at the mid-point, in my supposed youth.  The youth that would be slipping away from me, the youth that had been yanked out from underneath me.  Suddenly I was made equivalent to a senior citizen and I wasn’t quite ready for that life stage just yet.  Wondering where I had lost all those years along with my vision, my ability to link coherent, cognizant ideas together, I would sit in silence.  Often.  Alone with my racing, random thoughts, eyes fixated on the ceiling, trying to get it to become one and making peace with the fact that not only had my vision doubled, but so had my age over the course of two nights of sleep.  Years of life. Blink. Just like that. Gone.

Picture from Dawson's office for the next few weeks. Hyalite Canyon. It's not far from the house, but far enough to fill you up with wild goodness for the day; sunshine and snow covered, wind-blown goodness.

Supposedly I’m going to inject a little poetic cadence into this day by adding a bit of prose to this here blank canvas, but it’s nowhere to be found this fine evening.  Drained.  Completely drained.  Feeling like an American, longing for calories and laziness. There’s not even success to be had in the calorie consumption arena due to laziness winning out.  Tonight its a war against entropy and the force has me in its body-in-repose-stays-in-repose grip.  Granted the day brought good things or so I recall, strangely.

What is it about certain days that makes you tell the tale of the earlier portion like it occurred during your previous life stage?  Seriously, it was THIS morning, yet it feels like it must have been when I was a mere nymph.

I won’t bore you with my metamorphosis fantasies since its not the change I long for so much anymore, but the time to drift away, asleep in a cocoon.  Dreamy.  No bills to worry over or spontaneously arise just as you thought you were getting ahead, can’t because you’re sacked out in the cocoon.  No frustrations about where you are in your life relative to where you think you should be, can’t ’cause, sigh, cocoon-town.  No fretting over how you said or what you said and who you said it to, yep, sailed off to cocoon-ville.

Dreams aside, for now I’m going to finish my slack jawed dullard day with a bit o’ television.  God bless America!

Cattle Dog. 13 years old.

Mode of travel: Quickly, spastically.

Its one of those days when entirely too much sits entirely too heavily.  Sure, sure, I’ve been around awhile, lived long enough to know that worry is just a part of it all. Anticipating the negative swirls around my cranium, bouncing around like a pinball.  Where’s a guys next meal gonna come from?  My advice: lick the floor for every morsel on the off chance that those few will be the calories that pull you through the lean times.  You can never be too prepared.  Recently, I discovered traces of food particles on pant legs, it feels like things are really starting to look up.  Then there’s that Blue girl.  Oh, the Blue girl.  I’d roll my eyes if I could right now, but I’m still figuring that trick out. She makes relentless passes, flirts or some strangeness and it’s just too much.  Too much.  Hold on.  One second.  Sorry, some dude and a yellow lab were just walking out front, had to yell at them, clear the sidewalk of such vermin.  I mean, really, walking in front of the house.  A yellow lab.  Gross.  As I was saying, I really dig the meals in the joint these days and the little extras here and there and all.  What?  That’s where we left off right?  Before I heard the mail man at the door and had to give him a little piece of my mind, right? Is that a Magpie in the yard?  Be right back.

To properly represent the gene pool, I vowed to write at some sort of regular interval within the next 365 days, however non-committal that vow may come across it is still a vow.  Hold tight to your seats, pull out your reading glasses and prepare to be amazed or lulled to sleep. To read.  About something.  About nothing.  Yes, nothing. Yes, everyday.  The everyday stuff that is the goodness of being a cognizant organism capable of oxygen exchange. Ideas, thoughts, musings on the everyday as was originally intended for this space slated to be filled with 365 days of life.

The journey begins…

Falling asleep didn’t seem scary until I awoke and the world was split in two. Literally. When standing up straight was a challenge and it was difficult to determine whether I was awash in sleep, longing to return to it or if the longing for it was the only means to get me out of a strange reality; the fear seeped in.

Falling asleep never came with a warning label. Sleep was never deemed a dangerous entity. Until it’s not sleep, but referred to by many (except myself, at first) as a coma.

From the Greek, koma (κῶμα), meaning deep sleep, is a profound state of unconsciousness. Profound unconsciousness. Profound. Unconsciousness. Somehow I had fallen into a profound state of unconsciousness.

The moment the word slipped off my tongue, it became palpable.

A blood clot hit my brain, my thalamus to be exact, my sleep center, knocking me out. Literally. Completely unexpectedly.

Changing me.

Leave the trail of said wilderness to bush-wack to a beckoning high elevation grassy patch.

Scramble several miles straight up to reach patch. Curse.  A lot.

Question your sanity again and again while bruising.

Bust through the last bit of trees with heart racing at the sight of the pure glory of the meadow you worked damn hard to get to.

Replace heart racing due to thanks and glory for heart racing in a kind of ‘Faces of Death’ moment as you stare at a moose and her new born (maybe an hour old, seriously) 50 feet in front of you.

Choke back fear-of-getting-stomped vomit.

Give thanks for your moose karma as mom and babe trot away. Slowly. Stand in awe as the wee life wobbles on fresh moose legs.

Climb over rocky outcrop in the opposite direction to witness 7 elk also with newborn babes grazing.  Sit and watch.  Sigh.

Feel gale force winds rip through the high country filled with weather.

Abandon off-trail mission and take a heftily treed–for cover–route back to the trail.

Revel in moose and, then, elk moment.

Think wistfully about your deep connection to nature.

Re-think said connection when you push through dense, thorny, painful vegetation only to toe-up to a black bear with 2 cubs of the year.

Long to weep at this moment because, indeed, it truly sucks; especially when she woofs, stomps and runs at you.

Choke back fear-of-getting-your-face-ripped-off vomit.

When you finally hit the trail, come to the realization that you have no idea where you are exactly, how much time has passed, if you’re alive or what the hell just happened.

When you finally reunite with your body, walk toward your truck.

Serve-up warm tale with cold beer less than an hour after second near cardiac arrest.

Add a dash of embellished revisionist history and voila!  Springtime.

Every now and again there is a clip that stuns and not for it’s journalistic merit or it’s beauty in prose necessarily.

A few weeks ago, I picked up some random section of the paper while waiting (the only time the paper seems appealing) and happened upon a 3 paragraph story.  Three paragraphs giving a vague outline of a story, the kind that drops an idea and leaves you wanting for more.

To back-up just a bit, wandering around the remote country of Montana, mostly off the path most followed, I’ve often wondered when I would come across the remains of a body.  When, mind you, not if.  For whatever reason in my twisted consciousness the idea that some turn of events, be it foul-play or a casual stroll gone awry, the probability of death on the edges of a Montana wilderness and deep in its heart was entirely possible.  Pair this notion with a predominant “type” of person often drawn to Montana– the loner recluse, seeking respite from a society gone awry (a la the Una-bomber)– and, yea, the idea of coming across an ‘unknown’ body in the woods seems less a figment of a morbid imagination.

So, when I randomly picked up the paper and read those 3 paragraphs about a year-old skeleton found on the banks of the Clark Fork by a man walking his dog, my imaginative story was suddenly reality. The skeleton was, no surprise, that of a transient whose death went unnoticed.  For an entire year his body sat, decaying.  No family was wondering why they hadn’t heard from him, no friend went to the police worried.  He simply vanished from the planet one day.

It left me wondering.  When this skeleton was an animated, live human being, was he ever a happy, sweet little boy with all the world and life in front of him and a mother who loved him, worried after him?  Was there some distinct moment when he began to disappear from the world, slowly slipping off or was he never truly afforded any of that? Could some chance encounter with the right person along the way have pulled him back, saved him from slipping? As a highly social species and, I believe, one capable of caring altruistically for one another, there is a ripe fear in this ‘disappearance’ concept for me. That someone could just die one day and no one has so much as a fleeting thought or a pause of longing for that soul; just ain’t right.

It all sits heavily with me.  This concept. Those three paragraphs. A life lost down by the river.

Thanks to the shrubs, every Spring I was often one of the first to witness the annual bird migration– varied thrushes and white-crowned sparrows would spend a few days loitering, fattening up on my offerings of seed and suet before moving on to higher, more densely forested places.  I would awake with child-like joy every time I heard their songs on the first day of their arrival; thrilled they were back, singing for me.  Every morning one lone chickadee would start his plea,  telling all females within earshot of his prowess, his virility, his superior genes and with the kind of gusto you just don’t expect from a 5 inch being.  Once he began, the robins started.  Then followed the cacophony.  Pure heaven.

Waking up to the song of the first chickadee brings me indescribable happiness.  Lying there, slowly waking up, in the wee hours, to the tune of big love from a little body, anxiously anticipating the crescendo when more would join-in.  It doesn’t get any better, really.

Currently, I’m buried in deep winter.  Been the case for over four months with many more to go and it’s starting to feel daunting, like I may never see Mother Earth again and I miss her terribly.

On a recent morning as the sun was just starting to break, I was sure I heard the first chickadee singing.  Suddenly in a three-quarters sleep-state I was smelling Spring too.  I stayed in that moment briefly, relishing it.  Longing for it.  Willing it to be so.

Then I woke with the realization that it was a sick dog whining to be let out.  All dreams dashed in an instant.

Why does Spring have to be so far away?

What’s the connection?

Recently, I walked into an office for a meeting with a guy who was sitting on said ergonomic chair.

I couldn’t help but wonder.

***

When I moved to Montana over a decade ago the speed limit was ‘Reasonable and Prudent’ and it was legal to drive while drinking a cocktail.

On a snowy evening walk with my dogs, I was ‘pulled over,’ flashing lights and all, questioned, yelled at: WHERE were my leashes?

Huh.

A lonely stroll through an empty park with a coupla dogs 10 feet ahead, criminal.  Drinking and flying down the highway, totally fine.