All Terrain The Tenses

I'm reading back in time: 1884, the text first published; August 2010, this sense of being adrift. I'm not as chronologically confused as that sounds. There is, though, this sense that if I've not mastery of these first three dimensions, I've at least firm comprehension of their trappings and uses. (Remember: our volumes, no matter how verbose, shall always be composed to the tune of length by width by height.) Time, though? Time betrays me.

I drift in time. Think of it as a pool sometimes, swimming to and fro, past and present and future, as if it were a opportunistic trout. (Being clever, extending the analogy: we were all just fishing for a chance at greatness - or something - here, in America.) I think of a question once asked, a lifetime (or two?) ago in a dim Portland bar. As I explained: I struggle sometimes in differentiating past and present. I lied earlier, when I said I wasn't chronologically confused. More telling, perhaps, is that I remember the conversation differently each time.

Related: I admit I have less difficulty now than once I did; I'm better grounded, and float less. I'm less prone to swimming sightless, or putting weights to lyrics to which I've no right. The music I no longer steal and make my own reminds me I'm getting ahead of myself. That's another conversation, another debate, another circling 'round and 'round, the edges each time muted towards hushed understanding.

I think of how you and I talk. A step forward, I think, remembering this morning's runners and walkers. I remember something you said to me once, or I said to you, one of us being clever in a moment of mutual self-deprecation: A step backward can be a step forward if we change the way we face. Something along such blurry lines. I'm a little sad for the people we were in the habit of becoming then; more so, though, I'm glad for the people we're finding we are now. Perspectives. Time shifts in the shadows.

We talk in the quiet of night, she and I, and more so in the still softly shaded dawn. I'm thinking backwards, and sluggish, in ways that are less than true. Communication is a street paved with practice, and practice alone.

I don't now what to tell you, how to talk about this week's prompt. I mined the archives, found a piece to rework, resubmit: a city of trails, and how fitting the terrain seemed. She'd made loving edits and suggestions and then we'd gone to bed, sedated with Nyquil. From thence I've no recollection, though she's since filled me in.

This is what happens when I take Nyquil: I get grouchy and crotchety and upset her. And then I fall asleep. I've told you the rest of the story since.

I love relationships, I said. She asked me to clarify. I think I did. Now, then, for you: relationships are not easy. They are not stable. They are the mountain trails that are so busy kicking your ass these weekends; this relationship is no less bereft of potential land mines than any other. What makes it different, though, is how we talk. We tell each other where our explosives are buried, try to help each other in unearthing and disarming such munitions, our bent and aching places. Most of the time, I would say, we're at least modestly successful.

You downplay the things you mean, a friend told me. This is true. A change in that trend, then: this speaks of magic. I don't know what else to say. Deleting old Facebook posts reminds me I've probably already said the wrong thing too many times to take chances now.

I think of an article I read once about a research team determined to quantify the calculus of love, interactions between pairs mapped and slopes plotted. Derivations were taken, of course - positive for growth; zero for stasis - but it strikes me that either the article over-simplified the nature of their research (which is, admittedly, quite possible) or the research team did not fully appreciate the dynamics of couplehood: simultaneously concave and convex, all ebb and flow, we cannot be charted. Relationships are not regular in their tides, nor in their anger. Nor in forgiveness, nor in love.

We are boulder fields in the middle of alpine meadows, the dip in the middle of a rise, the table top ridge beset by sheer basaltic face. We are worn down even as we are renewed. We run dry and find a spring; near drowning, we find ourselves suddenly ashore. This is grace, I think, that we are better when things are worse. She is that for me, and I hope to be that for her, and no math could ever map such a terrain, I don't think.

I couldn't be happier about understanding less.