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December 11, 2001 of silver backs and linings There was a time I believed that dark clouds eclipsed only other dark clouds.  Now I can see silver linings or, at least, diamonique-studded linings.  True, I am alone and struggling to live sober in a drinking world.  Yes, I have lost my wife of 23 years.  But the calm that has replaced the storm allows me to help others and to help myself.  It lets others help me. There has developed within me a light that others claim to see.  Sure, these are people who eat mushrooms sprouting from cowshit, but that's beside the point.  I comfort the wounded, embrace the lonely, and cheer the downtrodden.  If asked, I will fondle the succulent. Before I trudged with the single sober, I knew nothing of housekeeping, cooking, or Christmas decorating.  Now I keep a spotless house, I feed myself, and I have interspersed kumquats among fir branches to festive effect. Then there are my helpers, my precious elves.  Sisters who would take a bullet for me or, at least, a BB from a Daisy pumped five times.  There is my reclusive friend I'll call Boo Radley.  Boo reminds me of a Silverback who has retreated high into the mountains to avoid contact with other Hominids.  He makes the gorillas in the mist look like the Jaggers in Studio 54.  But he lets me play Dian Fossey and get just close enough to observe him and learn.  The list seems endless:  Jeff the Enabler; Brian of Home Depot; the Finns; the red-haired Alabama farm girl; Fish Deefers; Lamar; and assorted mystics.  I am cared for in my present form. Today a lovely friend gave to me as a house-warming gift a Bromeliad.  I was told she had raised the plant from a "pup" born of a Bromeliad I had given her four years ago after she had undergone surgery.  I did not remember giving her a plant, but I remember very little from back then.  I'm glad I gave it to her and I'm honored to nurture its offspring.

©  2001 by the beastmaster