i keep having these flashes of the view from Grandpa Wrights front patio, out into the vastness of the mirage that is the California desert area off the 138, and somewhere between Palmdale and Victorville. An area that is sure to grow, one day, and probably a good investment…yet not in my lifetime Frank. But we all see different things as we stare at the same open space. Even the idea of distance is individual to each of us. After all it is just an idea of how relative one thing is from something else. And how is that relative-ness measured? Perhaps in time? Let’s say, for instance, the time it takes to travel from the well heeled suburbs of Los Angeles to the middle of nowhere outside of Llano with a population of 1,319. The time it takes to rise to an elevation of 3,169 feet, without making a wrong turn and finding yourself on the way up Angeles Crest Highway in the dark of night until you realize the only thing you are passing in the dark of night are the slightly headlight illuminated shadows of giant Saguaro cactus and nothing else, but i digress, that is another story with another old man in this story, the late afternoon wind is whipping past the last living pine on this front patio of slowly disintegrating and cracked concrete, the bit of dust stirring up from the hard soil is high desert warm, the few predatory birds overhead are enjoying their search for their evening meal, catching tail winds of Mile High’s ridge out back. The small fountain which has found a second life as a dog bath is filed with life…green life, algae of a thousand forms, which the dogs don’t seem to mind at all. Meanwhile C&B have cleaned up the large pool so they can take a dip when they have finished raking up pine needles, and hosing down what dirt will loosen from being wind whipped to every exterior surface, nothing is sacred from the sun and wind here, not the tennis court, not the 9 hole golf course, not the collection of non-working family vehicles and campers and boats, none of the life collections that a ”collector of things and curiosities” would keep in the galvanized bins, and rusting pails and rotting wooden boxes. Yet no one here really cares about the transitory nature of things that is so evident, as the last layer of dust is removed, revealing just enough of the solidness expected to decorate the table for another Fourth of July, take a dip in the pool, deal the cards for another round, and tell some more stories with a refreshing glass of orange juice, under the last living patio pine tree and once in a while exclaim on the wonderful view out towards the 138 and beyond where the desert dust of this afternoon blurs the vast flatness of landscape with the sky that meets it where time is measured from the sun peaking over one ridge to settling in shadows behind another where one can drift in dreams and immaterial things, where one hears the ghosts of conversations, through toothless grins, and sees the imprint of a century through one pair of eyes, where one is aware of ones awareness and the waning of it, until all that remains is the story of it one afternoon
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