Tag: Phillip Hoyle

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Springtime, by Phillip Hoyle

I knew the childhood chant, “April showers bring May flowers” long before I learned, “In Time of Silver Rain.” Langston Hughes wrote the poem; I learned it as a song when I was twenty-one and newly-married, an undergraduate studying theology and music. It seemed the springtime of my life. The Poet said it this way: “In time of silver rain/The earth/Puts forth new life again.”

For years I was amazed that the church’s celebration of its main stories—the death and resurrection—were so attached to geography. I’m not thinking of Jerusalem in Israel but rather of Earth’s northern hemisphere. Easter symbols were springtime symbols. Lenten preparation took place at the time of lengthening days. Easter symbols sported flowers and eggs and sunrises. Of course, that made a kind of sense to me, but what would religious life in the southern hemisphere make of the shortening of days leading up to the same events preached and celebrated in the north? What effect would Easter in the fall have on its meaning down there? (I saw a postcard from Brazil of Santa Clause riding a surfboard.) The questions seemed real to me.

In springtime I now appreciate most the warming trend, the eventual return to wearing shorts and sandals, eating out of doors, and playing in longer daylight hours. I don’t look forward to the rebirth of weeds I’ll have to pull or Japanese beetles that will go to war in the vines, flowers and garden, or the squirrels that will eat the tomatoes and winter squash. But still there is a kind of positive magic in longer days, green grass, shade trees, even suntans.

Yesterday I was trimming back some bushes that had barely begun to leaf out and raking up leaves deposited in hard-to-manage corners of the yard. Jim has been at it for weeks. I don’t do much yard work but do have my specialties, and I’m back to work—applying sunscreen, getting out summer clothes, packing away the flannels, corduroys, and sweaters. It’s spring. Enjoy the great out of doors or just the backyard. Clean it up. Invite over the neighbors for grilled specialties. Talk over the fence where it’s not too high. Socialize. Bring things alive. Yes.

Yesterday I walked in my Birkenstock Arizona sandals, ones I had not worn for months. They began irritating my feet and I remembered I hadn’t worn them long last fall. They weren’t really broken in. Then my left knee—the better one—started screaming at me like the right one often does. I realized here in spring I am deteriorating. And we need more, much more silver rain and soon. I wondered if when my knee quits, will I get one of those electric buggies. (One friend called his the electric chair.) If so, I’m sure I’ll decorate it with flowers and carry my rainbow colored umbrella holding onto the hope for silver rain and new life.

© 16 April 2018

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

 
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Finding Your Voice, by Phillip Hoyle

I started out a soprano. Then on Sunday nights at church I decided to harmonize as an alto and learned to read the line and sing the part. When my voice cracked too many times in Glee Club, I became a tenor. I stayed with that for many years. Since I was a choir director, I learned to sing all the parts, SAT and B. In the choirs we worked hard to increase everyone’s tone and range using techniques I learned from one of my voice teachers. If a section was weak on a Sunday morning, I could bolster them with my own screaming. It may have horrified some people. Who knows?

Finding my voice as a writer was another story, one that didn’t depend on timbre or range. In fact the discussion of that concept goes on. I developed a terse style for use in academic writing. I had to warm it up it for the church newsletter and did so with a little bit of success. When I accepted contracts for writing curriculum resources I got more at home with addressing volunteer teachers. The reading level for them was eighth or ninth grade. Writing for students of different ages was more fun and challenging. That work served as my introduction to creative writing. I experimented but still don’t know that I actually developed a voice.

When I started writing for myself, I tried for something consistent and my efforts seemed to help. But I believe I didn’t really find my voice until I had written a couple of years of weekly stories for this Telling Your Story group. Meeting that weekly goal and encouraging others to do the same, telling stories to almost the same people each week, and having an appreciative audience and being a part of this group did something for my sense of voice. I like the entertainment part of that work that reminds me so much of talking with a group of children on Sundays during many years of church work. Sometimes I made up the stories on the spot and encouraged the children to help me tell them. That got me started. Many years later I feel like I have a rather consistent voice and am happy to share my many stories with you. Mostly they are accurate to the extent of my ability to recall, but you know how that goes with the years stacking up, hearing reducing, and eyesight dimming. I appreciate that the story telling group allows me to speak whatever my voice is, found or not.

Thanks for listening, or on the blog, thanks for reading.

© 23 October 2017

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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Escape, by Phillip Hoyle

Years ago I’d escape to the hideout in the attic of the garage where this boy with no brothers hung out with boy friends. I’d sometimes go there alone or at least sit downstairs in the garage with my dog Tippy. In Jr. Hi years I’d close the door to my room. I’d matured and moved from sharing a room upstairs with two sisters into my own bedroom across the hall from my parents. Mom consulted with me about color and I ended up with dog wall paper—a mix of portraits of several dog species. Having my own room was great. It was my escape and it had a door! I did my projects and reading there. I enjoyed the solitude.

My friends and I made escapes to the countryside—both on our own and with the Boy Scout troop. We’d hike or ride bikes, or sometimes pull our sleds through the snow. With Scouts we were driven to a campsite south of town where hundreds of years before Native Americans had camped, grown crops, and lived out their summers, one of my favorite places on my great grandparents’ homestead. Kansa and earlier tribes had lived in the valley for centuries. While there I had the further escape of dreams and imagination. I knew I was camping and swimming with Indians long gone from the place.

My other great escape took form in 8th grade with my discovery of the historical novel. I started with James Fenimore Cooper’s stories, The Spy and The Last of the Mohicans, but then found more by contemporary writers like Kenneth Roberts’ book Arundel. I was hooked and spent much of my escape time tramping through forests and prairies with explorers and pioneers, spies and troops, and American Indians of many tribes. Books are still a major escape for me.

Escape is an important factor in personality development (as Don Johnson might point out), to independence (as my daughter would avow), to maintaining long-term relationships (as I testify, both as related to my 29-year marriage and 32-year career in churches). I found meaningful the saying: when a minister leaves one congregation for another, it’s turning in one set of tired problems for a set of new ones.

I still need escapes in retirement. They relieve pressure. Some days escape takes the form of going for coffee, having lunch out, searching a public library, or visiting a museum. These mini-breaks remind me of childhood’s yearly one-week vacation trips with the folks. I recall the morning we woke up in the tiny motel room where we’d slept. Dad complained about how the blinking red neon sign announcing “FULL” had kept him awake, but then, putting his arm around Mom said, “But in all it was a really good night.” My junior-high eyes and ears realized that while we kids slept, Mom and Dad had sex. I’m committed to working hard and then escaping to a change of pace or another book. I guess my upbringing taught me that.

© 19 February 2018

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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Clearly, by Phillip Hoyle

My writing teachers are still trying to teach me to write clearly. That seems like quite a challenge for a teacher to take on. While most of my instructors really have liked me—I am easy to get along with—they have had little clue of how my mind works, its story-laden way of expressing truth, its constant internal argument about what this writer wants, believes, and cares about, its strange logic, and its confusion over things spatial. Now that’s a special-education brain if there ever was one. I’m neither proud of nor ashamed it, for it’s the only one I have. Many teachers have set out to set me straight. Obviously they failed to do that although they have taught me many helpful and creative processes, ideas, and the like.

When I was first given a contract for a write-for-hire curriculum resources project and sent in my first draft of the first session, it came back to me looking very sorry, dripping in red ink and words of encouragement. I made the required changes—the ones in red ink—and thought through all the suggested comments—written in blue pencil. I didn’t have to make all these blue changes. I quickly typed in the red comments and found out that my editor took my awkward, unclear sentences and with a few red-ink changes made them say exactly what I meant. I was impressed and wondered where I was when they were handing out brains. What did I ask for? Perhaps I just wanted to have a good time which might not necessarily mean to think clearly.

My patient teachers have had to slow me down, to make me read and reread everything about a hundred times, over a time period lasting several months, sometimes several years. Of course that never works in write-for-hire jobs; the editors have deadlines to meet. I gave them things on time and looked forward to their corrections to make clear just what I was trying to say. I guess for them my being on time was a higher value that first-try clarity. They kept using me for ten years. Then I was done with that kind of writing.

Unfortunately, SAGE of the Rockies “Telling Your Story” program doesn’t give me enough time. I mess around in my early morning writing and scratch a few lines or run to the word processor and peck away hoping not to compound my lack of clarity with too many typos. It’s fun to write these stories, and I hope no listeners or readers spend too much time trying to analyze my logic or even common sense. If I have logic I’m sure it’s not common. If you hear or read something funny, just laugh. If I’m around I’ll smile with you. It’s all just another story to me. Did I say that last clearly enough?

And thanks for being as patient as have been my teachers and editors. 

© 20 November 2017

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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Curious, by Phillip Hoyle

I was curious about a book and then found myself in it. My young wife was studying to become a teacher, and a text from her ed-psych class caught my attention. There I read a developmental description of children. It seemed especially pertinent to my life in its description of boys in their upper elementary grades. Ever since that time I have looked at children in terms of their development using several schemes: psycho-sexual, psycho-social, cognitive, affective, and several more off shoots. I’ve had plenty of opportunity to observe having reared children in our home (ours and foster children), taught in churches, and directed children’s residential camps, on and on. I even taught developmental theory to workshop leaders in a denominational program to equip teachers in local churches. Now in retirement I have fewer opportunities for this observation, but when they present themselves, I look with scrutiny.

One neighborhood boy now probably ten, I first met when he was two or three. George was sitting on the step up to the neighbor’s sidewalk watching a large backhoe dig a huge hole in the asphalt street and explaining to his mother just what they were doing. The work was part of the installation of new storm sewers to replace the old-fashioned cisterns. There was little George with his mother watching the construction. I greeted his mother and met George. “He loves watching the tractors,” she said. “All last summer he made me take him over to South Broadway to see the trucks and tractors when they were rebuilding the street.”

“You certainly are curious,” I said sitting down next to the little boy. Was that a literary allusion? George’s school-teacher mother surely caught it. I did as well and said to the lad, “I’ll call you Captain Curious if that’s okay.” He didn’t say no. So during the weeks the construction was underway I called him Captain. He smiled. His mother encouraged his curiosity and now was relieved that this hole on our street was his new attraction, just half a block away.

Years have passed. He matured, became the elder brother. Their house is just far enough that I don’t often see George, his mother, dad or the younger brother, but when I happen to be in the front yard and they are going by, we stop to talk. I’ve wondered if my name-giving still holds. I now call him George, not Captain Curious. Kids do grow up. Still I watch for signs of his curiosity. What I see now is usually him whizzing by on a bicycle or a foot scooter or running by with some sort of ball to play with our neighbor boy Charley. George is more shy now, a common effect of growing up, but I believe he is still curious. He plays. He seeks out peers to play with. He practices. Also he does his homework (his mother told me). I take it to indicate he is as mentally bright as he is friendly.

One day last summer as I was pulling weeds from the flowerbeds, I noted that George was playing alone in their front yard. He had a football and was tossing and catching it. Playing center he’d hike it into the air, then turn around and catch it like the quarterback. He was passing, running, tackling, being tackled, evading his competitors and, I’m sure, barely winning a victory for his home team. He’s fun loving, physically coordinated, good looking, and according to his mom, still curious.

Of course, watching others is always as much memory as it is a present reality. I’m so glad I had friends, a rich upbringing, a noisy family and neighborhood, and the freedom to explore my fascinations in libraries, youth organizations, and an ever widening boundary for those explorations. I had friends—Keith, Dinky, Marvin, and Dick less than two blocks away. I didn’t have much time to be bored and when I was alone I’d throw baskets through the hoop above the garage door—well at least I’d try—and engage in other interests that filled my time and taught me skills and concepts. I feel privileged now to live in a neighborhood where I am reminded somewhat of my childhood curiosity. Life is grand. Old age continues to be quite bearable, for I am still curious and engaged.

I’m getting ready to meet the family with grandkids and great grandkids for Christmas. I wonder what I’ll observe this year. If it’s too much, I’ll simply grab an early plane for my return to my curious retirement.

© 11 December 2017

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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When I Knew, by Phillip Hoyle

I knew I liked sex games when I was in second grade—age 7.

I knew I liked sex games with boys in third grade—age 8.

I knew I missed sex games with boys in seventh grade, but this time the knowing was complicated by the fact that my boyfriends didn’t seem interested any more—age 12.

I knew when I was sexually molested by an older man that some men wanted sex with other men. I also knew I didn’t feel molested—age 14.

I knew I wasn’t the only teenager to get hard ons in the shower room at school. I also learned not to be distressed—age 14.

I knew some boys my age liked to kiss and have sex with other boys and that I too liked it. I also knew my friend missed his big brother who went off to university—age 15.

I knew that only some boys attracted me sexually, not all of them. In fact I knew that only a few boys attracted me; few girls as well—age 16.

I knew one guy in the dorm who attracted me by his personality, humor, and relaxed nudity—age 18.

I knew one other boy at college who liked to wrestle with me alone in my room and realized he must miss his brothers—age 19.

I knew I had unusually intense feelings for a younger undergraduate the year after I had married. He was the first person I ever lost sleep over—age 21.

I knew the new music teacher, Ted, would like to do sexual things I might like to do and hoped we’d become friends but not complicate my marriage—age 22.

I knew I had deep emotional responses to some few men in my first fulltime church job. I knew I wouldn’t do anything with them but did experience and enjoy the attractions—ages 23-25.

I knew an undergraduate at university who was gay and seemed interested in me—age 28.

I knew I had fallen in love with a fellow male student in seminary—age 30.

These when’s are only part of the story, for I kept having them—still do—age 70. The content, or what’s are, as they say, the rest of the story, and I have enjoyed these what images as I have written about my when’s. Ah, the glories of memory; but that’s another story or a million more.

© 2 April 2018

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.” 

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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Utopia, by Phillip Hoyle

I find strange that crossword puzzles, including the New York Times, use Paradise as a clue for Eden. I hate to argue with cultural assumptions widely held, even if they come from a great poet like John Milton. But Paradise connects with a mythological afterlife in Christian terms, Eden uses a mythological origins story from the Hebrew tradition. To call Eden Paradise seems way too simple. The old garden was no utopia. The story makes that clear. Besides it’s an origin story for agriculture. The first humans tended the garden.
     The view of Paradise is a poet’s elaboration on a myth of afterlife. Utopia seems another matter altogether. A dreamer’s world of relationship. But both Eden and Paradise caution such perfectionist dreamers that problems will always be present. The need for change continues whatever the vision. 
     The main thing I like in utopian fantasies is the assumption that things in the world could be better. Well, you see, I’m schooled in the liberal tradition of democracies and the like. Yet I have a practical bent (Kansan perhaps) that cautions utopians not to suppose their ability to dream accomplishes what they are dreaming of.
     So this utopian-considering middle aged man left the trials and tribulations of straight life to live in gay life. He did not believe in salvation by gaydom, and it was a good thing he didn’t. He moved into the gayest part of the city, and started living in this new way in a gay environment only to discover gay was no less complicated than being straight. Oh, he and his ex-wife did agree living single was easier than being paired, but finding a perfect companion didn’t occur. There were none in this imagined utopia. And besides, gay men were people with traditions, inequities, and thousands of dreams—many unfounded—of what the gay utopia should be. Living there was as difficult as a career in marriage and church work. The only utopia he found was to get a job, continue to make friends, help neighbors, and laugh a lot. He’d already been doing that.
     Now this is not an essay to down anyone or any community. It is just about the non-existence of utopia except as a literary device of social critique, the theme of which is “things are going to get better” or let’s hope so anyway. 

© 4 February 2108

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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Time and Preparation, by Phillip Hoyle

The freedoms of college life and schedule demonstrated for me I would have to learn to manage my time, but I took years to figure out how my personality and preferences affected my ability to finish projects on time. At the beginning of a semester I’d study the prospectus of each class and begin figuring out how to approach papers that would be due. I’d go to the library, my favorite space in any school, where I’d search, research, and check out books. I loved digging into books and finding topics and approaches that made sense to me. Still I was writing and typing the piece right up to the last minute. Once I stayed up all night to do so but decided never to do that again. I needed my sleep! I’d just have to start earlier. Still I’d go to class re-reading the paper and changing spelling and even grammar by hand on the typed sheets. I realized Profs would like that I knew spelling and grammar better than typing. None of them criticized my last minute corrections.

One graduate school history project really captured me. I found a short 17th century German pietist theological treatise by August Hermann Franke titled “The Spiritual Affects” (of course in translation). My related paper compared it with a long book, René Descartes’ Passions of the Soul. I hoped to show Franke was not Cartesian. I was pushed for time so hired a neighbor to type the paper for me. As the deadline approached I gave her my introduction, then my first chapter that covered Franke. I was writing the conclusion while she was typing the second chapter that presented Descartes. I started wondering: maybe the old German was Cartesian. My thesis had asserted that he was not, but now that I was done writing, I thought he probably was and at the last minute concluded he actually was Cartesian. Looking again at the introduction and the conclusion, I decided I could have my typist change just a word or two in the intro, and I hurriedly rewrote the part of the conclusion. Somehow the logic of yes or no was a bit arbitrary to my analysis. But it just made more sense (at least ultimately)—a logical sense—a challenge for me since illogic seems as powerful and as helpful to me as logic. I changed the lines. The professor was amazed at the paper and agreed with my revised thesis, and I learned more about my relationship to time and preparation.

Some years later I was introduced to the Myers Briggs preferences inventory and found that I sat right on the line (zero) between thinker and feeler and on the line between judge and perceiver. Maybe that was why I had problems with those old papers. I wanted to read another book! I took another test that measured one’s preferences under stress. Aha. Under stress I become a thinker and an effective judge. That’s how I now do my work, with plenty of time to play around and a deadline to make me finish it. In the 1990s, when writing for a publishing company, I turned in all writing projects on time or even early. I suspect that is why they kept using me. The preparation was never a problem for me, but the deadline pushed me into being enough of a thinker and judge so as to complete the work.

These days I rely on SAGE Telling Your Story’s Monday 1:30 deadline to get my work done although I am still changing sentences, grammar, and spelling while riding the Zero bus on my way to the meetings.

© 29 January 2018

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.” 

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Utopia, by Phillip Hoyle

Perhaps I’m too practical to be interested in utopian fantasies. They’ve never appealed to me. After all, I grew up in Kansas and even the Wizard of Oz lived somewhere else and, when found, was shown to be a fraud. I had a friend who grew up near Liberal, Kansas, right there in the center of Dorothy country. He was brilliant, talented in music and organization, a teacher, and probably had red slippers in men’s size 12. He was gay and came to understand life was never utopian although he could dream. I had a different kind of Kansas imagination, but we liked each other and were fine friends for many years. He fled the wheat fields of southwest Kansas. I left the state for more education. We met up in Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, and eventually San Francisco. Now this latter place seemed utopian to him and opened him wide to his sexuality. He lived high on the hill on Castro Street, could watch big ships move in and out of the port, had lots of fun, and felt the kind of acceptance he needed. But it was no utopia. He loved it there, but life in gay San Francisco was not without its hazards. To me it seemed he lived rather fully into all of those hazards. They took their toll, and I made my last trip there to memorialize him, a man who lived and worked to make a gay utopia deliver the goods so Kansans and other people could enjoy who they were or who they wanted to become. I applaud his efforts; I miss him still many years after his memorial service.

I don’t tell this as a sad tale. Of course I cried at my loss of him. I too understood the attraction of the utopia out there by the western sea. I loved being with him walking up and down the steep hills, hearing great musical performances, visiting parks, strolling along the beach, hiking out to Land’s End, talking about life and his life and my own.

The experiments for this kind of utopian life continue in urban centers far beyond the reach of his lifetime. Anytime I am involved, I recall Ted’s contributions. We made music together, danced, and laughed in the little utopia of our friendship. Such utopias are necessary. Their pursuit brings quality and love into human relations. Their possibility asks us to be kind to one another, to applaud all human efforts for equality and freedom, to create pockets of such mutual respect in order to keep hope alive. With this account I memorialize a deceased friend to an extraordinary group of elders and in this most appropriate place where we celebrate our comradeship through telling stories and listening to the stories of others. Our sharing keeps alive the necessary and possible kind of community to support our lives in freedom and in love, even if that community is somewhat less than utopian.

© 5 February 2018

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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Hope, by Phillip Hoyle

I moved to Denver determined to live my life as an openly gay man. There is a fifty-year long story behind that statement. I won’t go into it here, but my mind was made up. I knew I needed come out publically. I certainly wanted whatever kind of gay life I could construct in an urban context. Of course, I also had other needs: a job, a place to live, some friends, a connection with a church as a participant (not as staff), and a change of scene to mention only a few of them. I wanted and assumed I would be able to see these needs met to my satisfaction. In less than three months I had enrolled in massage school to learn a trade that would sustain me, rented an apartment, moved in, and started meeting people: students in school, members in the church I had settled on, and eventually in my neighborhood. I did more things such as joined as a member at the Denver Art Museum, got a library card at Denver Public Library, started writing another book for the publishing company I worked for part-time and set up my art studio and massage space in my tiny apartment. I was on my way.
I was having a wonderful time in my new gay world, exhilarated by a sense of freedom I had never before experienced, looking at my day-to-day life with a sense of awe. What would happen next, I wondered. My art matured, my small book went off to the editor, my education changed my perception of the human body, and the city kept opening me to the potential of new wants. I was not greedy, but I did keep myself busy.
Toward the end of my fourth year here, after schooling was completed, my massage practice was proving rewarding, and I was enjoying a number of friendships, I met a man one day at a bus stop, a man who moved me deeply. I wanted to get to know him. I saw him three times on the bus and knew I wanted his friendship. But then he disappeared. For weeks I kept my eyes opened. The season moved from early to late spring. Then I saw him again. I gave him my phone number and encouraged him to call me so we could meet for breakfast or lunch. I really wanted his friendship whether he was also gay or not. I wanted him in my life.
Two months later I heard his voice on my phone. He asked me to call. I did. We began to talk. My want changed. Here’s what I wrote in my Morning Pages the morning after his phone call: “I am pleased, maybe even thrilled. Rafael left me a message. Then I left him a message. Then we talked. [Among other things] he said he wanted us to be friends.
That’s when my feelings changed from want to hope. I wrote: “I want him to touch me. I want to share some kind of love with him. I hope it will work out to be something fine.”
In my usage hope seeks so much more than does want, more in terms of deepest desires, persistent needs, and long-term effects on one’s life. It wasn’t that I quit wanting, but I then began living with an expectation of so much more than any other man had provided me or been able to receive from me. My feelings opened up into a romance the likes of which I had never before entertained. I’d always assumed romance to be a rather hokey and fairy-tale cultural construct but was suddenly living into a dream I had never expected. I had never been so moved and never had received nor given what this new friendship, partnership, love life, and cohabitational thrill that my too-brief time with Rafael Martínez provided. Even though our romance lasted just over four months, its affects and effects linger in my memory, in my body. My mourning his death is balanced with memories of our weeks together.
© 4 December 2017  
About the Author  
Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general, he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”
He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com