Sedona 1

Leaving tomorrow to see the boys again. I didn’t make the meeting last year: I was finishing the book that was soon due, and though matters press still, I wouldn’t miss the meeting for the world now. Indeed, I think now it is the world.

It is a nice flight out—I’ve never been to Arizona actually, though it has figured in my consciousness since Barry Goldwater ran for president against LBJ.

And the attachment to the boys . . . It is certainly in part an attachment to the past, but what about that past that joins us I am not sure. It is not that I want to reminisce about those days, though I am certain that will occur. I certainly do not have any desire to relive the past, even if I knew how to do so. But perhaps I am anxious to share and to live with them the man I have become, and for each of them to do the same with me. Then, it might be, we together will make of the past the present. We share more than the high school years; we share a greater and grander history. We served as witness to the last half of the twentieth century, and that is a connection not easily dismissed. There is something about our consciousness that was formed by the events; miles and worlds distant though we live, nonetheless we live our daily lives from common experiences and common formative visions. Now, we bring our adulthoods to each other to learn what has happened to us. We sit down to tell our stories to each other because no one else was there at the story’s start in quite the way we were for each other there.

I’ll miss Steve this year. I have not a few stories that involve him.