Morning

I don't think I will ever tire of the ragged, ungainly grace of douglas firs, tracing the lines of one individual against another, the swoops and sudden checks, the raw edges. I will not live long enough to really see even one of them.

I spoke of the weariness of dishonest living. A friend pointed out that economic necessity makes liars of everyone who has to work for a living. The dream of an honest life may be a noble one in the abstract: but it assumes an absence of coercion that is never going to be within most people's reach.

And yet, one of the reasons we are subjugated is that we are simply too beaten, cowed, and tired to fight. There has to be some glimmer of hope that an honest life is on the other side, I think.

All that fire, all that energy, can it really be for nothing? Or are we simply in the wrong world? Or we just sitting in a room, having carefully painted every window black, deploring the darkness? Well, one thing I can be reasonably sure of is that I am not going to be the one person who figures it out. And it is not going to be figured out alone. We build a house -- a house with real windows -- together, or it doesn't get built at all.

The wind comes off the snow fields, above the tree line, or in from the ocean at dusk. Or sometimes it's just the slow exhalation of a suburban lawn, finally unharnessed, free of the day's fret and strain. I sit on the curb and watch the sun climb through the branches of the firs and the power wires, his red toes and fingers sure, quick, precise. Morning.