Notice of Transfer

Why is it so hard to say goodbye to old cars, even when one is entirely uninterested in cars at large and all matters automobiliac?  I've donated my 28-year-old Camry to the San Francisco Opera, which seems a fitting end for it, and something my parents—whose car it was for much of the 28 years—would have gotten a kick out of.  (I'm thinking it might well turn up as a prop in one of the ubiquitous post-apocalyptic productions!) 

The tow truck picked it up just now.  We took it for one last drive this morning, down to the ocean front, and while parked there we saw a whale—and later three or four dolphins.  I love seeing the many moods of the ocean; today's was sparkly, with a lone paddleboarder tiny and insignificant against the vast shimmering light.  All symbols of parting or something, of life carrying on.

The Camry became one of those legendary cars driven only on Sundays by a little old lady, to church—but in my mother's case, to the casino.  The Camel Rock Casino out by the Tesuque Pueblo in that high desert country.

I drove the car reluctantly in Santa Fe, because it seemed to take up more room than legitimate on the narrowest roads.  I know we bundled piñon logs into the trunk one Christmas, having driven up the road of artists, Canyon Road, to the woodyard of Jesus Rios, snowflakes in the air but not yet feathering up on the ground.  We drove to Bandelier often, with all kinds of good things for picnics by little Bean Creek, and she would sit with her thermos of coffee while I walked up the path soft with fallen evergreen needles to climb cottonwood ladders up the cliffs to the Ceremonial Cave, sometimes with thunderclouds bruising the canyon.  I drove it out to Tsankawi the afternoon of many New Year's Eves, the last day of the year, to again climb to Anasazi caves, smelling the juniper and pungent berries on my fingers after, going home to sit by a piñon fire.

And when my mother died we packed it with the last of the Heritage books (Dumas and Henry James, Kenilworth, The Woman in White), and the big round cottonwood drum that years of martini glasses sat on, on careful coasters, while dinner was readying, and drove it back to northern California through Flagstaff, Las Vegas, a couple of California missions, Gilroy.

This morning I remembered at the last minute to take the three-stranded car charm she'd hung from the visor, hoping its blessings haven't worn out like the long-faded blue paint and almost every part under the hood, and can be brought inside with the reluctantly signed Notice of Transfer.

image:  Pinterest, Ancient Car

Beyond the Dusk

I could smell the curves of the river beyond the dusk and I saw the last light supine and tranquil upon tideflats like pieces of broken mirror, then beyond them lights began in the pale clear air, trembling a little like butterflies hovering a long way off.

(William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury)

With August comes an awareness of summer, summer no longer mid-, but in decline, on its long, slow way out, burning itself up as it goes.  There is a great nostalgia in it, wistful sadness for the waking glory lost, the potential more than likely unfulfilled, fading and making-do begun.

As I have said before, to me The Sound and the Fury captures the feeling of summer as nothing else can, the quintessence of summer.  So I must either read it again now, for the umpteenth time, or try Light in August for a change.

image:  James McNeill Whister, Nocturne, Grey and Silver

Time and the River, Thyme and the Sea

I love this recollection of Colette by her stepson, which I found in the Colette day book of my mother's, given to her by my father, among old family photographs and other saved scraps.

If you would know her, think of a garden in Brittany, by the sea.  It is early morning and she has been awakened by the melancholy two-note whistling of those birds we call courlis; she has come down, carefully bypassing a small stack of sleeping cats, and the bulldog has followed her silently.  She sits in delightful loneliness on the damp and salty grass and her hand enjoys the roughness of the herbs.  The sound of the waves fills her mind, she looks now at them, now at the flowers which are moving faintly upward as the weight of the dew dissolves . . .  What matters to her is the rapidly changing colour of the sky, the increasing roar of the incoming sea, the polish of a pebble which she had now picked up, and venturing further, the prompt dartings of a shrimp which feels that the tide will liberate it from its narrow pool.  It is also the gait of her husband when he comes out:  she will watch whether it is lightened by the enjoyment of the crisp air.

—Bertrand de Jouvenel, Time and Tide, 1954

I would be happy to be remembered that way, and indeed might be.  Those gentle pleasures of the French writer's are mine as well, and soon my garden will be by the sea.  I'm already planning for herbs, and salty grass, and missing only cats and bulldog.

My search for an appropriate image has led me to

. pictures and sketches of Colette in Brittany and elsewhere

. herb gardens in Brittany or by the sea

. herb gardens in bone china teacups, Twinings or Harney & Sons tea tins; decorated with blue & white plates

. French Trappist monks creating Port Salut, a monastery cheese

. French omelette with chives and cherry tomatoes or with soft green herbs

. how to design a potager garden

. and finally,

thinking about making the good kale and quinoa breakfast bowl—which I will go and do.

image:  Colette at Roz Ven, Saint-Coulomb

Among the Angels

From the glass canyons of downtown L.A., with their sheer walls of windows reflecting the sky, we took Metro bus 487 fourteen stops through the tangle of freeways to San Gabriel, at the foot of hazy blue mountains, one capped / captivating with snow, and when the traffic signals allowed crossed two railway tracks to Mission San Gabriel Arcángel—one of the last two missions we hadn't seen.  In the city of angels, in this time of terror when we need angels more than ever (to paraphrase Rilke, below), this pilgrimage to visit the now suburban archangel was important.

Let not one god pass away.  We all need each of them now,

let each be valid for us, each image formed in the depths.

Don’t speak with the slightest disdain of whatever the heart

     can know.

(from The Sonnets to Orpheus, translated by Stephen Mitchell—who I met one year at BEA there in downtown Los Angeles)

We made our journey midmorning, after an appropriate Los Angeles breakfast of huevos rancheros, fried eggs with a corn tortilla, salsa, and pinto beans.  Not quite the chilaquiles I loved in Cancun years ago, but satisfying my sense of right-being.

It's not one of the lovelier missions, but it was a poem, inspirational in many ways.

. palms and bells and old adobe-covered stairs

. giant white clam shell basins in the courtyard, holding water with flower petals

. learning that in carpentry dovetailed means made without nails

. little blue tiles around the shrine

. colors in sacred paintings made from wildflowers, olive oil

. baked floor tiles

. cistern, millrace, aqueduct

. soap and tallow vats

. Our Lady of Sorrows

. many charming signs, as below. 

"No longer do caravans of traders come lumbering up to the gates of Mission San Gabriel as in the days of the Franciscans.  No longer are fiestas and siestas the order of the day.*  But Mission San Gabriel Arcángel continues to enlarge its niche in the hearts of all, be they casual visitors or members of the Parish, which it has served for these many years."

*(again, recalling Rilke's "When everything we create is far in spirit from the festive, / in the midst of our turbulent days let us think of what festivals were.")

"The five fire circles are original and once held large iron kettles, such as the one seen here, wherein daily 'Pozole' or popcorn soup was made over the fires.  Upon the sounding of the 'Angeles' bell at noon and the prayer which it commanded, the Indians came to be fed."

"One of the original church doors stands (retired) here.  Made of California redwood.  The bronze bosses were brought from New Spain, Mexico.  If the door is closely observed, it will be noticed that rain-storm and sun have worn the wood away from the bosses.  This door swung on the south side main church entrance.  Look . . . its mate is over yonder."

And more than anything, I loved hearing the native guide playing what he called the River Song on a flute in the mission church, for his small group of visitors.  Explaining that the notes trickled, as did the sacred river, water vital in that dry land, and the music perfect for the day.  (Tellingly, I've learned, the erosion of the San Gabriel mountains, into and along the river, provided gravel, sand, and rock for the construction of the modern city:  all those roads, freeways, and parking lots; coliseum and harbor.)

The visit was evocative, reminding me of

. visiting the mission in the desert south of Tucson, Tucumcacori, the winter after my father died; the mission and nearby spice shop

. visiting the San Diego mission other years, when I was selling books at the Asian Studies conference, and drinking genmai cha I'd brought along to ice, in afternoon sunlight, the luxurious warmth of a southern California early spring

. finding the paintings of our birthday saints (Eliseo, by Tintoretto; and an Annunciation by Titian), another February, in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice

. our class making a film in a canyon with a little private adobe church one rainy day in high school, before we went our separate ways

. coming across the father of the California missions again back in his home church in Palma de Mallorca one September, orange trees in the cloister

. the artist in my Bonnard novel, Charles San Gabriel Girard, named for the mountains his mother came to from Quebec—the beloved San Gabriels of Eugenie, matriarch of the reclusive Girards.

Gabriel was, as it happens, the angel of the Annunciation.  Clothed in blue or white, he carries variously a lily, a trumpet, a shining lantern, a branch from Paradise, a scroll, a scepter.  He is patron of telecommunication workers, radio broadcasters, messengers, postal workers, clerics, diplomats, stamp collectors, Portugal, ambassadors—so, clearly, much needed today. 

I hope we have made friends.  Though as Rilke (surely among the angels himself) writes at the beginning of the Duino Elegies:

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'

hierarchies? and even if one of them pressed me

suddenly against his heart:  I would be consumed

in that overwhelming existence.  For beauty is nothing

but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure,

and we are so awed because it serenely disdains

to annihilate us.  Every angel is terrifying.

And, in the next:

But if the archangel now, perilous, from behind the stars

took even one step down toward us:  our own heart, beating

higher and higher, would beat us to death.  Who are you?

images:   Christie B. Cochrell, Mission San Gabriel

Archangel Gabriel, Hagia Sophia