Rain, after a record drought washes the streets, as I sit in the waiting area of Sundown Automotive, the owner, a long time friend, has his crew fixing the brakes on my car, making me safe for tomorrow. Money is tight, tighter than normal, making the choices between the essential, and the recommended, difficult. Locked in this space because I am wheelless until the car is repaired, and disconnected from the net so that I can get nothing done in a normal way with my PowerBook. Looking at yesterday, today and tomorrow, because I only have my mind to run around in, as I sit in this seat listening to Miss Peggy Lee singing "Fever" through the Muzak system. And it rains.

Finally making my way out of the depression of divorce. Reconnections being made with old friends from High School; we recently had our 40th year reunion. I have neglected my friends for a very long time while I searched for my self-standing reality. It is so very good to have my friends back in the environment that surrounds me, so that I can breathe the air they breathe, share experiences with them again, and lean on their strengths, and provide my own.

Making new friends through the connections of our mutual interests in computing, photography, open-minded discussions, and the just plain sharing of moments in time, made interesting by our being there.

A friend asked me whether I was sad.

I have been sad. There have been some down times, because life is a sine wave of transitional energy phases, but the energy level of my mean times sits at a level far above the populations mean. I love my lifes history, to date.

I have traveled many places, seen many things, lived in other countries, learned a second language, made contacts around the world. But times change, locations change, friends come and go. ... The wheel turns. In Denmark I learned the word for Christmas is Jule "Yule". It means "wheel". The ancients saw the world turning, and the wheel of life reborn as the days stopped growing shorter. The sun returned to warm the earth, melt the snow, and breathe life into the plants and animals. And so it is for me now.

Now I stand at the portcullis, making plans for life future tense, another turn of the wheel, standing with these old friends and new connections, soon to be good friends all. There are fifty-seven cycles of the wheel of knowledge, and experience, for me to funnel through that tomorrow gate. Everything cannot go with me through this unidirectional turnstile before me nor do I wish to bear everything. I want to shed the impedimenta of the past, becoming once again, the lean mean fighting machine, reset upon the trail, reading the signs that point my way.

There, shines the sun, under the edge of the clouds, streaming rays of auspice for those that have sight. Shall we go together?