Israel to Montana-Morning-The First Day

One needs time to write about the future, or the present for that matter. I am sitting in the midst of a storm ravaged city. Hundreds of homes have been demolished by water, some have lost all they have, others have died.

It changes ones perspective. One searches beyond the present to the past or the future, wavering with every step or every word.

I have chosen for my narcotic for the moment a book covered in dust from my library, The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich. I paid 96 cents for it on October 9, 1987. I have read it before, quickly, picking up a few tidbits of time, and forgot it. Its chosen place now defines a new place of being for me. At 66 years of age, time is running out and a question remains, "How do I make the most of what is left?"

There is no quick or easy answer, their are only comparisons of a life lived and events that changed ones life. It is neither desert, nor storm, but both. Conflictual moments that somehow play on the memory with ultimate importance. For instance, two words ring in my mind today: Jerusalem, Israel, and Red Lodge, Montana. World's apart in every way. A hurried, fragile existence in one, a quiet frozen winter in the other, both traps of my imagination during the last year.

The Solace of Open Spaces has a different meaning now. It is a rehearsal perhaps, or a prophetic vision of meaning. Having recently spent several days in the openness of Montana, I seem to have begun to understand Solace, the brillance of silence, the quiet hum of wayward mountains, the depth of sorrow in accidents of long ago that are not forgotten.

Jerusalem was a captured city, dominated by the Dome of the Rock, the ediface of another generation. A place for a cross, a tomb of David, the desert regions surrounding Qumran and En-gedi surrounding it with the glare of historical significance. There was much less of that in Montana. A fire that occurred when Willie Nelson played in the area is remembered as, "Willie's Fire." The dominance of moment rearranges the depth of time. It is morning, "The First Day."