Stoned

Lately I have been thinking a lot about rocks in Death Valley, which makes it sound as if I've been smoking pot but I haven't, don't even like pot. Weed, grass, maryjane, doobies. I still kind of giggle embarrassed when my own mother says dope.
But I digress from the rocks. Sailing stones. They are called sailing stones, as if the hard side of a stone creates lift across dried up old river beds when in fact the force behind their movement is not entirely understood. Some think it's the severe temperature changes, the ground heating up and then freezing at night moving the stones over the crag like an inch-worm.

Wind, ice, mud, blah blah blah. Here I am talking about the how when that is what interests me least. Sometimes I like a good mystery as much as a deep tragedy, the way it makes my heart sing with wonder. We have ruined so many of our mysteries, crop circles now in the shape of Stewie from The Family Guy.
Sliding rocks and snail trails, a geological phenomenon in which speed is an unknown variable, long dusty trails signifying time of some sort. Everything an unknown but the movement, which is how I like it, an identifiable sea-change in philosophical thought or a disambiguation, both just as likely.

I was about to compare my life to a sliding stone, this last year when I have felt nothing if not stationary, even sedimentary, and yet behind me a striated track, a deep groove. But I know the how there, the why, and it is more like a crop circle in the shape of Stewie from The Family Guy than anything else. And so I will just tell you this instead: if I ever have another kid and it's a boy Bryan wants to name him Dolomite, like the rock. Not John or Mike or even Feldspar but Dolomite, giggle, embarrassed: dope.