Wearing Pascal's specs,
The infinite spaces spread...
Dancing, glasses slip
Peter Jennings has been dead since Sunday. The voices of my youth are becoming silent as time marches inexorably toward...
...the end.
Many fear this end, its black unknowable emptiness. If one peers long enough, that blackness spreads to wrap the heart in blankets of despair, beneath a comforter of loneliness, upon the bed of our own mortality.
But, I refuse to gaze too long at the hypnotizing emptiness.
Instead, I crank up an Ella Fitzgerald CD, grab my wife, and dance in the dining room while my daughter giggles.
Heaven, I'm in heaven
And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak
And I seem to find the happiness I seek
When we're out together dancing cheek to cheek
Heaven, I'm in heaven
And the cares that hung around me through the week
Seem to vanish like a gambler's lucky streak
When we're out together dancing (swinging) cheek to cheek
Oh I love to climb a mountain
And reach the highest peak
But it doesn't thrill (boot) me half as much
As dancing cheek to cheek
Oh I love to go out fishing
In a river or a creek
But I don't enjoy it half as much
As dancing cheek to cheek
(Come on and) Dance with me
I want my arm(s) about you
That (Those) charm(s) about you
Will carry me through...
(Right up) To heaven, I'm in heaven
And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak
And I seem to find the happiness I seek
When we're out together dancing, out together dancing (swinging)
Out together dancing cheek to cheek
A life colored with
Mountains from past adventures
Shakes stairs with boot treads
While pushing paper from one side of my desk to the other, a memory yanked me from my seat and dragged me into the past--to the gnarled toes of the Rocky Mountains, where Going-to-the-Sun Highway curls toward endless blue. The odors of Montana carressed me; swaying green pines blinded me; the joy of cycling across the country nearly up-ended me from my uncomfortable desk chair.
My legs itched for the pedals.
And so, I walked down the stairs insead of riding in the elevator.
I guess, sometimes we just need mountains, even small ones.