Answering for the Lack of Rhythm,

Witty retorts aside, you’re right, I can’t dance. I don’t lack desire, I don’t lack feet, one left and one right over there, I don’t lack for much but a beat slow enough to work with...which doesn’t make for good dancing. Yes, I know. In my head, I am smooth, gliding across the floor like silky Astaire before he got old and died. In my head, I feel the music in my soul, thumping out my angst like hedgehogs at a carnival. Then again, in my head, I am much taller and my teeth much whiter. I can’t escape middle school formals, when I still thought I could dance, just didn’t want to. Sitting in my memory in a pod of prepubescent men, forming my views on this whole dancing thing, I still haven’t found the right girl with which to dance. Maybe my wife can help me find her. The sad part is, I just found out. Nobody told me, not with furtive glances or screaming stares, “STOP DANCING, YOU TWIT”. Nothing. I found out in the midst of the middle aged, thinking myself better, only to find out that it is I who has no rhythm. So, you’re right, I can’t dance, but I can whistle. So there.

This turn...

If you have ever found yourself standing on the edge of a wandering brook, the headwaters of an eventual force of nature, you know of where I speak. A place of severe beauty, making each footstep fall short and meaningless on this land of endless wind, and never a moments rest as the silent waters start their run toward the falls. Each gallon fighting gallantly against upstream eddies, dodging the tangles of a wild place, hoping to meet something plain and simple someday. You know this place without knowing or looking. It calls us with whispered trumpets, a sirens song stretched on the backs of boyhood fancies. The rivers twists are not without its straights nor is the world in which we fish. I know only this turn and cannot see what lies ahead. Only this turn, without compass or map, just blind momentum. Only this turn, this time.

Looking more and more like our father...

This is my brother fishing is Oregan last summer...