Writing "Worn at the Edges"

WATER TABLE I know this is sort of morbid. But, I was curious about how she died. On the phone I said: "So can you tell me what happened to her, how she died?" The stern sounding London Solicitor, Ms. Aldridge definitely didn't have had a voice like butter. Well maybe butter just taken from the freezer to soften. "Really? You don't know? ‘No idea,’ I said. "Apparently, she died at sea…" In other words, I needed to do a little detective work on my own if I wanted to understand what had happened to put me in this position. Angie had made her way to London as she hope she could. She found herself in various positions with orchestras and larger ensembles at times touring other parts with her cello. But, eventually she found herself back in the UK, teaching once again. Ironically, it was her teaching that became an unlikely vehicle propelling her into an unexpected course in life. She never anticipated that her journey would lead her to Mike Beauchamp, a man...

‘It makes things bigger, the world, the universe.’ she said, buzzed but serious about her insight. ‘I feel confined sometimes and when I am playing music, playing the bass, I break out and I am in the rest of the world for a while. Music comes back to me just when I absolutely need it. Just like you!.’ And then, out of the blue, through the haze of time I get a letter. Angie had died. She was dead and she had left me her stuff, her house in England because I had done what I think most people would and it turned to more. Timing is everything. I guess I could sell the house, or rent it, or (was I serious?) actually live there. It still sounded crazy when I said it out loud. It made me feel odd like I was losing something. Something I couldn't put my finger on. Should I have felt that deep connection all that time like she must have? Time with Angie felt more like a dream than a memory. Well, at least for now I wasn't moving. Not much at all after the knee surgery. I have found ...

SILENT NIGHTS By January, she was excited the prospect of getting a position over there. Around the same time my friend's wife, Helen, was thinking about pursuing a PhD. So, just like I had told Helen to "go for it" if she really wanted to, life is too short, etc. Seemed like the supportive thing to say. This time that message was delivered via text. It doesn't take too much thinking to read into the fact that I was not suggesting I was considering going with her. The thought of pursuing this move signaled the beginning of the end of our relationship. "Well that makes it clearer. Thanks for helping me decide." she texted back. The affair, that is how I thought of it at the time and shortly after, had been brief but intense. Like most of my romantic experiences this was quick and painful. February and March are dreary anyway. I often forget how dark a period that was for me. Obviously, to start, no more bass lessons. My interest in the instrument faded quic...

She was feeling entirely unable to cope with things. A feeling I know more now than I did then. She was struggling with teaching, wondering if she was in the wrong career. She had planned to be an Orchestral Muscian and had not focused on the reality many of her peers and even her heros faced: Being a professional musician in the late 20th Century was not a full-time job. I told her every classical musician felt like that. At one point she mentioned England. London tourism was really taking off and she’d heard that with the growth came a new bunch of orchestra managers and music promoters over there looking for singers and musicians. I think I was falling. Her allure was the sense of suspense and mystery that followed her wherever and with whomever.  Whatever she thought of herself, she was a very good teacher. I admired her as a musician, too. She was soulful and natural at music. "I feel like I know something that I can't put my finger on. It is something that needs to be ex...

Anyway, early on, one evening close to the Christmas holidays I had scheduled a lesson. She was adding tinsel in a complicated pattern to an already (in my opinion) overly decorated tree. ‘Oh, don’t do that,’ I said, intrusively, as though she was the pupil rather my teacher. The cat will see that and soon the cat and the tree will be on the floor. 'Oops! Oh. I’m sorry, I got carried away.’ I said. After a week of flying around dealing with client and staff problems. I was in issue avoidance mode. ‘Please, don’t be,’ she said, looking at me and squeezing a smile out of a lemon pucker of a frown. ‘Are you doing OK?’ I asked? I have been known to be too busy and not to get to my practice material during the week. Well, her mood wasn't about my lesson tonight. I could tell. I hadn't seen her in a couple weeks. But something that was not an issue the last time I saw her was an issue tonight. She was having a crisis. For so many people, including me some years, Christmas can be ...

 SOLOIST I must admit in the course of our whirlwind romance I didn’t get to know her as well as I imagined. I remember her as a very beautiful and shy young woman, with an air of glamour, which was a rarer quality back in 1999 than it is now. She was slight with very light hair and a sweet sweet smile. She reminded me of the actress Britt Ekland, but with an paler and even more flawless complexion. It always struck me as a beautiful contradiction, her lithe form partnered with that giant of the stringed instrument family. Her father had emigrated from Germany as a young man just after the war. First to London where he met her Mother and then together to the US. Apparently she had never been to Germany. But she seemed to epitomize a modern European, sophistication to my provincial Mid-Atlantic bull-in-a-china-shop. She once told me she missed the food she had known growing up, her English Mom's version of her Father's favorite German dishes. Still, she seemed to flourish with ...

 BASSICS The letter had been unexpected.  Through it I learned that I had been left a property in the town of Stow-on-the-Wold in the UK. It had belonged to someone called Angie Beauchamp. This Angie Beauchamp had died without family and she left me her worldly goods. Well, some of them, at least.  "Is this a scam?" I thought. You see, as a Professor of Cyber Security and consulting Cyber Security Architect, I spent a lot of my time warning people about this sort of "grift," Social Engineering aimed at people who thought that maybe this time, finally, the Universe had listened. It took me a while to convince myself that this was something else. Or, to put it another way, it took me a while to realize that Angie Beauchamp was not a stranger. Or, she hadn't been..  The name hadn't exactly rung a bell at first. It was a French sounding surname and that threw me. Beauchamp added a kind of air of nobility that seemed possibly fictional and definitely unfamiliar. ...

 THE WAY BACK DOWN I knew that there would be a lot of walking when I ultimately decided to accept the invitation to go to England. Now, with anesthesia mask over my face, the surgery bed at my back was feeling softer and the decision to take the trip faded as I went under.  I had put off this knee surgery for years and it had taken multiple doctor visits, insurance forms and EKGs to finally get it scheduled. I decided to put off the trip for a few months and to get this done. In the meantime, a property manager for the estate was hired at my direction by the attorney for the estate. It is not so much the going up that hurts in mountain climbing. Years of daily running, lifting heavy objects (remember to bend at the knees), tennis quick starts and stops, football, baseball, basketball, soccer, kickboxing, Downhills and descents after climbs can make a dent, even to a marvel of Nature's making. I emulated miler Sebastian Coe (later to become a Member of Parliament) in my downhi...

GIVE ME A TICKET As his eyes blinked open to the soft gray light seeping through the curtains, the details of the dream began to fade, replaced by the familiar contours of his bedroom: the light from the bathroom skylight, the bedside lamp and the digital clock that read 5:37. He stretched his stiff limbs and swung his legs over the side of the bed. The old ache in his knees had mostly retreated with the knee replacement surgeries. But this morning it greeted him like an old friend. He moved through his morning routine with the same quiet precision he always did: a cup of strong black coffee, meditating in the small bedroom sauna to keep his joints loose, a series of stretches and crunches to remind his body it was still alive, an hour of yard work under the rising sun, the smell of fresh-cut grass mingling with the scent of damp earth. Only then, when he felt the familiar pang of hunger, did he allow himself breakfast. Later, as he rode his golf cart down to the mailbox, the dream ret...

APNEA The old man awoke with the fading edges of a dream still clinging to him like the last wisps of morning mist. In the dream, he had been standing on a hill, a letter in his hand, overlooking a landscape dotted with sparse stone houses, their chimneys whispering threads of smoke into the cold sky. Below, the fields stretched out in shades of green and brown, sheep grazing lazily as if unaware of his presence. There had been a sense of waiting, a pause in the world, and he could not shake the feeling that the letter he held was heavier than paper, heavier than any words it might contain.

PADDYWHACK Once upon a time there was a particular old man who lived the most boring life in the universe. That man rarely left his pre-manufactured home except to see the doctor or buy groceries or maybe play a little tennis. He gardened less now that the raised bed was gone. Sometimes the grass was overgrown and the flowerbeds were full of weeds.  He lived in the Villages - the original part of the Villages that started as a mobile home park and became the birthplace of a retirement empire. Florida was a big change after a lifetime of moving to new houses and traveling to foreign lands. But, after exposure through his wife Susan, her family and friends, it had grown on him. Now it was the setting for his post-employment retired life.  You may have formed some impressions of the place without ever visiting. Truly, it wasn’t so bad. Its streets saw traffic that was mostly golf carts. Behind the house was a comfortable porch and a great view of the Orange Blossom golf course. T...

A recent trip to London and the Cotswolds gave me some time to relax and to think about starting a new writing project. Actually, long periods of sitting on airplanes are not always relaxing. But for me, having spent so much time flying, where the number of distractions are severely limited, the sky has become a place where the ideas just flow.