Tokens

Dear Ed,

I continue to practice the lesson that tokens are mostly useless – that trying to keep a thing or purchase a thing to hold a memory only falls short, like the so many attempted pictures of the baffling mountains and the reach of the landscape and the sky grappling them and the infinity of the ocean.  There are only memories, logistical and sensory – the gladness of being somewhere at all so far from home, the route we drove on the map including the magnificent getting lost part, the wonder if you are living the right way there and in the greater scheme and those two together, the hope you are comprehending the bigness, the debate of activity versus pausing, the awe unavoidable, the sitting, the grinning, the beaming of the heart, the exhaustion of the heart from the energetic upkeep of being away.

Of all the things that are impossible to take from a place to encompass the place, that might serve as an even mildly sufficient token, I was surprised with a fistful of true comfort when I put my sweatshirt back on by the small pile of skipping stones in my pocket – the ones I was quite sure I would throw into the ocean and sat on the floor of the car all week.  So I guess I have those.  Their glimmer will fade in the years, the way they shine the beauty and openness of this trip through their specificity, but they will shine to my core at least for a while with their clattering together.

Thank you for helping these memories happen.  They’re made of wind and silence.

Sincerely,

Tim