He said: "Out to Lunch. Be back soon. Leave Message With Wilma. She'll know what to do. We will call in as soon as we hit land. Me might send a telegram. We might wire you when we get to Spain, but don't count on it. If we don't contact you expect to hear from us by mid-October. We should be home by then if the subs don't shoot us out of the water."

Stumble It!

He said: "It was the idea of motion that propelled me. The idea of movement followed by release. It was the idea that there was actually something out there to meet me and to propel me even farther than I knew I could go by myself. The world was barriers that needed to be swept aside so that I could prepare myself for the next thing, whatever that was. I liked the city because it was always moving; it never stopped to rest or to check navigation or to worry about outcomes or responsibility. The real world was in motion always, in all directions, for all time, in ways that I could never explain or understand, because it was not understandable to me. I was just a mote swept along by a breeze that was the result of the a breath from the other side of the table where two old men played checkers in the park, stopping only when the light was gone."

Stumble It!

She said: "We were singing a song about redemption; about how the music is redeeming and how our redemption refreshes us so that we can sing another song; we were singing about what makes up the songs we sing; about what is important to us in our songs and why we continue to sing our songs, the songs that we have sung now for a very long time. We were singing about being taken up by song and transformed by song and about how songs sustain us when we need strength. We were singing about today. We were singing about that moment that just happened to us all, and we were all singing together."

Stumble It!

He said: "I wasn't running away. I was running toward something. I was reaching out and hoping that someone would see me before I drowned. It seemed like I was always running. I ran by the church choir singing their hearts out for Jesus. I ran up the stairs and out the door. I ran away from the war that will never end and I ran from the heat and hatred of Mississippi and Georgia. I ran from the parents who didn't know who I was. I ran from the towns and over the mountains. I ran to the beat of my heart and with a tear in my eye from the dust on the road. I saw others, like myself, who ran until they could no run anymore. I followed the sun and the moon and the stars and my own compass and my own time. I ran and then stopped when I could not run anymore. I stopped and I wait on the side of the road for my brothers and for my friends so that they could somehow find me and take me back home."

Stumble It!

She said: "When I think of my friends, I always think of them as they were when I first saw them, never like they are now. They're always young and active and fun. They don't have wrinkles; they aren't sick or have gray hair, they're always young and active and fun. In my memories, they're laughing at some silly joke or about some silly boy. We're always going somewhere to do something, and laughing all the way. I like to think that when my friends think of me, that they think of me as I was back then, when I was young and happy and fast, light on my feet. That's the way I want to be thought of by my friends. It would be a courtesy and a mercy, because that's the way I see myself, even when I look into a mirror. How I see myself is the way I always was and how I always want to be. It's not a trick of the light, but the way I really am when I think of myself and when I think of my friends."

Stumble It!

He said: Nothing was ever right. There was something wrong with everything. It was that kind of atmosphere that ruined everything. Everything had to be perfect, even thought we agreed that we didn't live in no perfect world. And, of course, this kind of atmosphere slowly began to poison everything. It wasn't even rational anymore. Just Negative, Negative, Negative all the time. I just couldn't stand it much longer. I suggested therapy, but that wasn't going to help and it was going to cost too much money. Then, I tried not to listen to the negativity any more. I tried, instead, to be upbeat and positive. Well, that just got right up her nose. She wasn't going to have any of that. She looked at me and said 'Well, all right. But you know that life is just an endless collection of dropped connections and missed opportunities and I guess we will both have to get used to that'"

Stumble It!

She said: "I needed time to think. There was never time for anyone to think in that house. It's no wonder that I went a little crazy. There were always people coming in and people going out and I didn't know half of them. I didn't know where my own children was half the time. I know there was drugs and booze involved most of the time. Money, and there wasn't much to start with, just went missing. I had to make up all kind of excuses to get the rent taken care of. We were always behind. There were always somebody's baby left here for me to raise up. There was the constant train noise and the arguments from the drunk upstairs and the druggy down the hall. And the babies crying and the Man cussing all over the place and just no time to think. It made me crazy, I guess. Well, I got time to think now alright. I sure enough got time to thing now."

Stumble It!

He said: "After the accident I felt shaken, but OK. Considering how much damage had been done to my car, I felt like I was lucky to be alive. I didn't ever see what or who hit me. I was going too fast, I know. Whoever was driving the other car was going pretty fast, too. The road was a mess were the 2 cars came apart. It was getting dark and no other cars came to help us. It was strange and quiet and was beginning to get cold. I was going to walk over to the other car to see if anyone there was hurt, but I couldn't find the other car. I could see pieces of car, mine or his, I don't know. But I could not find the driver or the car and that was when I started to panic a little bit, because it was too quiet and I wanted to get home so no one would worry too much about the accident. As I stood there, spooked, I had a strange feeling of being lifted, lifted up, out of the dark, above the trees and the ruined road bed below me. I felt like the wind was blowing me away and I was being lifted up, over the homes and up into the sky."

Stumble It!

She said: "It got so quiet after the school bus picked them up and left. Even the birds stopped for a time to listen to the silence and to just sort of relax in some way until it was time to breath again. The sun is warm this time of year and it feels good to be outside, watching the bus turn the corner and then be gone. I can hear it moving away and I can see the birds in the trees watching to make sure that they get around that tricky corner without a problem. When I can't hear them anymore, I go inside, and make coffee. It stays quiet even then. That's why I like the morning so much this time of year. I feel like I can have it all: The peace, the quiet, the warmth on my skin, the knowing that the kids will be all right for another day and I that will get done what needs to be done. I know that it will all, always, be just this right."

Stumble It!

He said: "They had an understanding: She wouldn't ask too many questions and he wouldn't lie to her. It seemed easy enough, but it turned out that it was hard to live with. He was gone a lot of the time, going somewhere or other, for his job, for his fun, for whatever, and she waited for him to come back and resume their business from where it got left off. This went on for years and while no one was really happy, no one was was miserable enough to leave, so they endured. It took a heart attack to make the changes they both wanted, but were afraid to ask for. He got sick and, I guess tired, and while he was in the hospital he told her everything about what he had kept secret for so long. He recovered, of course, and she waited for him to come home, and he did. He came home from the hospital and she greeted him at the door and introduced her secret to him. I guess he wasn't all that surprised and I guess he probably guessed some time ago, but it still must have been a shock. After all, they had an understanding.

Stumble It!

She said: "It was like having it all. It was like being there and knowing where to go. It was like a dream that seems like the real thing. It was like having it all and then forgetting about it. It was like water over the bridge and like how the birds just know where to go without having to look. It was like a boat leaving the pier, but going in the wrong direction. It was like a cloud that stays right there while all the others are being moved out of sight. It was like a voice you recognize but can't see. It was like going the distance. It was like a cup of coffee on a cold winter day. It was like a voice you'd know anywhere. It was live sleeping with spiders. It was like dancing with cats."

Stumble It!

He said: "She wasn't beautiful, but a few of our friends fell for her. She was ernest and politically aware and she did what she had to do, even getting arrested once or twice. She did what she wanted and didn't care what anyone else thought of her. She could be funny when she was relaxed and was ready at any time to help a friend or a friend of a friend. She traveled a lot in her work and so made friends over a large part of the world. I loved listening to her tell some story from wherever it was she was coming back home from; about the weather or about the corrupt leadership in this place or that or about what it was like to do the things she did as a woman. It was apparently not that different from what a man might do in the same circumstance and I guess now that was what her stories was about in the end. She was a unique person; a friend and a lover. She was her own self completely. In the end, I think that was enough."

Stumble It!

He said: "I can hardly remember the times we had together back then, when we were young, foot loose, and just a little bit crazy. Science now tells us, of course, that when all that stuff between us was happening, our brains were still developing and that's why we did the things we did: because we only had 3/4s of what would, in adulthood, be our brains. Damn we had good times though. I remember racing around the quad at 3AM wearing nothing but a grin. I wasn't doing much grinning the next morning, as I recall. Of course, we probably wouldn't have had to spend a creepy weekend in lockup if we had had a brain then. And then there was the driving: I drove us into New York City and for the whole ride I wasn't really sure where the roadway was. I guess, looking back, that it's amazing that we're still here testify how stupid young men can be. I know what you're going to say and you will be correct. 'That was a long time ago". It was, that's for sure. It was a different era with different ways to get into trouble. I don't know. It doesn't really feel that long ago. Not really. Not when you think back. It seems, really, just like it was yesterday."

Stumble It!

She said: "It wasn't always easy for us, the women among all those men. The men were the ones in charge; the woman did whatever the men said. They had us running around doing this and shinning that, and doing, basically, what was called 'Woman's Work". I didn't mind so much, though. That was what got me out of New Jersey and into the world. I would not have been able to do what I did and see what I saw without the War and everything that came with it. I couldn't have become the person that I am today if it wasn't for the war and the death and stink and smoke that was our days. I learned a lot. I learned how not to weep for the dead; I learned how to deal with one moment at a time. I became a stronger person because of the war and because I was a woman in that war. I guess you could say that that was the price I had to pay to become me."

Stumble It!

He said: "There are so many things that need to be connected. We are always looking for the connection that is waiting to be found. We are a tribe. We are a Nexus. We are swimming up stream in our attempt to find home. What happened to "home"? How could we have strayed so far and become so lost? We look for our brothers and our sisters. It is too late now for our parents. We had lost them a long time ago. They just spun away and we did not follow. We have our own road to travel and our own stories to tell. There will be peace some day. I know this to be true. There will be peace and we will sit down with our brothers and we will tell the stories of our people and we will hear the stories of the others and we will be sustained."

Stumble It!