If you've just landed here, forgive the shape of the place, I've been too busy to straighten up

Listening to: Bill Evans, Live at the Lighthouse

Caught a little unawares by Trusty playing guest blogger for Michele and her "say hello" (or whatever it is) game, I realize my latest post SUCKED (not this one but the one before this one but now that I mention it, this one as well). Therefore, if you're going to poke around, read this post, it's more "me" than this post or my half-assed attempt at a post previous to this.

Trust me, trusty, no good deed goes unpunished.

If you want to know about my love of music (and how it affects this blog), go here and find out how my friends and I exchange music. If you want to know about my romantic love, go here and she'll fill you in about our glorious synchronicity. Finally, if you want to know about the loves that brought me here to begin with, go here, here, and here (although there's much more).

Brushing aside shameless promotion, I'll relate this incident from yesterday, notable because I'm such a skeptic and the experience totally weirded me out; notable because I chose it so.

At the park, the girls dipping their feet into into the creek, I was pushing Zeke in the swing, "Higher, daddy, higher!" he kept exhorting. Although I love pushing my kids on the swing (and keep reminding myself that these moments are ephemeral, a drop in the ocean), I was anxious to have him grow tired of swing and ask to get out, go to the slide, the monkey bars, join his sisters at the creek. I had a book to read and the idea of going to the park is to a) let them run themselves insane so that they'll pass out upon hitting the pillow and b) they'll by-and-large get this done with little participation on my part, therefore, allowing me to get some reading done.

I should add that 'b' is a fallacy that recommends my certification as clinically insane (if we define 'insanity' as "repeating the same mistakes, expecting different results").

Pushing Zeke on the swing, higher and higher, he asked, "How do we get over there, daddy?"

"Over there?" I wondered, looking past the lilacs, the wrought-iron fence, the stream, the sidewalk, the road, towards the Mexican restaurant, "There," I asked, "Over there? Over the fence? Across the street?"

"Yeah, there," he emphasized, "How do we get over there?"

I thought about his question, why he was asking, what kind of an answer he was seeking. In my mind, I forged my answer, "We fly," I thought, "We swing and we fly over there."

I kept pushing him in the swing, his silhouette a speck against the gray clouds that sagged low against the crest of the mountains, threatening rain.

"We fly," he said as he soared towards the clouds, "We swing and we fly over there."

A chill ran through me at the recognition of his words, his mirroring my thoughts exactly, verbatim, as if he'd read my mind.

These are the things I write about. In case I get too old and forget moments like these.

These are my fireflies in a jar.