Michael Reardon

There are times/moments when people who've left us resurface. My dear friend Matt Samet and I share how much Michael resurfaces in our lives. It is haunting and beautiful at the same time. Michael died in 2007 and his memory is as fresh now as it was that day bouldering on Flagstaff Mountain...this is my tribute.

I didn’t meet Michael until months after we’d had long conversations on the phone about dreams and possibilities, for our common online projects and for ourselves. Michael’s enthusiasm was infectious – I wish his intelligence had been, as well. I felt like a third grader trying to understand AP Calculus when I spoke with him. But it made him no never mind. He loved what he was doing, loved his wife and best friend, adored his daughter, and kept the faith strong that something wonderful would turn up for each of us and soon. He’d be damned if it didn’t and said so in so many words.

I finally met him in person around a Ryan Campground campfire in April of 2005. I was in Jtree for three weeks of climbing and Michael was a rock. Struggling on a classic 5.9 and working my ass off to pull a power move through an overhanging crack crux, Michael free-soloed on an adjacent route, calmly offering words of encouragement. “Come on, Martha, it’s completely within your ability levels.” Those words have become my personal mantra.

I loved Michael. He loved all of us back more. He had that unearthly capacity usually reserved for visionaries and it was exquisite. At our little agape fests, he’d slam dunk us with news of some absurd-sounding project he’d just aced, then listen and comment with the same fervor about our own mini epics and epiphanies, ours rarely as grand as his. It didn’t matter. We were here and as long as we were living large and doing the best we could at the moment, it was all any of us cared about. We could be hung over from the previous night’s tribute to Dionysius, raw because we were just betrayed by a friend, or ecstatic from conjuring up the latest derring-do. It just didn’t matter. We loved each other’s dreams and whimsy and how we never stopped trying.

Here’s the key to accepting that Michael is gone: he grew too big for this world. His heart, his skills, his mind and focus were limited by his humanity here. In his 42 years (and the little dipshit told me forever he was 36 - I’ll chuckle about that well into my own Crossing Over) he became what we all wish we could be – timeless, fearless, priceless, almost untouchable.

Someone told me once that when someone we love dies, a piece of their soul imbues our own for all time. Michael, I’m stuck with you. Listen here, my good man - in spite of the fact that Ireland has called you home, I’ll always live large and do my best in the moment.

And I’ll always be 42.

For Mícheál O'Ríordáin - An Solas Geal Lonrach. Son, Husband, Father, Friend. Inspirational Free Spirit. 1965-2007.

You are greatly missed.

Orion in the Sky

Maybe somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere
There’ll be room for all this love
Where they’ve saved a place for innocence
And what is still mysterious
And their dreaming time…

It’s winter and Orion is back. Orion the hunter I follow every clear night walking home, night-skiing, or just star-gazing. He is a favorite constellation and midnight mentor.

In the southern hemisphere, Orion orients differently in the sky and in Spanish America it’s called the Three Marys, referring to the three prominent stars we know as Orion’s belt.

In Bolivia a micro-industry is thriving. In the 1990's Quechua and Aymara village women were organized into Save the Children – Bolivia and adopted the name Artesanias Minkha. Their goal? To feed their extended families as well as their children. Their means? Hand-knitting beautiful alpaca sweaters in the recognizably Bolivian style. There are now 45 families sustained by the income they make through the cooperative. The women have not only greatly improved their lives and those of their families, but they take pride in their craft and positive feedback for their work. It is entirely owned and run by the indigenous women – there is no western interference other than orders placed from North American buyers.

Evo Morales is the first modern indigenous president of Bolivia. As with most minorities who see the folly the international majority misses in itself, he has challenged greater world powers and the mouse still roars. Because he protests the authority of other governments over the autonomy he intends to develop for his people stiff sanctions have been levied against his country by the US.

Are we still hateful toward the Indian, any Indian?

Now is it too much to ask in a lifetime
For just one shot at happiness?

Because our government is displeased with the choices of another government, importing any of what should be considered Fair Trade goods is impossible. Import taxes and duties are prohibitive. And who suffers? Not the governments. Always the soul of any culture; its people.

So the women of Cochabamba I’m sure pray faithfully to the Three Marys that as sole wage earners they’ll continue the ability to feed their families. I have given up and rail at Orion that from his post as watchful hunter he’s incapable of standing up to the global folly.

Thanks to Shawn Colvin for letting me use her title and lyrics.

The Blank Page

It’s one of the greatest fears of a creative writer. Or at least of this creative writer. Sitting down, figuratively or literally, with the intent to put words to paper and all of a sudden the mind goes blank. So I stare at the page/monitor and wonder what in Socrates happened.

Ironically enough, I’ve been meaning to write this essay for the past week, but every time I’ve thought about working on it the screen goes white, the head goes grey, and I pull a big goose-egg. Literally. So if this seems a bit disjointed it’s because I am still, and eternally, searching for the right words.

Whoever said that genius was 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration was correct. Okay, I Googled and it was Thomas Edison. His percentages were a bit different – 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Here I sit looking for inspiration to say something quotable, sweating profusely over the likelihood that I won’t say anything at all.

So what do I say next on this blank page? I don’t know. I suppose the next question begs to understand why people write. Or why they consider themselves writers.

I have an opinion on just about everything. I suppose that’s the origin of thought and creates the need to say something. I may have the wrong information on the topic but I can usually come up with some sort of reaction which may, or may not, be reasonable given my mood du jour. I also have an eye for the unusual or extraordinary so while I opine away I’m also opting to find that unique voice and expression to drive it.

Therein lies the challenge. What if I pick the wrong opening line? What if my idea doesn’t bear any literal fruit? What if my language choices read like a comic strip? What if there just aren’t the right words? What if I get half-way through the idea and it just dries up like a lake in a drought? What if I sound like a blithering idiot?

What if, what IF, WHAT IF????? It screams at me like an angry mountain lion cornered in an inescapable place.

I know how it feels.

A very wise man once pronounced there is nothing new under the sun. Consequently there is a finite source of creative ideas and all the observer does is reorganize those same ideas into a different structure. While the end product may look new, it really isn’t. Someone just pushed the refresh button.

Here’s where the mystery ends. There is no mystery, there’s just a lot of hard work and discipline. I thought discipline belonged to Catholic school nuns and Dominas (…must…not….comment….). The road to heaven may be paved with angels, but the road to hell is lined with gold stars and that’s something a writer can bank on.