Fifty or sixty miles east of Missoula, we pull over at a rest stop and immediately I recognize it as a special place. Nearly two years ago when Jill and I were in the sex-crazed early days of our relationship, we stopped at this rest stop on a cloudy, cold November day, crawled off into the trees and fucked right on the cold ground like the mad, hungry animals that we were. I should note that the passion hardly even quavered let alone ever waned in the ensuing 20 months or so before are separation one month ago. Then why did I ever leave her? Simple: geographical incompatibility with a lot of valor thrown in. Not the kind of die-for-a-cause valor, rather the live-for-a-cause kind.

Well, no sooner did I write all this than we passed another rest stop, this one being THE ONE, not the one we stopped at just now. Oh, well. Memory, like love, is imperfect. So is valor, for that matter, but I had to go just the same. To go and not feel like I should run back at any minute to validate our relationship or to suffer celibacy or give up intimacy with other humans for the sake of holding or being held by another. I simply don't believe in it anymore. And so I stand a moment at the rest stop (albeit the wrong one) and share a private moment with that memory, with that magic, with Jill who is always with me now, and then I move on and rejoin the magic of now.

And back at the cars there is a woman with a beautiful white parrot cursing the lack of film in her camera for wont of a photo of Duke. I tell her that car is mine and that in trade for a photo with her parrot, I will give her a postcard. Her name is Marlene, aka Eartha the Ecological Clown and she is traveling with her friend, also a clown who goes by three different titles: Matilda the Clown, Mother Goose, and Mrs. Claus. It turns out they were in the same damn parade as we were yesterday, only so far up front that we never saw each other. The hail from Portland, taking their act on the road to children all over.

I pose for several shots in my billowy white pirate shirt with Major the parrot both in and beside Duke. Another miracle in a day of miracles! Except now it is getting late, very nearly sunset. It was my plan to reach Jerry Johnson hot springs well before dark and tromp in for a soak. Now there is no way. So the possibility of hanging a night in Missoula arises. I tell Tex about all the great bars, but dammit I'm tired of drinking every night. I feel a sincere need of a little nature.

And oh, shit. Suddenly a thwacking sound on the roof and curious, I look up to see a form falling past the open driver's window. At first I think it is my Snap-on Tools hat which Tex has just taken off his head. But no, Tex is yelling, "Oh, shit we just hit a duck." I turn and look out the TV-rear window and watch the poor thing tumble and slide into the median strip, most certainly dead on impact with the trunk sculpture.

It is a sad moment. I think of the duck Jill's brother hunted and brought home for dinner on that visit to Missoula long ago. I took one bite of the cooked beast and spat it out, my head filled with a vision of the duck safe in its nest in the reeds of some pond just the night before. It was so vivid I simply could not continue eating.

I was a mess back then, a walking emotional sponge. This sudden killing of the duck with Duke, as sad as it is, is for me another reminder, another affirmation that I am getting better, stronger all the time. It hardly touches me. I sometimes wonder if a chronically depressed person is just more in-tune with traumatic reality. And are they depressed because of it, or the other way around?

Rest in peace, poor little of-course duck. Amelia Duckheart, you flew over the cuckoos nest and smack into my wall of baggage. Au revoir. My apologies for the society of mankind.

I'm mad, am I not? Go ahead, say it.

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Last update April 1, 2004