mostly back

    I've returned from a very short trip to the home state. I drove five hours up on Tuesday night, then caught a few hours' sleep. Wednesday morning was a funeral, one of the nicest I've seen. It was both sad and really, really beautiful—a real tribute to the man and to his family. Afterward, I had lunch with friends and then lunch with my parents (don't ask, it's a sort of local thing) and then drove back. I am incredibly tired of being in the car, incredibly tired of the CDs that I took along (why so similar?!), incredibly tired of the Fritos and peanut M&Ms that fueled my rides and served as "dinner" for the last two days.
    I am at work, feeling personally and professionally disjointed. I'm struggling with the 780s, recataloging music CDs in a way that is at once organized and useful; it's no simple feat. What I would really like to do is to go home and go back to bed, because it's hard to believe I'm of much use to anyone here today. My mind is on 'greater things'. Friendship, vows, honesty, commitment, family, a 45-year marriage and the meaning of "death parts us," what spurs us to do the most unreasonable things: to drive 600 miles in a day, just to say, "If you need anything...;" to tell someone "I'm glad you're home" when you've seen them less than a day before; to love someone despite wanting (or even because you want [strongly]) to kick their teeth in.
Sometimes at night when the heart stumbles and stops
a full second endless the endless steps
that lead me on through this time terrain
without edges and beautiful terrible
are gone never to proceed again.

Here is a moment of enormous trouble
when the kaleidoscope sets unalterable
and at once without meaning without motion
like a stalled aeroplane in the middle sky
ready to fall down into a waiting ocean.

Blackness rises. Am I now to die
and feel the steps no more and not see day
break out its answering smile of hail all's well
from east full round to east and hear the bird
whistle all creatures that on earth do dwell?

Not now. Old heart has stopped to think of a word
as someone in a dream by far too weird
to be unlikely feels a kiss and stops
to praise all heaven stumbling in all his senses...
and suddenly hears again the endless steps.
[Kenneth Mackenzie (1913-1955), 'Caesura']