A Perfect Hour

We went to say goodbye to Cape Croker. At least I did. It's been a special place for me. It's somewhere to go to stretch myself open, to see what's rumbling around inside. I play my sax there. I make pancakes on a little burner in the mornings - my fruit inside, hers on top. I float in the hammock. I meditate. I read, I write. We have sex, great meals. We drink too much wine probably. We watch the thick river of stars in the black sky, and the embers dancing up off the fire. Me meet people who are easy to meet, they being as relaxed and happy as we are. I sometimes, but not always, climb up into the thick woods on top of the escarpment. More often, I just move along the beach a little ways from the camp site, where the sand and rocks have squeezed out all but the hardiest vegetation. I listen for the sounds of the birds and the insects.

I say that this is my spiritual place. And it is - me, without any formal practice, but with a wandering and wondering something inside me that needs a home. There's a meeting here, between that yearning and that destination. There's a knitting, resolving kind of energy that I find, or that finds me, seeping up out of the rocky, patient earth, thrashing about on the moody winds.

I went with a goodbye to say because next week we may take possession of Cloud. And Cloud is a place we will own - which isn't of course the right word for it. How to own land which will be here long after me; which will never come to me, but always draw me toward it, which will harbor and rest me...nourish me in ways I am already dreaming about. No ownership here. Let's say that we are stepping more deeply into a relationship with a place. And that relationship will involve centering and orienting and balancing, and whatever other things one can do with a place.

It can't ever, of course, but it will, in some ways, replace what Cape Croker has been to me. It's a place to which we intend to bring out creativity, and the parts of us that are reaching for space and for the simple rhythms of being. We will come back to Cape Croker - as early as next month for the Pow Wow. And we expect to come at least once a year. But who knows? And even so, there will be Cloud, and so less will be brought here, less will be sought here.

So now, about the perfect hour. It was our last one there. We never leave Cape Croker when others are gathering up to beat the traffic. Our favorite times are always when the weekenders have left and the place is near empty. Some week-long campers will come in and settle down. But Sunday afternoons and evenings are always quiet and calm; the weather is always perfect. And so on Sunday.

I had wanted to be on the road by six, but at five we weren't even close to ready. I said we should get going and eat on the way. Ponczka wanted to cook the sausages she'd bought from the Polish store. But that will keep us too long, I protested. Work tomorrow. So we hustled for a bit. But, well...she really didn't want to settle for fast food, and so Ponczka cooked the sausage after all. And there was green tomato salad, great crusty bread with seeds, some mustard, grilled peppers from the night before. And there were two bottles of cold, cold beer that we'd forgotten about.

It was one of those times when the food you are eating seems to be the only food possible to eat. How could there be any other? We sat under the glowing sky, almost packed, ate and drank and were happy.

When we were ready to go, we gathered a few rocks to carry to Cloud. And while we stood looking out at the bay, Ponczka said what a perfect time it would be to go in the water. We were sticky and we had the road ahead of us - three or four hours. Why not? We parked away from where we'd camped, close to the road heading out, peeled off our clothes, dug out our damp swim gear, and stepped out into the cool water. It was so shallow in this end that twenty steps in we were only thigh deep. The sun was just hovering over the bluff, in its pool of red light. The water sparkled and the air whistled softly. We lay ourselves upon the water and floated. The water was so still, everything so perfectly balanced and tranquil that we closed our eyes and let the water hold us. I remembered the mantra from yoga class, the invitation to keep relaxing more, and I let go of my hold on my muscles and felt my body softening, progressively, a bit more with every other faint outward breath.

If a place can embrace a person, and kiss every portion and particle of him, that's what Cape Croker did to me. Ponczka and I came up out of the water feeling our every pore had been flushed through, every muscle and tendril wiped clean. All was right with the world. I can't imagine the possibility of feeling better. It was a perfect hour.

Man, on a Pier, in the Dark

A friend of mine is drowning. He is angry, obsessed with the circumstances of his undoing, and with the ocean of indifference that washes over him, wave by wave, day in and day out. Maybe it's his anger that has kept him from drowning. Because he's determined to have justice. He did not place himself in this sea of troubles. He should not be here, but on firm land somewhere. Or in a boat at least, with a steady hand on the tiller, the power of the winds held comfortably in the fold of his sails.

My friend won't swim to shore, because drowning is his evidence, his proof of how he's been wronged. Difficult enough to get anyone to pay attention as it is, treading the deep dark waves, with only the occasional piece of floating detritus to lend a bit of buoyancy, while he lifts his voice in a roar, demanding his vengeance, his day of retribution. How much less chance of being heard once he is safe and dry again.

His story is that he was walking alone on a pier, in the dark. He was doing nothing more than passing his time, attending to nothing but to the stuff of his everyday, making it more real by remembering it after, or by looking ahead to what it would be. He could hear the surf, but could not see it. He felt the spray of the ocean across his face, a heavy, stinging blast occasionally slapping him out of inattention, to notice the chill in the air, the dampness gathering in the fabric of his thin jacket.

The truth is, he was aware of nothing more than a shape that brushed up against him. He will say that the shape was a man, and that the brush was a shove. He will say that he felt the malevolence, and further imagine that he was being stalked all the while he walked there, his aggressor waiting for the moment of his ripest vulnerability.

During his hours and days in the life-draining waters he has put various faces to the shadow. His past is peopled with enemies, declared and not, and with the envious, and with those secret agents of reasonless hate. And though he has no solid clues, my friend knows that, as there is logic and reason and justice in the world, when his day comes, he will point out his prosecutor and name him. He will no longer be shadow, but flesh, like his flesh, bone like his bone, with thoughts and dreams of his own, however twisted by spite. This tormentor will be named, and then will know how things come around, that there is a right order, and how courage prevails over slinking meanness. And on that day, in that future, my friend will be dry and content. Fulfilled.

But I say to my friend: swim instead. I ask him to raise his arm and to beat his anger usefully against the waves, then to do it again, until he is moving. I ask him to choose a direction in the blinding mist and foam, and to believe in that, instead of all the rest. Save yourself, I say to him, because there is no one else. All the rest are phantoms. I ask him...but you see, I'm not there, but only a whisper in the wind myself, which is nothing against the roar of nature he's battling, and the tumult of his own anger. That he will hear me is my own whispered wish, and only if dreams speak to one another is there a hope.

Making Wine

I imagined that making wine was hard
That it required some esoteric knowledge
or a paranormal sensitivity at least
Same as being happy
As meeting and keeping your right love

But the only hard thing is the truce with time
Believing in the possibility of wine, with only grape juice on hand
Other than wait, there is so little to do
Only choosing the grapes...for flavour and sweetness
Then letting time do it’s work
Time, and maybe biology... or physics
Or whatever science it might be

I pour the juice into the green glass carboy
Shaped beautifully like a rolling tear
And fermentation begins, filling the house with sweet odors
And the burbling chatter of the airlock

There’s the invitation to go on with life
keep my appointments
generate all the plans and accidents of my every day
Nothing to do here
The magic is propelled by its own incantation
a murmuring conspiracy of grape and germ and air
I’ve done my part
The rest happens when I’m not looking
Not being the hero, the mover, the cause

And so the world takes on a different hue and tone and weight
From not exactly waiting, nor being passive
Merely riding out that truce with time
The gist of which is: pick grapes when they are ready
Siphon off the first fermentation, when it is done
Wait some more – but not treading time, rather in forgetful being and doing in the world
The wine will come

Then the bottling and corking...
And I know – I’ve known all along
About all the promises made, kept and broken,
The sunrises, sunsets and moonshines
The passings and meetings and lingering
Greetings and goodbyes
That have passed in the making of a bottle

And I’m faced with a truth
That there is no making of wine
Because wine makes itself

The Weighted City

The city streets are heavy
and hold me down these old ways
Gravity thick as basements, the roads lined with streetcar veins
cracking with traffic in the three am narcotic glow

I follow the link of street lights
safe in their unendingness
silencing the fear of what lies around corners
Someone’s phantom dream, maybe my own.

At the end of all the boulevards, where the donut shops are closed
only silence and distant headlights waiting
The stillness is long-legged and brash
filtering through the thin and distant radio
leaking rooms of memory...and touches...
and fantasies that will stalk me back

I am seeking the fragments
of my ongoing, half true story
among those knit to me by this gravity

Story and rumour, what a city is built of
Not just this one, but every brother sister place
holding me home to weighted down memories
close and rutted like old scars
able to fade but not disappear
mimicking potholes of time and inertia

Clearing Out the Basement

Shoes I don't wear anymore
A huge umbrella and stand, used for outdoor art shows, before we got the tent
The outboard motor for the sailboat. Somewhere, the sails
Video Cassettes of "The School Yard Bully", produced by Regent Park Focus with some 7th graders I worked with at Mandela Park School
Boxes of old letters, cards, pieces of stories that never got written, clips from newspapers
A big bag of soft rubber balls, for juggling lessons every now and then
The acoustic guitar - Pocketwatch - I got for Christmas from Helene in 1977, and carried around with me when I was a cabbie, plucking through lonely half hours on Inman Square
The trumpet - Trixie - that my Dad bought me, for a hundred bucks, when I got serious about playing in 7th grade
Damian's abandonned golf clubs
Plastic 20-liter buckets for the juice that goes into our wine
Laundry
Batteries, light bulbs, screws and tools
Ponczka's canvasses, painted and not - and sketches and other exercises from her school days
Chairs, stored away for winter, from the back yard, the upper deck, or on their way to the trash
A bottle of expensive champagne, brought by an ex-lover to one of our parties years ago - we're waiting for the time to drink it
Summer jackets, the overflow of scarves and hats, including gifts, bought and handmade
The cat box and a bag of litter
Back up, semi-retired camping gear

It isn't time yet, for Spring cleaning
But a quietly building desire for order makes itself felt
Shuffling the familiar into some new configuration
Creating a model of my everyday, with highlights for the newness it makes possible
I'll look once more at the small souvenirs and tokens, reminding me of evenings and meetings and songs I would otherwise forget. Again, I will fail to discard them, needing their power to evoke the geniis I have been, in their way lightening the alluring weight of memories that carry me nowhere related to now.
Not time yet, but Time - that big wheel, pulverizing ambition, sweeping up the floor, putting everything in its place.

Day

Coming into Night, I once felt it could go on forever
deepening, like a dream washing over me
pulling me into my own imagination
made real and grown beyond the limits of waking day

Night was Haven and Escape and Mystery
I was not afraid of its dangers
though I knew I could so easily lose myself
and never emerge the same self as went in

But no matter
Being lost in myself is maybe only a tighter knot than being lost in the World
A spiral downward, into a single moment
the infinite immortality of embracing Night

But when Light then comes, creeping over a distant horizon
like a ghost of the World returning
seizing me out of my moment
What am I to think of this feared, unwanted tomorrow
pulling me, breathless, back into Life

Ways to Approach an Ocean

First of all, always with respect. Recognizing that it can crush you, without a thought or a care. Beyond even that, without being aware of you as anything more than a tiny fragment of all-pervasive being, of which it too is but a tiny drop.

But you, to you, are you. And you would bathe in this ocean, source of life, maelstrom of forces, cauldron of feeling and being. You would do so and live, to return to dry land with a story, with new understanding. You would immerse yourself, and emerge a master of your inner world, your personal, inner seas tamed, channelled into more manageable rivers and lakes, the occasional splash of rain.

You might then begin your approach with a toe. But you will fail. You will instantly be splashed at least to your knees. And this only if you’ve come in the stillness between waves. Not the tiny, regular waves, of our own tiny, fleeting time, but the vaster waves that the ocean itself attends. (You, after all, do not spend your attention on every breath and heartbeat.)

And unless you instantly retreat, dryness will become but a crumbling memory.

Perhaps, instead, you will navigate your way in a boat. The larger it is, the more immune you may be to the moisture that wants to claim you. An ocean liner might be best, or even a battle ship. Take your station below deck, or in some high tower, with a panel of instruments arrayed about you, the steering wheel in your grasp. Feel your power. You can almost pretend you are on dry land. Except for the laws of tides and currents, the surface interaction of water with air. All of this will make itself felt. Your ersatz earth will be soggified, your reality tossed. And the storms, however repelled by steel hulls and decks, well...isn’t all that what you came to feel? To know that you are alive?

Maybe a smaller vessel will do. Make it a long boat, or a canoe, catamaran or kayak. Something propelled by paddle or by sail, that bends with the undulations of this ocean. Enough of denial and self-repression. Flow with this elemental power. Let it decide the islands and continents you will visit. With or against reason, it will all begin to seem the same. You will begin to intuit how life here is different than on the level ground you’ve previously clung to.

And this experience may make you bolder. Abandon the vessel altogether. You will now meet the ocean head on, so to speak. Plunging, head and outstretched arms boldly splitting the breaking wave, a lung full of air enough for this ride. This ocean is not just the source of all life, but the very amniotic fluid of this life. This is mother embracing. This is the natural home. This is where the very planet cradles you, reminds you of your own fluid nature, the part of you that exists beneath the fragile, permeable skin. This is the embrace into which you can dissolve, to become the proof that nothing in you is foreign to this alien world.

And so you may go further. You may now give up all pretence, all separateness. You will now let the inner forces hold sway, subsume you into its rhythms and cycles, recreate you endlessly, evolving and devolving in a ripple of miracles called both creation and living.

You may even drown.

Now

This moment
Today
This Year
In this Lifetime

Progressively diluting versions of presence
Decreasingly focused experiences of Here - This Place

At the moment of conception my entire History was Now
A moment later I acquired a past, and ever since I've been trying to escape it
to find my way back to Now, back to that eternal, singular moment

I brust at it. It brushes me.
But miracles are still too precious
I cannot simply let one by without wanting to hold it a little while
turning it into memory
and I am suddenly in my past again

The Flowers are still too beautiful not to want to pick them
take them home with me

Grateful for times I cannot think
when words and names fail to rise above the clamor of life all around
I become still, in one form or another
I slow down to the speed of Earth

Manifestations of Earthling Beauty

Looking at 22 year old Sarah yesterday
with her wispy Mohawk, newly dyed, buzz cut to either side,
basking in the warm sun in a tank top.
The hair is now a cross of purple and pink
the bruised eye is healing back to normal.

She is beautiful, head tilted by her ever interested smile.
It's her vital, escapist enery, her hopefulness, the innocence enduring, however much the exposure to corruption and death.
She lost her father - to suicide - just a month ago, and my guess is that it's hardly registered.
She says as much - that it doesn't seem real. And she cannot understand why.
How could she, with that edgy, gawky, all limbs newness of a newborn colt
driven by the outward focused energy she doesn't even know is born to her
the engine of her bones, her questioning
behind all the dances she will invent.

She made me think of all the various forms of beauty,
including the ugly seeming ones
Because her glow had been invisible to me, hidden within the emaciated waif, the lost, clueless orphan, dancing in puddles and accepting candy from preying strangers.
Beauty then was only in the eye of the desperately beholden.

But thank Creation for these eyes anyway - seeing Ugly or seeing Beauty, it's all the same. Another facade of the mysterious.
Shadings and light, mood and temperment. Timing.
The order of things - chicken or egg, morning or night, death or life, ascension or fall.
The things that are to come that I cannot yet know.

What roads will Sarah Caine follow? What highways will discover her, alone, seeing her father all anew, and beginning to feel that hurt inside, all the places in her heart he will only revisit in her imagination, or in her dreams, or in her blaze of faith that Good things happen, and there is a tomorrow where forgetfulness is served up in spoonfuls of light and possibility.

She will surely find her way away and back again. She has these roads to travel, limits to discover and ignore, the impossible to achieve and make commonplace, even forgetful, before age and time will capture her, will mold her into something less earthling
but more and more achingly human.