Two Words

In the 1980s my wife and I lived near the tiny high desert town of Yucca Valley. Although I have always loved the stark beauty of the Mojave Desert, Yucca Valley boasted few attractions and the highlight of a weekend might be driving to town and watching a movie at the Sky Drive-In Theater by night and going to the Sky Drive-In Swap Meet by day.

The Sky Drive-In Theater stopped showing movies outdoors about ten or fifteen years ago. The ground beneath the drive-in never was paved. When the movie was over a cloud of dust swirled up into the sky as cars moved like cattle out of the stockyard to the greener pastures of home. The swap meet still goes on there Saturday and Sunday mornings. I was there recently. It's not one of those commercial swap meets with retailers vending the slick and new out of the back of their mini vans, it's the real thing, grisly old farts with lifetime collections of tools and car parts and doo-dads from their sheds, young couples selling the latest baubles to make their rent, the guy with the trailer selling off the last of the household goods before moving on to who knows where. 

I found a treasure there. It didn't come from the dirty cardboard box on the faded blanket in front of an old pick-up, even though I looked through it anyway. It wasn't in the pile of children's clothing stacked up beehive style next to the broken stroller and bag of plastic curlers. It wasn't mixed in with the baby chicks who peeped endlessly for food even as their seller's dog snored quietly in the shade of the car he was tethered to. I found it in the men's room...when I went in to use the urinal.

It was scratched in wall there, at eye level, most likely by a knife, because the cuts were well formed and deep. It had been painted over many, many times it seems and yet was still clearly readable, letters three inches tall, two words..."Love Life." Standing there, I must have seen those two words a dozen or more times, pondering the nature of the author, the motivation for this choice of words, the unlikely location for this unusual treatise, what effect it may have had on others, if any.

That I should be thinking about it now is a testament to its presence. As to its meaning, well I'm sure everyone has an idea. To me it was more an answer than a command. When things look pretty sour, what should I do? Love Life. It's like a choice I have, I could curse the endless stream of things I find irritating, or, I could do something different, I could try to appreciate the crazy mixed up things that happen.I could Love Life.

For the few brief seconds just before the sun rises across Alamitos Bay when flocks of gulls start flying inland and are black against the peach colored sky, that is when it is easy to make the choice to Love Life. When the person you love says "I love you" and you see in their eyes they mean it, it's easy to Love Life. I guess it's about appreciation, appreciating the many little things that make life valuable. When life is hard, when we are required to let go of things or people, when what we want is different than what we get, than the choice is harder, but still, a choice...Love Life.

I dragged home all manner of, um,  stuff from the Sky Drive-In Swap Meet, stuff I wanted or thought I needed, stuff that filled up my garage and life but none of those things were worth a damn compared to the two words I still keep in a pocket, in my heart.

Tim Bulone is an ardent observer of life on the swirling blue marble. He works at Davis Group Consulting and creates fine art and canvas prints which he likes to sell from time to time at http://www.MyFamilyArt.com He is an early morning pedestrian in Belmont Shore, where he resides with his wife.