View My Complete Profile

Click Image To Enlarge

The early morning cataract road
buried between barriers of brush
is weighted by a veil of sky
and laid mute, softly hushed.

These blind roads lead to never,
to destinations unseen, unknown,
life-highways leading to our fate
and this one is my own.

This road is the murky stage
upon which my dreams are played
and though I walk it nightly,
As I step forward, I am afraid.

Scene: On phone with Sarah, who's been a little under the weather the past few days.

Me: How are you feeling?"
Her: I'm a little nauseous.
Me: No, you're a little nauseated.
(Brief pause)
Her (in a confused tone): Huh?
Me: You're a little 'nauseated,' not 'nauseous.'
Her: What do you mean?
Me: 'Nauseous' means 'tending to cause nausea,' as in 'Rotten eggs give off a nauseous odor.' 'Nauseated,' on the other hand, means 'experiencing a feeling of nausea.'
Her: Really?
Me: Yeah. Think of it this way: 'Nauseous' has the same meaning as 'nauseating.'
Her: I see.
Me: So, you're nauseated.
Her: Yeah, because you're nauseous.

I have become fast friends with a couple in my neighborhood here at the lake. Paul and Evelyn retired here about four years ago, pouncing on a great deal on a fantastic lake house when it was liquidated in the former owners' divorce.

Until my exile landed me here permanently, I had known most of the neighbors only in passing, a result of my having spent only a few days here at a time. The natives, I have learned, tend to view those who own weekend getaway houses in the area as outsiders, not out of any snobbery or animosity, but out of the practical fact that including temporary sojourners in their social plans makes for awkward scheduling. The weekenders' houses sit shuttered and secured, dark and empty most of the time, and signs of occupancy occur only sporadically and without warning. Attempting to keep track of the nomads' wanderings is too great a headache when compiling a guest list for a party. It's easier just to ignore them.

Before my full-time settlement here, I'd known Paul and Evelyn only by sight. I'm not sure I'd ever even spoken with them previously. Their house is directly across the cove from mine, so I would see them whenever I visited. We'd wave at each other from our boats as we throttled up and headed out for a tour of the lake, but that was the extent of our neighborly encounters.

A few months ago, before the weather eased from summer into winter, I happened to run into Paul while I was out for a walk. He, too, was out for a little exercise, so we walked together. As we walked, he told me that he'd learned of the fire-sale price for their house two days after he'd been offered a mountain of cash by his employer as an early retirement incentive. He took it as divine providence that two such fortuitous events would coincide and they bought the place.

He told me that it felt strange, at first, to think that all of his friends his age were arising every morning and rushing off to work while he slept late. The hustle and bustle of his work had become so firmly rooted as a part of his life as to be almost instinctive and it had left him fidgety. The urge to get up and go do something was as ingrained as the natural migratory pressure birds feel before flying south for the winter. Sitting still was not his nature and he began to wonder whether he'd made the correct decision in retiring early.

He took up running, solely to silence that part of him that screamed when he tried to relax, and his new hobby eventually proved to be the medium by which he learned that he'd finally shed the restlessness. He told me that he was out running one day and a thought popped into his head: "What's the rush? Why not slow down and enjoy the scenery?" They were questions he couldn't answer, so he decided to take a stroll instead of going for a run. Even the phraseology convicted him - to take a stroll versus to go for a run, the former implying doing something at one's leisure and the latter implying being controlled by something external.

He said it was an epiphany, one that allowed him to recognize the value of laziness. The point, he said, was made even more evident when he learned a few days later that at precisely the same moment as he'd decided to convert his run into a walk, one of his former business colleagues suffered a fatal heart attack. He embraced sloth, a trait he'd found unseemly in his former life, as soon as he realized that he'd earned it.

Evelyn is delightful, as well. She's pretty, she's smart, she's warm and kind. She loves reading and we've spent many an afternoon talking about books we've each read. About half the books in my house right now belong to her, but there's plenty of room for them on the shelves because half of mine are at her house. She also loves to cook, another passion of mine, and I've been tempted to invite myself to their house for dinner on more than one occasion when the smells from her kitchen have escaped the confines of their house and wafted across the cove.

She's also unpredictable. Her interests are so diverse that I'm constantly surprised by new discoveries about her. A few weeks ago, I walked out onto the deck with my morning cup of tea and saw her waist deep in the water across the cove flyfishing. Per Paul, it's one of her passions, but I'd never have guessed it. Last weekend, we were discussing a book she said was a must-read, and when she led me down the hallway in their house to retrieve it, I passed a framed medallion hanging on the wall. Closer inspection revealed it to be a Gold Medal she'd won in the 1960 Olympics. I would never have pegged her as a jock.

These are fun people, but as engaging as they are individually, they're not much fun as a couple. I now recognize the possibility that their children's living far away might have been intentional. My neighbors bicker with each other constantly, and my one-on-one encounters with each frequently involve a lot of complaints about the absent spouse. To the best of my estimation, Evelyn's greatest fault, viewed from Paul's perspective, is that she's a huge nag, always pestering him to attend to some unimportant task while he's in the course of doing something else. Paul's fatal flaw, Evelyn has opined, is that he's close-minded and temperamental, argumentative in the extreme, and unforgiving of others' simple mistakes.

Both are correct, but the greatest thing they share in common is that they won't let pointless arguments drop. I have taken to visiting only when one of their cars is missing from the driveway, but occasionally, the other returns while I am still present. Yesterday, though, they both got a dose of reality. Something happened that demonstrated to them how petty their wars have been.

I was sitting on their deck with Paul while Evelyn was at a meeting (she was elected to the county Board of Supervisors a few months ago, another fact about her that would have surprised me had I not already known - it was difficult to miss from all the campaign signs that lined the roadways prior to election day). When she got home, she came out onto the deck and they immediately resumed some battle that I gathered had been raging for a day or two.

Their verbal volley was intense for a few moments, until Evelyn finally retreated back inside the house. I tried to hide my embarrassment, but it would have hardly been noticed had I been obvious about it; Paul's temples were throbbing and he began sounding his complaints to my barely sympatheic ear.

Fifteen minutes later, though, Evelyn reemerged from the house. Paul stiffened, waiting for the skirmish to resume. When he looked up, however, he saw that her face had softened and that she had tears welling in her eyes. She smiled at Walter, then handed him the cordless phone she bore in her hand. Walter took it, muttered a suspicious 'hello' into the phone, and received the news that they had just become grandparents.

The sabres were returned to their scabbards, and with sobs of delight, a truce was called. They hugged and apologized, embarrassed at their silliness and gaining a fresh new perspective on what's important in life.

That kid'll do great things in life, I'm certain. He'd only been in the world a few hours and he'd already made it a better place.