I am sitting in my favorite spot in my chair by the stoop of the cabin at the “Hotel California” in Sebastian. It’s a beautiful day! Sunny with some distance clouds teasing me with hints of rain but it is just not in the cards today. For me, it is a day of rest. I had planned a ride over to the Gulf Coast but it just became onerous doing the planning and my heart wasn’t in it. It soon became a “gotta” instead of an “I wanna”. So, here I sit enjoying a beautiful Florida February day.
I have to resist this Pavlovian response to the good weather to get on the Harley and ride. I need a rest day to recharge and figure out what I really want to do over the next few days. My friend Bud dropped in this morning to try out my sissy bar bag from my ’06 Road Glide to see if it would work okay on his ’07 Street Glide for some trips he has planned to Daytona Bike Week and the Leesburg rally in April. I am not using the bag now since my 2011 Road Glide Ultra has the TourPak and a bag for the top of the TourPak to carry my belongings when I hit the road again this spring.
The bag worked out just fine so I have let him have it on indefinite loan. Bud and I made plans to take a run down to the Fort Pierce Thursday night Bike Nite which, we have heard, is a must attend event. It will be a leisurely 30 mile ride there then some meet and greet with other bikers in the area. Then, it was off to the grocery store to fill the fridge and wine locker for the weekend.
The restlessness I feel is coming from the hard calls of reality to get the year end closed on my 2 small businesses and get my personal taxes filed. I also have to figure out the bureaucracy of Canada Customs so I can cross the border with my Florida registered Harley. I also need to figure out where I will stay for a while once I hit Canada to take care of other personal business and to have an address to receive my bills and maybe a big fat ole tax refund.
There is also a bit of a cloud in my psyche about relationships and the distances that fall between us whether we are friends or in a relationship. I penned this a while ago.
Soft touches of your words
Applied to the canvas of my soul
Light touches and bold sweeps
Soft yellows and vivid magenta
And in the background a soft blue shading
As the distance stands between us
I find the irony in how we are like the pair of woodpeckers in the live oak above me who are busy working on separate limbs together but not together. When one moves to share the branch, the other moves over a branch. It seems like a mannered type of dance that is all about keeping a distance but appearing to be together. In our lives, how often do we let the task at hand or the interest of the moment become the space between two branches.
On my ride down to Jensen Beach I had Paula Cole’s This Fire record on the trusty iPod. Her song where Have All The Cowboys gone captures the sense of how we create distances with our pre-occupations and sometimes, the indifference bred of the familiarity of a relationship that is stable and routine. It is something I will keep in mind as a “want” is to keep freshness in a relationship by tending to it in a mindful way so it does not stagnate and become full of spaces where the distance stands between.
Oh you get me ready in your 56 Chevy
Why don't we go sit down in the shade
Take shelter on my front porch
The dandy lion sun scorching,
Like a glass of cold lemonade
I will do the laundry if you pay all the bills
CHORUS:
Where is my John Wayne
Where is my prairie son
Where is my happy ending
Where have all the cowboys gone
Why don't you stay the evening
Kick back and watch the TV
And I'll fix a little something to eat
Oh I know your back hurts from working on the tractor
How do you take your coffee my sweet
I will raise the children if you pay all the bills
Chorus
I am wearing my new dress tonight
But you don't, but you don't even notice me
Say our goodbyes
Say our goodbyes
Say our goodbyes
We finally sold the Chevy
When we had another baby
And you took the job in Tennessee
You made friends at the farm
And you joined them at the bar
Almost every single day of the week
I will wash the dishes while you go have a beer
Chorus
Where is my Marlboro man
Where is his shiny gun
Where is my lonely ranger
Where have all the cowboys gone
Where have all the cowboys gone
Where have all the cowboys gone
But, enough heavy thought on this very pleasant day. It is time to make a late lunch and get organized for the ride down to Bike Nite. Yesterday’s ride to Jensen Beach was a beauty. This will be a good ride too in the company of friends and there will be the chance to make new friends while we are there. Life remains good.
From the still untitled book
And in the whispering silence of the rain
I heard soft chords and scattered notes
Diana Krall passages
Written in soft fonts
Into the fabric of my day
A feeling of red velvet
Softly
Touching
And a final chord echoes against wet glass
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