He woke up. Because that is how things start. And this is the beginning. He woke up. Not like a genesis sort of waking up. This isn’t a creation story. Not really a re-awakening or rebirth kinda thing either. Not a Groundhog Day, waking up again and again. He just woke up because that is what you do at the beginning. That’s where the pattern starts. I would say that it restarts but I already told you it’s a pattern. Restarting is redundant. Patterns are interesting because they are always asking questions. Questions about similarity like coffee first then shower but also about difference like 6:05am, 6:15am and 3:30am. Saying that it is a pattern is a question about the pattern and how it is different from chaos. He wonders about chaos.

It would have been better if he only had one drink last night. He did add water to the whiskey but that wasn’t exactly new. He’d been doing that more frequently. He’d intended for it to be an adjustment, not a new pattern, not an aberration, not an eddy or a pool, the same pattern, the river but different. It would have been better if he had only one. Easier to get up. Easier to sleep well. The dog woke him. North is the dog. They had driven out to the country the night before so that they could wake up there. North woke him by putting his cold wet black nose so close to his face that he could feel it. North loves it here.

He dug his pants out the duffle bag that was always half packed in the city. Missed the leg hole once. Hopping. Patterns. He noticed the other day that he was tying his shoes too tight and it made the top of his feet ache. Evidently the top of his feet are called the dorsum, like a dolphin, where the dorsal fin is. He would notice his dorsum aching while he sat at his desk waiting for the bell to ring and the students to come in. He noticed the other day that he pulls his socks on too far and the pocket where his heel is supposed to go was always up around his ankle. He stopped doing that when he noticed. What was he using his brain for every morning while he was putting on his shoes? Ooooh, actually, what was he using his brain for the day he noticed his shoes were too tight and toes were scrunched up in his socks, the day before he broke the pattern?

His niece died about three weeks ago on March 27th. They were friends. She called him Cheesedog and he called her Truck. She was 20 yrs old. Her family and his family, not that they are two families, were with her, next to her hospital bed, holding her hands. He can’t remember if he or his sister were in the room at the moment when their mother died many years ago but he is realizing now, as he writes this, that their mother was there too, in that room with his neice, three weeks ago.

He thinks about himself as broken but not in an inherent way. Well not, not in an inherent way. Maybe inevitable is a better word? Broken and imperfect because that is what time does. The best things are broken and repaired and sometimes again and again. Nothing unbroken is worthy. When he broke is when he noticed the patterns. He is desperate for patterns, something to tuck in to, like a mummy bag in a tent after a long day of hiking. Night signals he is done again and starting will happen later and after iterations of night and morning, something else will happen?

There’s an oak tree outside the window. It was just a bush 20 years ago when he first cut out a bunch of maybe-some-day branches. A few years later, he needed a ladder and a chainsaw on a long telescoping pole, a chainsaw-on-a-stick. He is noticing it has too many leaves now. Nature is doing it all wrong. He can’t see the patterns in the branches as they retreat back from twigs to branches, to bigger branches, back into trunks, back into the trunk, back into the ground. It’s on a steep hill and he will need a ladder that can reach heights that are taller than heights he can estimate. He knows how tall he is. He knows ceilings are about 10 ft. After that he’s not sure. Where would the ladder sit on that steep hill? Is a chainsaw-on-a-stick still a good idea 20 years after the tree was a bush; 60 years since he was born?

There’s a PVC pipe bike car in the back of his pickup truck, parked in the driveway, in front of the tree. He bought a kit several years ago. It was never a good idea. It kinda worked the day he said he was done building it. Then it sat outside for a long time. The neighbor made him move it, well, asked him to move it, “that Burning Man thing”, because they were going to get some tree work done. He liked that he made a thing that could be called “Burning Man” and is imagining himself, dusty, wearing those round goggles and a top hat with a feather peddling his pvc pipe bike car across the playa with his dog North. He’s never been to Burning Man outside of his head.

He’s pretty sure he knows things now. Being wrong for 60 years means there are layers of adjustments accreted as understandings in his head. He assumes that’s where they are kept, in his head. He also believes that he can’t use those understandings without looking through them at the world as the world moves and changes, as his understandings move and change. He is pretty sure he is less wrong now than ever before but when he tries to tell people what he knows they get mad at him because they think they know things too. He knows that being right isn’t as important as being and the struggle worth engaging in centers around the truth of grace, that existence merits dignity. That’s the hard one because some people suck, he thinks.