Seeing Forward By Looking Back While Catching Up With Fairies

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Strange to think that a week has gone by since I drove to Manchester to fly out to Tulsa.  I got back into a whirlwind of activity  that hasn't stopped.

This is not a bad thing except for the paucity of time to think things out.  I need to take some time off to think through the things I experienced on my time off.

Most surprising - and strangely connected - is the closing of one of my favorite bookstores just across the street from JavaNet (in whose window I'm sitting).

Books Etc. was run by one of my Cumberland music families.  This knowledge didn't get me any discounts but it did get me a smile and occasional recommendation from the owners.  I remember the "Common Book", a large bound blank notebook kept on a table in the doorway.  People from all over the city would comment in it about all sorts of things.  

Long conversations would happen between strangers who would leave anonymous epistles in the book for each other - often separated by days.  The only rule - well, there weren't any real rules, only conventions - was one of an implied respect for everyone who wrote in it.

I wish it was still there - it went away, as many of these things do, because some folks decided to use it to exhibit their lack of class by being vulgar and insulting.

The reason I mention this is to remind all of us that changes come for all sorts of reasons, good and bad - but that changes come, whether we will or not.

This reflects my experiences in Tulsa.

I walked in Woodward Park - sat in my seat in the Sunken Garden behind it.  The voices, fairies, if you will, still spoke to me, welcomed me back to where I had spent so many stolen Summer nights as a Junior High student.  I had snuck out of my house - I'm sure my parents must have known, though perhaps not.

I had been afraid that perhaps I had changed so much - become so "worldwise" or "cynical" or just so ossified in my imagination and experience of the immediacy of life that I could no longer hear their voices, or listen to their songs.

Well - it doesn't look like it.

You could sit there for a decade and not hear anything but the pleasant soughing of the wind through the trees surrounding the Garden.  It's really very pretty.  Even at this point in the Oklahoma Spring there is life and the start of a riot of color that won't come to full life for a month or more.

But it is so much further along than New England is.  It made for a nice break from the austerity that surrounds me - but that austerity will lead to a richer experience as well.

Oh - fairies.  I think we find fairies - or perhaps the fairer voices of our true natures - wherever we our most ourselves.  I hear them here in Maine when I'm walking in the Oaks, along the shore, even in the Orchard, sometimes.

So I'm a little torn about making this current series of posts a diary of my travels - I suppose some narrative is germaine to my apprehending the meaning of it all.  A little bit of the past will help give me perspective on where my future will lead.

And it was a great trip.