The intoxicating fragrance of peppermint tea bags, fresh from the box.
Monday, September 25, 2017
Tuesday, September 19, 2017
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
Monday, August 21, 2017
As If to Demonstrate
As If to
Demonstrate an Eclipse
I pick
an orange from a wicker basket
and
place it on the table
to
represent the sun.
Then
down at the other end
a blue
and white marble
becomes
the earth
and
nearby I lay the little moon of an aspirin.
I get a
glass from a cabinet,
open a
bottle of wine,
then I
sit in a ladder-back chair,
a
benevolent god presiding
over a
miniature creation myth,
and I
begin to sing
a
homemade canticle of thanks
for this
perfect little arrangement,
for not
making the earth too hot or cold
not
making it spin too fast or slow
so that
the grove of orange trees
and the
owl become possible,
not to
mention the rolling wave,
the play
of clouds, geese in flight,
and the
Z of lightning on a dark lake.
Then I
fill my glass again
and give
thanks for the trout,
the oak,
and the yellow feather,
singing
the room full of shadows,
as sun
and earth and moon
circle
one another in their impeccable orbit
and I
get more and more cockeyed with gratitude.
—Billy
Collins
Tuesday, August 8, 2017
La Vie en Ambre
Away for
the weekend, and gratefully back home here to the coast, where I'm nesting
again.
Making a
chicken and farro salad with green beans, goat cheese, marjoram. With shallots—always tantalizingly mythical,
redolent of the Victorian poets, alchemizing those Medieval and Arthurian
elements. A kind of amber skin, amber a
kind of alchemy as well, fossilized tree resin holding inside it flowers,
fruit, feathers, insects, crustaceans, spider webs, healing, history, life
itself.
Getting
ready to read The Cleaner of Chartres,
by Salley Vickers (having loved Miss
Garnet's Angel, set in Venice, holding inside its own amber heart the
Archangel Raphael and the restoration of a 14th-century chapel).
I have
lived by the sundial motto, "Count none but the sunny hours," and am
pleased to learn there is a rose for such as me, named Amber Sun.
images: Christie B. Cochrell, Sundial
Amber Sun rose
Tuesday, August 1, 2017
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
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)