About Erik Dolson

Erik Dolson is a writer living in Oregon

It’s Never Enough: Part II

My season started with an email from Jakester in the middle of April, saying the first race was coming up the first weekend in May.

I wasn’t planning to go. In Middleofnowhere, Oregon, the car was in the trailer where she’d been since I’d drained water out of the block last fall. I had my racing license, but hadn’t even paid my annual dues to the club. I thought I’d be race-ready by June.

Jakester was having absolutely none of that. At age 15, he’s still crew chief and decided the season doesn’t begin when we are ready; we are ready when the season begins.

“Time to suit up,” he says. That’s not a direct quote, because Jakester is more discreet than that, but that’s what he meant and I got the message. Three days later we were signed up, fueled up, tuned up and fired up.

Good thing Jakester woke me up. Cowboy called about a day after everything was finished, asking if I was going to the Spring race, and I was able to say, “Yeah, I’m ready. You?”

“Nah, it’s supposed to rain.”

Actually, I think Cowboy doesn’t want anyone to see what he cooked up over the winter. He likes to surprise the rest of us. One thing is certain: It’s going to be fierce. It may look like an older vintage race car, but that’s because it was “built down” from a much wilder machine.

Or “restored to original,” which is how Cowboy describes it. Cowboy is the best there is at getting you to think what he wants you to think just by how he says things. “Restored to original.” No harm in that, right? I bet there are a few details swept under that rug.

Cowboy doesn’t like new rules letting much newer cars into our races, into our group.  Cars that are 15 years newer than ours. Able to run super-light frames, with bigger motors and smooth tires that will allow them to stick to the track like they were glued.

“We’ll be middle of the pack. Might as well kiss this racing good-bye,” he said, thinking our popular production Corvettes, Mustangs, Camaros would be replaced at the front by cars with less appeal. He makes a good argument, but others see it differently.

“We need more cars or it’s all going away,” says Ceegar. “The fact is, those of us who love these old cars are dying off. We need to have newer cars come out. Some guys we used to race with in the past, like Irish, might even return.”

I enjoyed racing with Irish back when he was still involved. He brought to the track the finest automobiles ever made; a TransAm car, an original Cobra. And he’s a lot of fun to be around, smart and enthusiastic.

It’s true. The grids are smaller, and we’re getting older. A lot of guys aged out, or the money ran out, or they just moved on. There aren’t as many of us as there used to be.

Our cars are getting faster, too, and that concerns me a bit. Racing at 170 mph is not just 15 mph faster than 150 mph. It’s a whole different level, with different aerodynamics, different braking forces, and far more demands on a driver to act and react faster than ever when he runs out of track or out of skill or something happens on the track just ahead that he didn’t anticipate.

We’re going as fast as pro drivers did just a few years back, but we’re in machinery that was designed 50 years ago.

I hope we’re all ready for that.

Ceegar will be there this weekend. He’s 100 percent ready, his chief mechanic, O/C, has seen to that. We may not recognize Ceegar, nor O/C. Ceegar’s lost more than 30 pounds, O/C has lost more than 40. They’re on some diet that cuts portions and uses three drops of magic oil: my guess, something between snake oil and 90 weight gear lube, but you can’t argue with those kinds of results. I wonder if I can sneak some into my crankcase.

Excalibur will be there, too.

“We had teething problems last year. I was going nowhere. The first weekend, we ran a 1:31 and it got worse from there. There was one race I brought the car in and said to Stays-Late (his mechanic) that I wasn’t sure if next time I would bring it in in one piece.  After the front straight, I could stand on the brakes with both feet and not know if I was going to make it.”

This winter, Stays-Late told him, “you will have brakes.” That means Excaliber will drive again with the confidence that made him one of the top three on most weekends, but this season in a fresh and much faster car. Whew.

“I don’t need to win. All I know is that I want to do the best I can do,” he says.

Yeah. Okay. When Excaliber starts a sentence with “All I know is…” you can bet that he knows a lot more than he wants you to know that he knows.

As to speeds as high as 170 mph, he’s cautious but confident.

“I believe that’s where we’re all going. That’s something we all have to consider, and hopefully we all have what we need to do the job… Hopefully, it’s not 1,000 percent harder to go five percent faster. But there’s a world of difference between 80 and 140, or between 100 and 160.” Yeah, things that used to go by fast are now just a blur.

Most everybody thinks the rules on car preparation will be more rigidly enforced, and everybody knows that some will take advantage.

“My guess is, that at least at the July 4 race, you will find some interesting interpretations of the rules,” said Excaliber.  “But if you are a superior driver, that can make up for a lack of horsepower. I always thought the driver was an unheralded part of the equation.”

We do talk a lot more about cars than skills, more about horsepower than technique, more about setup than braking points.

The clearly superior driver of our group, by far, won’t be there next weekend at the Spring race. Canuck’s car isn’t quite ready, he says. Lots of little things remain to be done. His mechanic, Swede, is working on it, he says, but Swede has other clients too.

One of them is Falcon, and changes have been made to Falcon’s red car that he likes a lot. ‘Stang will be there in the blue Mustang that just keeps getting better and better and faster and faster. It’s not like either of them has been sitting on their hands all winter.

There are supposed to be some great drivers up from California this year, who can give any of us a run for our money. Canuck thinks they might push us a bit in Portland, but that Seattle takes longer to learn.

It’s said that Kiwi won’t just wrench and manage cars for clients, at least at the big race in July. Kiwi may drive a big-engine Corvette, and Kiwi used to be a professional racer. He intends not just to race, according to someone who overheard, but plans to qualify first with a better time than any of the rest of us.

“There are seven or eight guys who might disagree with that, who are planning the same thing,” Excaliber says. And he’s one of them. Canuck certainly is. Cowboy, always. Captain America will have a shot. Ceegar wins races, and has gotten 105 percent out of that Mustang each year for so long, he’s got to be close to 175 percent of what that car is capable of by now. I’d like to be in the hunt, too.

Seven or eight drivers in the running for first place, and any one of them could take it. A lot will depend on who did what over the winter; what new cars were built, what big changes were made to old cars, or what small tweaks were found that add up to give one of us the edge.

We’re all looking for that edge. We all live a bit on that edge, in a way. It’s not just what we do, it’s who we are. So we’ll keep doing it until we can’t, and keep looking for more.

It’s never enough.

Shark

A beautiful turboprop sea plane comes in to pick up passengers at Blue Lagoon Resort. It’s on the beach for maybe ten minutes, loading passengers and gear, then is off to the mainland.

I’m in no hurry and prefer the giant yellow catamaran, a huge marine triple decker transit bus that makes the island circuit once a day and is the only other passage to these north islands.

But none of the hotels where I want to stay have any rooms. I didn’t think the “high season” started for another month, but it’s also Easter Break. Manta Ray Resort, just a long hop down the island chain, has one private room available when I call.

I really don’t want to stay in a dorm. I don’t need posh, but there are some things a man my age shouldn’t do. Manta Ray is also supposed to have tremendous snorkeling right off the beach.

I pick a seat in the shade on the second deck. Zoe and Alice come sit down across from me after they bake long enough in the sun on the unshielded deck above. The two blond girls have freckles. Zoe, for about the tenth time since I met her, asks why I am traveling alone.

“She emailed you from the next room?! She didn’t want anyone to know you were together? She’s just mental then,” Zoe lays out in her thick Essex English accent. “You’re a good guy!”

I start to defend you: “Two sides to every story… I’m sure she had reasons… ” and then stop. It doesn’t matter.

“Thank you. I think I’m a good guy, too,” I say.

I go down at one point to find my snorkel bag. I’d planned to carry it but the resort guys gathered it up with all the rest of the luggage and it wasn’t tagged with a destination. A crew member helped me find it, we tagged and moved it to the pile going to Manta Ray Resort.

We get to Manta Ray and I say goodbye to Zoe and Alice. There’s just four of us getting off here, Claire from Switzerland and a young Japanese couple. The resort check-in person assumes Claire and I are a couple despite the age difference, and starts to check us into the same room.

“That would work for me, but I think Claire might have another idea,” I say when I catch the error on the paperwork. We all laugh.

It’s nice not worrying how every word will be construed.

Manta Ray is not as upscale as Blue Lagoon. My room on stilts is about 10 foot square, and the bearings in the fan may not last the another month. I unpack as much as I think is prudent, then decide to write for a while.

That decision lasts less than 10 seconds. I did not come to Fiji to write when some of the best snorkeling in the world is 30 meters off the beach.

I toss my glasses on the bed and pull my fins and mask out of the green mesh bag (so glad I didn’t lose it on the ferry!) and head down to the beach. After everything is adjusted, I swim out, turn to my right against the current and do a crawl out to deeper water.

There are a zillion fish, and the corals look like they were dipped in the finger paint from third grade.  It’s magical. Eventually, clouds roll in and I don’t like snorkeling alone, so after I dive down to pick up a D cel battery lying on the ocean floor, I swim straight back to the beach while the current pushes me south and I end up right where I set off.

I put my fins on the concrete shelf and am deciding if I should get something to drink when I’m pulled into a game of volley ball by Christina, a six-foot tall German girl with a Teutonic-tinged English accent .

On about the third serve, the other side puts a ball right in a dead spot near me. I do a full stretch body slam onto the sand but reach out with one fist and get the ball up and we make the point. There are oohs. Geezer guy plays!

We play five sets, and finally I bail out.

“I’m too old, you’re too good!” I say as I head to the ocean to cool off with a swim. They’re polite about it.

After dinner, three of the guys who’d been in the game asked if I was going to play tomorrow.

“Depends on two things: The snorkeling might be really good. If it is, I’m going to be in the water. If the snorkeling isn’t so good, then I’ll play… if I’m still able to move my right arm, that is. And if my right hamstring is okay. And my left elbow. My right hip, too. And if I still have a large bottle of ibuprofen left in my bag…”

They laugh. Eric, Gustov and Magnus are from Sweden. Eric says I look Swedish. I say that’s where most of my blood comes from.

The sun is bright the next day. I write, have lunch, grab my snorkel gear and wish I’d loaded my Go-Pro to take photos underwater instead of a Sony that doesn’t work.

It’s bright all the way to the sand valleys that meander between the coral. Bright silver fish and dark blue fish and black and yellow striped fish browse the coral heads for lunch.

There’s a couple not far away and I sort of stay in an area with them, so as not to be really snorkeling alone.

It’s so incredibly beautiful that I’m not diving down to the bottom as I often do for a better look at details. I’m just taking it all in when about fifteen feet away a five-foot shark swims through my field of vision.

The animal is amazing, with movement not lazy, not by ocean fish on the reef standards, more like it’s hyper efficient. It can’t hide, nor waste a lot of energy on unsuccessful frenzy, so it moves with a rhythmic, strong but easy sweep of it’s tail. Smooth is fast, right, Racer Boy? It seems nonchalant, but I imagine the fish around me are quite aware the predator isn’t just out for a swim.

I am.

“Did you see that shark!” says the man behind me. I point to where it disappeared into the green curtain of underwater distance, and nod.

I didn’t know how I’d respond if I saw a shark out here. I’m thankful I’m cool with it, also thankful that it was swimming away from me when I see it. But for the next half hour, I’m looking backwards forwards and to each side with a little more intensity than I had been before the shark swam by.

 

Vinaka

There are about fifteen of us in the boat when we hit the beach to visit the village, but two of the young women have not brought scarves or anything to cover their shoulders. Another woman on board has brought extras. I’m told I’ll have to take off my hat.

It’s conservative, here.

We walk up the path to a school, where we wait in the shade for recess to be over. Boys are playing rugby on a field of packed earth and dry grass, and it’s rough and tumble. Full-on tackle, take down, no pads no helmets, no elbow or knee protection. I can’t imagine such a game being played at a grade school in the U.S.

I have no idea how important rugby is to Fiji, but will learn in a couple of days.

It’s a boarding school, and children come here from other villages on other islands. The row of huts closest to us belong to teachers, and they have small solar power arrays for electricity.

“This is new, and saves on diesel fuel, which is very expensive,” says our guide. Teachers are dedicated, but at least need electricity.

“It’s Friday, so the children will go home today. They will return on Sunday for Monday classes.” They study math, science, English, the Fijian language.

Recess over, we cross over the field to a large classroom with two rows of empty chairs at one end, the rest of the room filled with children sitting on the floor.

“Be sure you clap afterwards,” says our guide. This is his village. I wonder if he has a child here.

This feels a little obligatory. We sit in the empty chairs as if we are the ones on stage. I’ve endured enough grade school performances. I really want to see the village, see how these wonderful Fijians live outside the cities. I’m sure the performance will be very nice and all, but…

Then the children start to sing.

The Fijian songs are intense, beautiful and the singing fills the simple room. It is not the pure, silver bell refinement of a European Children’s Choir. There is an earthen urgency in the harmony of these voices that is far less contained; almost a ferocity. I can’t help but sway with the notes. It is so strong and loud and beautiful, I’m nearly overwhelmed.

A little girl with deep dimples sits near the front, and she watches me very closely, even though I’m in the back row. After a minute I look back at her, cock my head slightly and smile, which brings a wide, beautiful flash of white teeth, a bright light of joy.

At one point, individual children stand up and dance at us, distorting their beautiful faces into terrible masks of crazy, tongues out, eyes bugged out, a grimace or fish face pushed eight inches from ours as they hop and flap about. It is startling at first, even a little scary, but all the rest of the children are laughing and singing.

Then the songs are those we recognize, and the little girl in front laughs with me as my fingers follow her’s and we climb an itsy bitsy spider up the water spout. Yes, I nod at her, I’m a dad, I know this song, while I sing along.

When the singing is done and our final, very real applause has ended, we stand to shakes hands with as many children as we can. The little girl nearly leaps out to grab my hand, stare into my eyes. We are smiling, acknowledging. Some things, you just recognize.

To hell with colored pencils: I put my largest bill of Fijian currency in the school donation box outside the classroom door.

We go to the village then, of huts about the size of a large U.S. kitchen, some made of corrugated iron, others of concrete block, others of grass. The Catholic church is the largest building in the village, of course, and is made of concrete.

There’s a communal laundry tub with water for washing clothes.

“The diesel generator is only turned on for four hours a day, from about six to ten p.m.,” says our guide. Diesel fuel is very expensive.

In a grassy square under some trees, village women have laid out tarps covered with items for sale.

“The money you put in donations box is for the entire village. What you buy from these women is for their own families,” we are told.

There are too many women to buy from everyone, and it’s a disappointment they are selling identicaal book marks, door mats, shells, bracelets of shells.

“Buy this for your wife!” says a woman on the blanket in front of me.

“No wife,” I say to her.

She squints at me. “How old are you?”

“How old do you think I am?”

“Dunno. 50, 60?”

When I tell her, she tsks, shakes her head. She does not approve of me being single. Some things you just recognize.

I remember the reading glasses I brought to give away. I ask the woman in front of me if glasses are needed and she says yes. Like an idiot, I give the glasses to an older woman sitting on the next cloth, because she’s older and I thought she might need them more.

This causes a little dispute between them. The glasses aren’t just an aid, they are a commodity, in a village where trading is living.

I make the rounds twice, three times. I do buy bracelets that my daughters may or may not decide to wear. I do not buy a bracelet with shark’s teeth for myself. I don’t wear shark’s teeth. Why give sharks an excuse for revenge?

I come to a place where children are sitting with their mothers, and from my backpack I pull out a tray of water color paints for a pair of boys.

Their mother gives them a little nudge on the shoulder, and the quiet instruction in Fijian to say “thank you.” Some things you just recognize.

“Vinaka,” they say together. A very small boy in a red shirt to my left watches hopefully as I reach again into my bag, but two little girls have appeared. I give the bubbles to them and the little boy cries out. His mother hushes him. I look at him and am sad, but the bubbles I’m holding would be better for these girls who are older.

The little boy cries when a bubble leaves the loop. Again his mother tries to hush him, but he can’t be consoled. I have nothing left in my pack. He cries as she puts her things away, and as they walk off down the trail.

Then we are done, it’s time to go.

Walking down the path I talk with a young couple from Monterey. Trey is in the Navy, Ashly works for a company that sells organic pesticide for vegetables, I think she says. As we walk out of the village, Trey is saying how amazing it is to see this much happiness when the Fijians have so little.

The little boy in the red shirt is still crying in one of the huts next to he path.

“Excuse me, I have to make amends,” I interrupt Trey, and walk up to the little boy standing on the threshold of a concrete hut that has almost nothing inside except what’s needed for survival. I squat down so he’s a little above me.

“Bula” I tell him. “Hello.” It’s the only word of Fijian I know, besides  vinaka, “thank you.” But he instantly stops crying. His mother stands behind him, and she is smiling.

“You are a wonderful boy,” I say from only a foot away from his wide brown eyes, looking as deeply into him as I can.  “I will come back here,” I say, and I mean it. Of course, he can’t understand a word, but the tears are gone now, and he smiles.

I stand up and start to leave. His mother says something to me. Though I don’t understand the words, I can tell she is telling me to stop. Some things you just recognize.

She brings the bag of items she had been selling from the lawn and that I bypassed several times after looking, even though I was tempted. She reaches inside. She makes me take a tiny shell bracelet. I’m overwhelmed.

Vinaka.

Mother’s Birthday

I wrote this at the end of 2012 for one of my dearest friends. Well, honestly, I wrote it for myself. My mother died 42 years ago. I was in India. Today, St. Patricks Day, is her birthday. While I did not know her well, this is what I would have wished for her.

Her mother hovers near death, so light now she floats six inches above the bed while nestled small and frail so deeply in the sheets.

I am blessed, asked to sit in this room, asked to bring strong arms from which grief can be released. Blessed, trying to anticipate small needs, driving small errands, a presence to offer balance, solid with no weight.

Blessed, in this watching, to see here great beauty.

Two weeks since she fell and shattered bones in hip and neck, a week since she lost consciousness. Four adult children attend with children of their own, a great grandchild due in a month visits via the womb.

“Perhaps mom hangs on to meet her great granddaughter,” someone says.

“I think it would be better if mom meets her before she is born,” says daughter-soon-to-be-grandmother with a smile but not joking, the quickness of her response and the love in this room offers another chance to laugh.

With laughter and warmth they share stories of childhoods where Gaga played her important role, memories brought out and burnished like holiday silver.

So many meals for so many as her own children searched for channels into adulthood, moved back home sometimes with their own kids until fully fledged and swimming on their own. There are many stories.

Running through it all is the common theme: “She made each of us feel like her favorite.”

A grandson reads a book, his grandmother had read it to him, he cannot continue for tears that flow from love and loss. His father sits at mother’s bedside, head resting on one arm, his eyes to the floor while she looks to other vistas.

He caresses his mother’s brow for a long, long time. There is is no measurement for this waiting. He cries, one of his sisters puts her hand on the back of his neck.

The mourning is as natural and accepted the laughter, as the need to go out and get fresh air, to go home for a shower. We attend in shifts. Tears, laughter, errands, waiting, nurses come in every two hours with an opiate to ease her pain.

Until the end each dose eased her breathing for a while, but then seemed to have little effect at all.

A grandson in the Air Force flew home from Arizona, he and his brother stand at her bedside, eyes bright to her. They just stand, holding her hand, no tears, no drama, peace emanates from them. In another world they wore robes and traveled by horse or mule, they are timeless.

Rebel son of rebel dad, long hair creeping from under cap, but pride earned and voice direct to her even as she cannot hear, the love she poured into him pours back to her, from pitcher to cup to pitcher.

The words “I love you” bring from her a smile. They are the words spoken in this room most often.

An Army Sergeant brings his family home from Texas to be here for the services, and uses his leave to be part of this, to help as he can. Soldiers, aviators abound in this family, tough men who do not flinch from their own weeping.

They attend, ageless youth. Baby blankets she made for them, satin edging worn away by their tiny fingers, return to the foot of her bed, warming her now and them now again.

“What will I do, her love was so important to me,” asks a granddaughter, a professional pilot, overwhelmed in this moment by her helplessness.

“I just don’t want to let go of her hand,” responds her mother, who for years absorbed the pain of her mother’s uncertain shuffle to flowers in the garden, worn by years of a long transition.

Daughters together here and now, their tears flow to her in one stream through it all.

Then, a smile, another story, one stands to go to her bed, to hold her cool hands, to feel her feet to be sure they are warm enough as circulation slows.

Over the last days and nights her breath slows, becomes uneven, long pauses cause everyone to stop, to listen, then she gasps as the body’s need of oxygen overwhelms her soul’s desire to flee, the breathing is ragged in her throat, softened only by sponged drops of water.

“There is a door,” she said when she still had a few words left to share, “but I don’t know how to go through it.”

“Daddy waits and will show you the way, your papa waits and will guide you,” her children reply to her stillness. “All those who have passed through will be there.”

Finally, early in the morning her breathing slows even more and grows even more shallow, then just stops. This struggle is over, surrounded by loved ones through it all, not one moment of this departure did she spend alone in this room.

Such a blessing to be here.

What color is your “blue?”

Back in the early days, when the internet was trying to define itself, different web pages sometimes looked different on different brands of computer, depending on which browser was being used.

The pages would be “rendered” (drawn) differently, depending on algorithms used by both the sending and receiving machine.

For grins and giggles, let’s pretend that each “me” of us is a user, and what we think of as “what’s real” is simply the way our browsers (brains) render the input we receive from others machines that, in turn, have to render their inputs, and often do so imperfectly.

What’s drawn depends as much, or even more, on the receiving machine’s algorithm as it does on the dots and dashes transmitted by the sending machine. We all are building and changing our algorithms daily. Most of us, anyway. I know a few who haven’t changed much since the 70s, but that’s another topic.

I bring this up because it’s important to think about why we think the way we do, and to understand that we can hold fast to our “rendering” of reality without much certainty that it is “objectively” true.

In fact, there ain’t no such thing.

Thailand?

“More coffee?” I’m trying to prolong the conversation.

“No, really, I have to go,” you say.

“Me too,” I say. “How about we go together? Thailand?”  You give me a very strange look.

“Thailand? Thailand is half-way around the world.”

“Not quite. Halfway would be off the tip of South Africa. In the water. Not much of a vacation, but I’d probably go there with you.”

“That’s insane,” you say.

“Haven’t we covered that? I prefer crazy.”

“You prefer being crazy over being rational, maybe,” you say, almost like that’s a bad thing.

“You get it! I knew we had something in common!”

“We don’t,” you respond quickly, reaching for some clarity.

“We should,” I respond. “Look at all the fun we could have.” I have no intention of letting clarity anywhere near this conversation.

“You can’t ‘should have’ something in common. You do or you don’t,” you say with slight exasperation. That’s just one of the things I like about you, the way you show frustration with me so easily. Some try to hide it.

“It can’t be both?” I’ve got you now, but you don’t see it coming.

“Having something in common and not having something in common? No, that’s inconsistent.” You pride yourself on a consistency I’m about to turn into a hobgoblin.

“We have coffee in common,” I say.

“That has nothing to do with this,” the rising tone of your voice tells me you sense the trap.

“We don’t have lipstick in common,” I continue, as if you had not said a thing.

“Stop it.” You see it clearly, now.

“So, obviously, we have something, coffee, in common and don’t have something, lipstick, in common. Happens all the time. In fact, having and not having something in common is something we all have in common.”

“I’m leaving,” you say.

“We can be in Thailand this time next month if you’ll say ‘yes.’ ”

“Why Thailand?” you ask, closing the door again.

“Beautiful beaches, beautiful sunsets, good food, good times, laughter. Yadda yadda. All that, but more important, adventure!

“What happened to Bocas Del Toro?”

“You didn’t respond to Bocas. I’m upping the offer.”

“The food is better than in Bocas?”

“You ever go out for Bocas, or do you go out for Thai?”

“That’s not an answer.”

“There’s one in there somewhere. I might look for a boat there.”

“Where?”

“Thailand. Isn’t that what we’re talking about?

“I don’t know what we’re talking about any more.”

“Then let’s just sit here and enjoy each other’s silence. I like that, too. More coffee?”

You shake your head, but you’re still sitting here. I take that as a hopeful sign.

“Why a boat?” you ask a minute later, a little bit curious.

“Have to get home somehow.”

“You would take a boat back from Thailand?” you ask, with some incredulity.

“Not without stopping in New Zealand. Want to go?”

“Who are you again?” Now you’re trying to avoid the question.

“The guy you met for coffee. What do you think?”

“I think you’re very different than I expected.”

“In a bad way?”

“Not bad, just… different.”

Bocas

“Would you like to go to Bocas del Toro in March? Let’s stay a month. Get out of winter.  I know a great little place on the water.”

“But I don’t even know you!” you said.

“You would after a month in Bocas.” I say this with a smile, but it’s pretty much true.

“But you don’t even know me!”

“I would after a month in Bocas.” I was being flippant, I admit it.

“That’s just insane.”

“I prefer crazy.”

“You can use either word,” you say. “They’re synonyms.”

“No, I meant, I prefer crazy. Prefer it over the ordinary, or the conventional, or the really truly rational. I’d rather not spend the last of my days being too rational.”

“Why do you say ‘last of your days?’ Are you sick?”

“No. Just crazy. And that’s not a synonym for sick.”

“So why are these the last of your days?”

“Each today is the last of your days. By definition.” I say this with a smile.

“That isn’t how that’s supposed to be used.” You’re getting frustrated.

“But that’s how I prefer to live.”

“What if you don’t like me?” you ask. I don’t blame you for being a little nervous.

“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t suggest we go to Bocas together.”

“What if I don’t like you?” you asked.

“I guess you go home. Or go to Belize. No, that’s not a good idea, I may go to Belize after Bocas, and if you don’t like me, there might not be room for both of us. It’a a small country. So how about it?”

“How about what?”

“Bocas del Toro. Or Belize. Thailand? Bali? Fiji? I’ll pay for airfare and the hotels. We’ll split meals unless we fall in love.”

“What happens then?”

“That would be a really great way to spend the last of our todays, no matter how many we have left.”

“May I think about it?”

“Of course, but don’t take too long.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I don’t want to spend the last of my days waiting. That would be insane, and I’m not crazy.”

Kitzhaber stung by butterfly

On February 18, 2015, Dr. John Kitzhaber, former governor of Oregon, fell from a cliff 100,000 feet above the floor of the Willamette Valley. Though he was climbing with others, he fell alone. His legacy, found near the capitol in Salem, did not survive.

Many focus on the last moments of his climb, and wonder how an avid outdoorsman could succumb to such a fate.  An autopsy has shown, like many men of his age and “lone-wolfness,” Kitzhaber suffered a malfunction linked to the “Y” chromosome, leaving him vulnerable to a sting by the blind butterfly, Femme Fatale.

Femme Fatale has evolved attributes that attract the susceptible, usually a man with strength and resources who can contribute to her wing span and survival through summer storms. Attached securely to the back of his neck, the butterfly has access to neurons between brain, heart and testes.

There is evidence Kitzhaber may have been stung at least once before by a similar species, rendering him even more susceptible.

Those not exposed to butterfly venom will not grasp the reality-distorting vertigo it induces. Laws of physics seem suspended. Solid walls, inviolable boundaries, the very ground and certainly the mountain path traversed by the former governor, are as if painted on soft curtains that shift and billow in ever changing breezes churned by the butterfly’s softly pulsing wings.

From the outside, it’s as if the sufferer has lost touch with “what’s real” and is blind to appearance, context or consequences. From the inside, it’s as if “what’s real” is just out of reach, pushed farther and farther away by toxins of need, greed and illusion.

Inducing a state of false symbiosis, Femme Fatale attaches her goals to those of the victim, and values are twisted to appear mutual. The result is an exceedingly convincing illusion that the path towards her desires is a path shared and will bring fabulous, if intangible, reward.

The blind butterfly knows only that resources she needs to keep flying are available. Flying is her only goal. Often a butterfly will leave a trail of the broken until the day she loses her shimmer and is seen as another creature altogether.

Ultimately, that’s the tragedy. Right to the point where she takes wing again, those stung by Femme Fatale feel a wondrous future waits just around the next bend in the path. It may be a different path and a different future than they envisioned before the toxins took hold, but it becomes the only one they believe in.

It’s common for them to exclaim, as footing is lost in the loose dirt of illusion, “I love her!” just as the butterfly releases her grip and lets them fall to their fate, while she flies to embrace another.

Making memories

The new book is about half done. The first ten chapters and the last three are written, so I know how it starts and I know where it goes. Weird, but now all I have to do is draw the map between them.

To wrap it up, I pulled a phrase I’d uttered many miles ago to a someone I’d just met. “I’m not ready to let you go.” Later, she and I used that moment often as a reference point for how it all began.

Yesterday, I shared with her I’d used the seminal sentence, even though she and I have been through so much since then.

“I notice you put a lot of your own life into your writing,” she said.

“I hoped to make you smile,” I replied.

“I am smiling,” she said. I could tell from her tone it was true.

“I wanted to give the reader that same sense of hope, vulnerability. In the book it’s different in degree than when I first said it, but the same in what it meant.”

“Hmm,” she said, or something similar.

A couple of months ago, on our last trip over the mountain, she was engrossed looking at photos she’d taken on her phone of places we’d traveled. “It’s all about making memories,” she said.

I wanted to say, look at the snow in the trees, wet leaves on black pavement, take my hand in yours, make this a memory! Be with me! But I just drove, knowing that grasping harder would squeeze the remaining life out of what we had, not knowing how to keep her from slipping away.

So I put words I’ve heard and words I’ve said and wanted to say into the mouths of characters in a novel half finished. It’s a complete fiction woven of moments some of which are real, by a writer trying to make sense of what is and what’s not, using memories to create something that never happened.

It’s Never Enough

After a season of racing, Ceegar and I finished almost the same number of laps, but I finished two more than he did. After my engine issues in Seattle, after his dropped mirror in Spokane and flat tires and the wreck in Portland, it came down to two laps.

I’m headed north this weekend to get some sort of award for that. It doesn’t mean I’m the best driver, because I’m not, or my car is the fastest, because it’s not. It means I finished with two more laps over four or five races, and it’s a chance to get together with friends.

The organization we race with is letting cars 15 years newer join the fun. I’m all for it if it brings more people out to play, because our sport is dying. But part of me doesn’t think it will make much difference. Kids don’t grow up to be gearheads anymore.

Strange, because we live in a time when the most amazing cars ever sold are coming right from the factory, cars with 600+ horsepower that handle better than the most sophisticated race car of 40 years ago. Better than much of what we run on the track on race weekends.

Putting that kind of firepower in the hands of the untrained is stupidly irresponsible. Eventually enough bad things will happen that nobody will be able to buy these machines.

Instead, Google electric cars will drive us safely to buy crap from China we don’t need sold at whichever shopping mall we programmed in and while we play with our email until we get there. Won’t even have to look outside.

It’s probably time for me to think about slowing down, but I saw a T-shirt years ago that said, “The faster you drive, the slower you age.” Maybe that’s something from Einstein, I don’t know. But for those of us out there every season, it seems to be true. Or maybe we’re just a bunch of aging adolescents who believe it’s true by avoiding the mirror.

At some point, reality is going to catch up with us. I worry about that a little bit. It’s not just kids today who have access to power and speed that might exceed their ability.

Cowboy’s building a new car, Canuck will probably have his finished. Beater will be ready to go in his new Frankenvette. Ceegar will get it done with his Mustang, he always does, and I’m not exactly sitting out here in MiddleofNowhere Oregon waiting for the sun to set.

We may be building cars that are faster than we are. I wonder if something bad is going to happen one of these days because of that. We’re not fly fishing out there. If we coax these thundering, howling beasts up from 160 mph to 167 mph, what might happen? Those are speeds that professional drivers would have loved to turn not that long ago.

Do we have the chops for that? The judgment? What happens if we build bigger engines but don’t have bigger brakes? If parts fail that we amateurs don’t want to spend money on?

I suppose that’s the nature of the game, and we’re still playing. Bigger motors, wider tires, faster cars. Ready or not, here we come. It’s not about awards. We’re still out there because that’s what we do, the cars are faster because that’s what it takes, we keep looking for more because that’s who we are.

It’s never enough.