Letters to Melissa - A Thousand Times

Sweet Melissa:

Oh, I miss you, Nettie Moore,
and my happiness is o'er
winters gone, the river's on the rise
I loved you then, and ever shall
but, there's no one left here to tell
The world has gone black before my eyes...

Bob Dylan, "Nettie Moore"


A week of wondering what this--my thousandth--post (counting those never published, still in edit mode), would entail has led me back to you, Sweet Melissa. So much leads back to you...

You recall, of course, the beginnings of this old blog (June, 2004) when, after our morning run, we'd return home and I'd create the rant of the day that seldom meandered further than another denunciation of the tragedy that was and is and forever will be Dubya's war; a conflagration not only on the other side of the world, but in a world a thousand, ten-thousand years removed from the whole diapason of Western civilization. The duplicity of it all conjured a rage that, almost daily, spilled over into my little posts; my meager entreats meant for the unseen, unknown, perhaps unengaged eyes and minds of those who might catch a glance, here and there, of what jutted from my mind to my fingers out into what remains for me the unknowable mystery of cyberspace.

Yes, and then there were the short stories I shared with what became a small bevy of cyber friends, gay men who took some little interest in more than two decades of representations in prose of what gay life was when I was enmeshed in its trappings; before, during and after the appearance of the bogeyman--Old Mister A who began his insidious visitation upon us all, probably well before many of my so-called cyber friends were even born. Those short stories (many of which had been published in, um, esoteric mags), surely shocked the casual browser who might have stumbled onto my blog, not really knowing what they were getting themselves into until the rawness of the truth of those times was revealed. At that point--in my life and certainly within the safe anonymity of my blog--I really didn't care who thought what with regard to the content of my posts. I was, after all, in the process of becoming a more fully honest person; a more self-accepting person.

Dare I smile, Sweet Melissa, with the affirmation that I have been posting rants about my perception of Mayor John Hickenlooper's shortcomings since the beginning of the old blog, since June, 2004? Yes, I smile. Those rants continue to this day.

Perhaps there is some devolution from the sublime, noble rant to the whiny. In the beginning, as I said, the good fight promulgated on the blog focused mostly on the war, on Dubya, on the killings, on the insanity of it all. Now, well, I write about zoning issues and snow removal. Where's the nobility in that! But, then how long can one begin each day with the macabre images of insanity before one, himself, becomes encased in some adamantine shell where even the simple joy of a scarlet sunset or the majestic nobility, the essential worth of life reflected in the eyes of, yes, dogs becomes less than what it surely ought to be: miraculous?

Ah, but the pictures. So many pictures. A thousand posts means little when compared to the worth of pictures and the thousand words each of those pictures communicated over these past several years. The trees, the ducks, the geese, the Cormorants and the Pelicans, the camping trips, the scaling of a Colorado Fourteener, the old houses, the rivers, nieces, nephews, family, friends, the deer, the mountains and, oh, yes, each of you, Melissa; David's and my children, our babies.

Has the devolution, with this post, slip-slid into syrupy? Perhaps.


So, Sweet Melissa, I end this portentous post--my thousandth--with Sarah. You, of course, wouldn't like her. She is, like you were, the Queen Bee of her realm. She insists no others (critters, not people), tread near either David or me. But, unlike you, she is possessed by secrets--perhaps demons--that David and I will never know. We are the third family she has known, and her secrets surely have come from those prior lives, if you will, that do so haunt her, at times. I have come to call her "soulful" Sarah. Her eyes, if you study them for a moment, communicate something deep, something abiding that we--David and I, as mere mortals--will never fully understand.

In ending this post, Sweet Melissa, I can tell you that the quote from Bob Dylan, with which I began this piece, rang true for some time after your passing. Yes, I miss you still; I loved you then and ever shall. But, please know that the world remains a sphere of beauty and dread; a lovely and an ugly place.

Perhaps, my next thousand posts will reflect a more reasoned attempt to grasp more beauty than dread.