This past weekend I spent a day with a friend in Washington D.C. among the memorials as he described "doing all the dead presidents and wars." At every memorial the words of Wilfred Owen were in my head, "The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est /Pro patria mori." The World War II memorial denies these words by presenting the glory of war, the Korean War memorial suggests them with images and no words while including "collateral damage" in the estimates of the dead, and the Vietnam memorial with its black reflecting wall in which one sees one’s face reflected among the names of the dead engraves those words in even the hardest of hearts.

There are other types of wars and deadlier lies.

#2

I ran away from Arkansas to Florida almost 25 years ago lost and with a broken heart to find the ocean and relief. I have been an obsessive solo beach walker all those years looking over the ocean for something. When I was looking on the beach I was in the wrong place. Poets write bad poetry about their lovers' eyes and it is a terrible literary conceit. Those eyes that vary from green to blue … I looked into them as we walked through the wars . . .

#3

Months ago his cryptic quote from a movie song before naked time . . . sometimes falling feels like flying . . . just for a little while.

#4

Damon Fowler sings Leon Russell’s "Tightwire"

I'm up on the tightrope ,

one side’s hate and one is hope

It's a circus game with you and me.

I'm up on the tightwire ,

linked by life and the funeral pyre

But the tophat on my head is all you see.

And the wire seems to be the only place for me

A comedy of errors and I'm falling

Like a rubber neck giraffe,

you look into my past

Well, baby you're just to blind to see.

I'm up in the spotlight,

oh does it feel right

The altitude seems to really get to me.

I'm up on the tightwire

linked by life and the funeral pyre

Putting on a show for you to see.

#5

Last night a scene from the television series "Sex and the City" kept invading my dreams. Carrie is explaining to her artist boyfriend that her friend Samantha has breast cancer and will be fine. The artist tells her maybe not that he lost someone he loved to cancer. Carrie became angry, "You can’t say that. That can’t happen. I can’t lose her. She is my family . . . she is my insides."

#6

While in DC I lost my friend for a few hours on the national mall during the book fair. There were thousands of people walking around. He was unfamiliar with landmarks and could not get to me. It is a place that is very familiar to me since I spent much time in DC with my family as a small child. In the end he found me sitting on the front steps of the Smithsonian . . . a place I often waited for my father when I was five four decades ago. I was crying in frustration … that I lost him and could not find him and he would be angry. He found me and laughed. "Are you afraid I’m angry? It’s OK." I buried my face in his shoulder and cried.

My family . . . my insides . . .

falling/flying . . . tightropes . . . wars . . .

is this how I can believe the biggest lie of Ti amero per sempre?

I can’t lose this time. It is unthinkable.  Do not say it.