"Make the white queen run so fast she hasn't got time to make you a wife." (1971) Jon Anderson of Yes

In the summer of 1998, I had finally found a temporary oasis. By then it had been a full year since my long-overdue departure from an outgrown relationship. It was the ideal split -- gradual and amicable -- a very smooth transition. But transition to what? After nearly eighteen years of pure excitement, alternating almost hourly from elation to exasperation and back again -- all generated by my gregarious French Canadian-American friend Jack -- what would my life be now?

I should have been relieved. I finally got the quiet and predictable life I had longed to find. As the saying goes, "Be careful what you wish for,..." Although I've been blessed enough never to have been drawn into any of the usual vices, somehow it still felt like that year was spent coming down off an addiction. How would I be able to survive the passage from a life so incredibly busy that one year blurred right into the next -- to this new open canvas or fresh page or blank disc where it was now my responsibility for filling in all the creative material that would become my new life?

The desert outback was foreign terrain for me. I fairly thirsted for something novel and interesting to enter my life again. Thankfully, my fear of the unknown kept me from venturing into dangerous territory in search of excitement.

Finally I met my little work-friend Nate...

(In the interest of space, I'll continue this story in the next post.)