To The Catcher's Moon

12/28/2006 8:19 AM – 8:41 AM

In the dawn, the light strips away the weight of those things unseen. Dreaming of sharks and cooking, we set our boat in the water and sailed fast away from the sinking ship. Where are we then, when we forget out own peaceable natures? Just the moon there, sailing down mountainsides in desert lands.

No meaning then, just peace. You can wish for a cigarette but, someday, you’ll have to give that up too. There must be some thing that one can retain in order to not feel the part of a fake, a phony. Somewhere, there is some part that will always remain the flawed but sharp-toothed catcher in the rye. Preserve him somehow, but add the honest stair to the back wall of one’s own closet. What is growing up? Perhaps it will always be the myth that it struck me when my friends started having children. And I, so dramatic, saw in myself that catcher by the cliff. But what boy didn’t? Even here though, there must be some evidence of an honest attempt at non-phony.

“Give me humility in which alone is rest” and Merton knew. Perhaps he too dreamed of being the catcher, but the catcher remains better fiction and the phony is found in the stuff that makes up our bones. Up then and on to the task of remembering this moment that indwells and surrounds and we, forgetting our false nature, remember the honesty of matter and energy in time. In the going is the dream; in the staying is the work. We pick up and start again. We grow up and remember to forget our pose of doubt. One does believe in love, though one doesn’t trust it. One trusts love though one doesn’t know what it is. There’s dreams and there’s work. The warmth of water in silver pipes creeps into cold walls painted pale blue and we can taste the sweetened coffee and smell the lingering tobacco smoke. The world revolves. The days grow longer to the first day of summer. Through three windows, I can see a streetlight. There’s a day and in the moment is enough to know the whole. Then the moon grows dim and the blue grows huge.