we have escaped the grand intent

it's obscenely beautiful here today.

please pause and put out peaceful, loving vibes on behalf of my brother, known in these pages, variously, as grader boob, lumpy, and the cantankerous english professor.  sometimes he's grouped with his elder sibling as a "brother-unit," a term never meant to diminish the role but to leave it wide open for fresh meanings.

i don't think he is dying today, or even tomorrow, but i have felt the push and pull of things change this week, felt the unmistakable beginnings of descent.

then there's what he's allowed himself to allow -- falls, brain scans, a fatigue beyond imagining.

mostly, though, there's the fact that he set me a task.  busy work that he knew would thrill me. burn him a couple more CDs, as the first one was such a hit that they listened to it on the drives to the cancer institute, singing along.

the truth will out, though, and it became clear that it is his friend, the driver of the mini cooper into which he folds his very tall frame for the torturous trips, who is really grooving to my musical production.

but i'm easy and also scared, so i will spend the rest of the day rabidly doing my teacher's bidding. he was schooled in good music by the best, and he gifted me with what he knew, and i have tried to retain those lessons, enriched with the accretions of my life.

i don't blame god, or blame anyone, or feel let down by some amiable universal source. there is comfort in our anonymity, in the finite space and energy we occupy, consume, produce.

i hope he lives out the year, having heard him reference christmas plans, but now there is elision in the discourse, and palpable entropy in the hurricane's whorl.

my brother-units are precious to me, but i know my preciosity means nothing, that we mean nothing, and that there is great beauty and comfort in that.

we have escaped the grand intent.

oh, sweet grader boob.
oh, lumpy.









© 2013 L. Ryan