Thanksgiving thoughts...

This is the time of year when I get sort of nostalgic, for family and for friends.  I've been reaching out to friends via emails and on Facebook, which turns out to be a pretty fun way of keeping in touch.  I'm very thankful for all my friends, here in California and scattered all across the country and the world.  Thanks for touching back.

This week I'm having my daughter Lisa and her Matthew and her mom Sandi for Thanksgiving dinner.  I have to admit I've ordered a pre-cooked turkey, but I'll do most of the side-dishes.  It's been a long time since I've cooked a holiday meal, and it will be the first in my Mt. View townhouse.  It's going to be great fun!

Meanwhile, my love, Penelope is with her sisters Vicki and Patricia for a week in a time-share condo at the top of Sugar Mountain near Boone, North Carolina.  (My ancestral homeland, where a statue of my fifth great-grandfather Daniel Boone stands.)  In a couple of weeks I'll be back in DeLand, Florida, and we'll be sharing most of the holidays with each other both there and in California, something for which we both can hardly wait.

There are some wonderful things about writing long emails and burning up the long-distance minutes on the phone.  I think we learn lots about one another that we wouldn't otherwise, we have time to explore literary and poetic life in a way that might slip by if we were always together, sending each other poems, books, burning music for each other on cds.  But, I think we're both getting ready for this part to end, no matter how fruitful and lovely it is.

New love...

It's been a while since I've posted anything.  Caught up in my final term of college teaching, not sailing much because of weather and sails being repaired, and because I've been emersed in one of the most remarkable and improbable beginnings of my life.  But now it's time to share it, to admit how real it really is.

So meet Penelope and James!  Three weeks of emails and phone calls and it became clear to us that we needed to meet sooner rather than later.  So we did, closing the three-thousand miles separating us for the Veteran's Day weekend.  And it was more than either of us imagined it could be.  Truly a sacred coming together.  Happily we forsook all others, turned away from possible loves closer to our homes, and leapt into the promise of potentialities with each other.

So it's a new life beginning for both of us, a most improbable connection across a continent that has blossomed into true love in less than a month.  You may think us daft, but we are sure we are not.

For now we burn up the minutes on our phones, email incessantly, and dream of rejoining each other in mid-December, when I will head to Florida for a week and then she will come out to California for a time.  Beyond that ... well, love has its way.

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