Precious

I have the greatest job in the world but it doesn't give me enough time to write about it! People are so exquisitely interesting. Today I met four people. Each one of them true and real and alive, all filled with blood, mucus, sweat and tears pouring out of them depending on the activity. A war with pollen and mold brings mucus, a war with evil-tears, a war with flesh - blood, a war with the earth-sweat. Today I met a builder, a milker, a milk hauler, and a dairy farm designer. The one with eyes that seemed most alive was the milker. Big fat dude with manure all down the front of his t-shirt and on most every part of him. He stretched his wide smile over pearly white teeth and we talked about coyotes howling outside his house and how his "old lady" wanted to look for a different house because she gets scared after he leaves at 3:00 a.m. to go milk cows. We talked about growing gardens and eating farm fresh eggs. You have to cool them or they break all up in the pan, fresh eggs don't hold together well. We talked about the deer hunters travelling down his dead-end road. We talked about manure - we can't help but talk about manure at a dairy farm, its everywhere, on his hands, face, and clothes but there he stood grinning and twinkling - precious.

This morning I got a call from my buddy Baldy, the one whose mom died about a month ago. I need to visit his dad, he's giving up on life and just keeps playing some crazy Allan Jackson song about "walking in heaven with you" or something. It breaks my heart to see lovers mourn. I don't think I have anything to say but Baldy thinks I need to come. You can't say anything to a person like that. I'll just go and sit with him. I'll ask him to play me that song - precious.