Work hard, play hard, live hard. In my formative years the fairy tales told quickly and on liquored, fading breath, presented such an appealing hope; the linear recipe for life. Study, work, raise a family. The straight line to heaven.
Mr. Sebaugh holds up a ball bearing. “Perfect sphere,” he says, and waits. When we sit mute and tired, me in the back still wet from the gym shower, he says, “Not even close.”
He explains that this seemingly flawless circle, if expanded to the size of the Earth, would be in fact so imperfect that its tallest bumps would rise higher than Mt. Everest. I think he was trying to say that perfection is cold.
Sad to say, I didn’t pass physics.
I sailed through forensics, however, understanding how to speak in front of judges, my words deemed superior to the girl standing next to me. Chalk it up to imaginary conversations with others played out in my head throughout the waking, lonely hours of my schooling. Practice makes perfect sense.
“Are you really going on this call?” she asks, hurt and incredulous, me picking up my clothes off the floor. “You can’t seriously be going on this call.”
I’ve suddenly lost the ability to speak to the friend I always wanted.
It’s a wildland fire. The summers here surprise me with their lack of rain, humidity. Endless rain for 9 months, and a tinder box July. We drive into the forest, dropping water on renegade embers, until reaching an escarpment at the edge of the Deschutes. “Chock it up,” he says, and I throw the wood blocks underneath the tires. We fan out among the trees with shovels and Pulaskis, the fire barely more than a threat. We meet at the midpoint of our secant line, the center of our perfect circle a tree.
“Jesus,” she says. “How did they miss this one?”
It’s a cedar, 4 or 5 men in breadth. Like a thumb among arm hairs, a giant in this forest of replanted firs.
“How old do you think it is?”
“Gotta be at least 300 years.”
We imagine its history in different ways. My fantasy is that this old tree simply disappeared from the eyes of the loggers. Two centuries of unremarkability perfected to the point of invisibility.
I sneak back into the house, and pass by her, unnoticed. We’ve become dedomesticates, agnostic in our affection. She wonders at the excitement that’s missing, the danger of the flames from years ago. The peril that lies patiently in the past.
But rest assured in 10 years you'll want everything you’ve lost of late.