at 8,800 feet

So long as you don't make cuts in line, I know of a place you can go where people get along.

it stands at 8,800 feet, overlooking a happy valley with happy accidents. with happy clouds, happy crooked trees,

and happy little squirrels.


a valley where the little 'possums and raccoons all have a place to sit and drink up the sweetness from the falls.

The valley is busy. the rivers are sprinkled with rafts, the meadows with fawn, and tandem bicycles with children. matchbox cars zip alongside the rivers. 300 miles away the water is salty and filled with romantic dinners.

there is no need to fear evil here, on top of our granite monolith !
night and day, winged-less gargoyles poise stoically from fastened strings like rusted clothes pinned puppets from fingers.
Chinese, Indian, French, German, Dutch, American, Israeli, Palestinian.....a place where women are just as strong as men, where children like the stories that old people tell, where the skinny, the fat, and the muscular do handstands for the camera, where brave people help those who are scared and scared people realize that being brave is part of being human, and we really have to be brave enough to feel it.


at this moment, this moment that we wish would last forever, in mid handstand, in mid war story, we are all so happy! so very thrilled to have defied death, to feel our knees shake, our lungs strain for air, to stand on top of this world together.
to violate our mother's wishes together.
to be greedy masochists, together!
all of us here on top of this rock are happy to feel pain and think pleasure, and together it is our secret.