The Beating of Your Drum

Lea and Karma went home today.  When I dropped them off at the airport, I left knowing my home would be quiet tonight - just Dave and me at the end of the day.  We like the quiet, so I didn’t lose my mind immediately.  I looked forward to a night alone, just the two of us recalling our week together with our old friends, in a house of boisterous conversation and activity.  Much like the old days, really, but something was missing.  Owen’s commentary on our inane and insane discussions about life, politics, war, and family - that’s what was missing.

I was thankful that Nat, Anna, and Ruby had spent time with all of us over the weekend.  Nat’s monologue during the Academy Awards (more like a responsive reading from the Church of Holy Cynicism) filled my heart with memories of the days when Owen and he took all possible liberties with television and propoganda.  They were an amazing debate team, the two of them dueling it out - good, bad, good, bad - always ending up on the same page - the page of a united brotherhood in philosophies and beliefs.  Each paragraph with a different theme - different, yet the same. 

Politics and our broken government met us at our kitchen table and in the middle of our living room for the last 7 days.  We talked of the possibilities, the probabilities, the end of life as we know it, and our individual and collective hopes.  We talked of personal struggles, our communal losses, and reconstructing a future we had previously imagined - a future that less than a year ago included Owen in our small circle. 

Our future now, is an illustration of the marching of time and turmoil; our longing for better days ahead; and the knowledge that history repeats itself.  We came out of it, remembering that history included some great and unbelievable turns around unthinkable corners.  We beat our drums as solitary souls, and as a tribe, in and out of sync with the moon.  Leap year has set us on our ears, the extra day coming soon. 

Our drum strokes are trying hard to find their own rhythms.  Now, in the late hours, I let go of my grasp, and lose my mind in the aftershock of friends and family, together and apart.

Song for the night:  Fiddle and the Drum, A Perfect Circle (original by Joni Mitchell) 

http://youtube.com/watch?v=_B6kheJ8zks

~ by Linda on February 28, 2008.