death is life

This is a love letter to the explosive possibility of renewal that comes from suffering and loss.. which I have no doubt most reading this can relate to.

Last week my best friend Dianna and I broke away from Houston into the Central Texas hills, to breathe some cleaner air and reclaim what was unfolding as an especially rough holiday season - one gutted by the sudden death of yet another close mutual friend - the fourth person we’d lost in common this year. Dianna followed me in her camper van as I took my DR on her first multi-day trip of any kind in over a year (those of you who know me well understand this fact to be bloody sacrilege. Yes, you do..).

For the umpteenth time I was reminded of how soul-cleansing the act of stepping away can be. Physical distance, coupled with nature and a bit of silence, creates space in the head for contemplation. There’s safety in not having to act in the moment - to gaze into oneself slowly, with the added pleasure of unwrapping of past events, ideas and decisions with a trusted mate who knows you all too well. Every night we’d build a campfire and stare into it while the smoke soaked into our pores, that thickly perfumed hickory smoke that takes days to wash out of your hair. The flames dancing around in never-before-seen colors - blue-greens, magentas and hues of iris-purple - hypnotizing away the waves of pain and the prospects of doom and gloom that creep up while the people you never realized just how much you’d appreciated start dropping around you like expired endangered butterflies.

The emotions don’t go away. But they ease up on your heart once the realization hits you that you’re strong enough to weather and live through them. 3 months ago I wrote about the gifts my mother left me in her passing. She isn’t here to pick up the phone and absorb my anguish any more. In her absence I have no choice but to turn inward and find her strength and comfort in myself and in the words shared by those close to me who are still alive.

My motorcycle, whom I call Ivy (after Poison Ivy, the iconic, gorgeous, bad-ass guitarist for the Cramps), has been carrying me around faithfully for four years, mile after mile, without issue. She’s been, until a month ago, my only source of transportation and has taken me to both coasts and back, continuously serving as my psychological conduit to the outside world, my metal horse and alter ego. When Dianna and I reached our first camp ground out in Garner State Park, I started to hear some new sounds coming from deep within her engine, a kind of panting whine that was especially pronounced while she was still and idling. I didn’t like it.. but it didn’t seem to affect her performance much, and I was too far away from anyone who could look at her to do anything about it.. so I put it out of my mind, figuring I’d deal with it later. Christmas Day, Dianna headed back to Houston, and I spent the next couple of days camping alone with the bike.. and the noise gradually loudened to the sound of metal scraping metal, coming from deep inside her lower end, like the worst possible stomach ache that can only end in… well, use your imagination..

From a mystery-brand gas station in a treeless part of southern San Marcos, I called up my mechanic and described the sound. “That’s not good,” he said. I was 200 miles from home.. too far away to tow it. So I gassed up, got back on her and hoped for the best, readying myself for (obviously) the worst. I figured I’d stick to back roads to minimize stress and risk of a high speed breakdown.. but well… when I found myself on Interstate 10, I just tossed myself up to the gods and went for it. Some part of me knew that she was under more duress at slow speeds, when moving through the gears and at idle. So I pushed her home as hard as I could, maintaining 70 mph for three straight hours. Under my gloves I could feel my knuckles turn white. My knees and thighs ached from the tension that gripped my entire body.

The closer we got to Houston, the thicker the traffic got. A buildup of moisture blackened the clouds to the northeast, and the rain started coming down as we climbed the tall, narrow interchange ramp onto Beltway 8 toward Jay’s repair shop. I felt a sickening, guttural pop that ran through both of us like an electric shock. But Ivy kept going. Two miles away at a traffic light, she stalled…sputtering, she started back up. It wasn’t till I rounded the right turn up into Jay’s driveway that she finally died. She came to a gentle, quiet stop. And I pushed her the remaining few hundred feet to the line of other bikes waiting to be cured.

So, yeah. It’s not good. A bearing cage deep in her crankcase for whatever reason blew apart, sending little bits of metal shrapnel into much of the rest of the engine. We don’t know how bad it is yet, or whether or not the engine can be rebuilt or need to be replaced altogether. To fix her will cost a whole lot and I’ll be without her for a long time.

But here’s the thing. *She got me home.* Kind of like the little black horse in the movie “True Grit”, who dies in the act of galloping across the plains to deliver its young master to safety. My bike is in pieces in a repair shop, and I am here walking around, able to talk about it.

Here we are, on the first day of a new decade. I have to admit that I feel like I’m a tree in a forest that is being steadily razed by a reckless logging company. Surrounding me are the blank spaces left by friends, friends of friends and family members who were once planted right next to me, or down the path a little, but who aren’t here any more. So I sink my roots down deeper and reach my branches out to the other trees still there, and we help hold each other up, whether the axes are coming for us or not. Because we are still standing.

Here’s to the glory in being alive.