House Near the Bay the Precarious Way

At the edge of the city sat a small house built of brambles and branches, mud and sweat, blood and hope, fear and longing. The marsh was a ways away and he thought the marsh was getting closer.

She called it an estuary and marveled in the creep and flow of the tides, up into the river and down spewing into the bay.

She would say “An estuary is a tidal inlet of the sea where the water of the Bay is joined with the freshwater of the river.”

That is how she talked, like a dictionary, full of facts and details and minutiae.

He would say “It’s a marsh ‘cause I get my boots stuck in it out back near the side of the house.”

She would nod and worry at her beads, one after the other, whisper, silent prayers on her lips. A strange mix of intelligence and religion she was. Always up early reading. The bible,  or the books she bought used when they went to the city, up the coast road, farmland sprawled on the right side and the rocky coast relentlessly pounded by waves and wind on the left. He knew he preferred the land side to the ocean side.

She said, “The ocean and the wind stir up the energy and make you feel your spirit unsettled. Wind waves are random and change all the time as a stochastic process. The pressure from the air is in direct relation to the pressure in your spirit and you sense the changes through the delicate ether.”

He had no idea if she knew what she was talking about but it sounded good, He thought she mixed Science fact with spiritual belief and came up with a worldview all her own. He knew he liked the land side, he knew he liked to be in the wind of the sea side, as the strong power off the ocean would almost hold him up while gusting. He could hear the eucalyptus trees groaning, sometimes with limbs breaking.

He would sit out at the edge of the front fence, just a ditch space away from the highway, in a little hollow that he had made from the juniper bush and a few select boards, and watch the ocean and the wind. Just watch, nothing more.

She would say “What is it that you do down there all day?”

“I sit and watch the patterns in the water and the air” he would answer

She had a habit of walking up the estuary, the marsh, early on into the morning gloaming, without a single thought to how much she could see or where she was going. She would walk up into the canyon until she came to a small place to squat down, she would sit for a long time listening to the land, the wind in the trees, the water flowing down to the sea.

He would say, “what do you do up there? I hope you don’t get lost.”

She would smile and tell him “Hush up, I find secret places to let myself rest in. I want to hear the voice of God, I want to be one with the land.”

The couple of them would go down to the beach and pick up stones and shells. They would be quiet at the setting sun and wait until it was almost dark, the other end of the morning gloaming, then they would walk back up across the highway and up the path into the glowing light of their small house that was built of love and hope, cedar and memory, a breath of tomorrow held aside for the night to enter into.

Hurry Around the Corner

Sitting at the table Elena waits for the tea to brew. She is tired, slept fitfully the night before. She hears the bathroom do close and knows that Tomas is up. The kettle boils and begins to whistle., She turns the fire off and pours the water into her tea pot. Immediately she can smell the tea as the leaves unfurl.

 “Hi” Tomas said

 “Hi” she answered

 “Been up long?”

 “Since just before dawn”

 Tomas puts the kettle back on the stove, the acrid smell of the gas catching fire always startles her as she remembers her mother each day lighting the fire on the old stove in the villa on the hill in Tuscany. Tomas leans against the counter fiddling with the edge of the dish cloth. He looks so handsome in his pajamas and slippers. Unshaven and still rumpled from bed. She knows he will be distracted by his trip to San Francisco today. The water boils and he adds a bit of sugar to the cup of tea, he directly boil’s the leaves in his cup and never waits a moment to let the steep come on. He sits down across from her, he will only be here a moment, he is always on the move, and holds his cup in front of his mouth, the steam works around his eyes.

 “Do you want to come to the City today? I can drop you at the museums and pick you up around lunchtime and we can go over to the Haight and get something to eat.”

 She looks at him, through the steam, he sips his tea, she waits one more heartbeat. “Okay, as long as you finish on time, last time I went you were two hours late and we hit all the traffic coming back on 101.”

 “Today is shorter and I will be finished early, even with the questions after, the talk is only scheduled for twenty minutes.” he sets his cup down and stand up as if the conversation is settled.

 “I am going to get dressed” he says

 Walking out of the kitchen he pauses in the doorway and looks back. “Is everything okay?” he looks a bit startled by her silence.

 “Yes, it’s fine - I will be ready in a few minutes, just let me get my satchel together so I can sketch in the museum.”

 He waves his hand in an amicable way moving back down the hall into the shadow. She remembers the first time she saw him, across the room hold the attention of a group of students with his witticisms and stories. He is back in a flash, briefcase in hand, casual sloppy in his dress, rumpled but academic.

 “I’m gonna run down and pull the car out” he says

 “Okay I am almost ready.” She works the folder into her satchel and grabs up a jacket.

  He turns back at the door, holding it open for a moment, "Hurry around the corner I want to catch the freeway before the traffic builds to much."

  She smiles as the door closes, steps toward the kitchen to shut out the light.

Shell girl hides her heart away forever

She went to the well and waited for the Sun to rise. Upon the lowest point in the hollow of the land, where no one would rut and only the trees, weighted with night rain, sat still and without the life of a breeze. Her exhale, foggy warm breath, into morning cool crisp air. Air was crisp, not quite burning her lungs, as in Lhasa, not dry, as the summer wind in Fez, rather just a bit of drawn breath coated in slippery dew, slippery morning dew. That was all that was slick about her, she was dried and withered, not in her flesh, certainly not that, she young, inside her fear filled soul, she was as dry as a bleached white bone, marrow gone, succor gone, peace, a memory of egocentric reaction. What was that phrase, she had heard, that held her so hard up against herself, judging? The men had been talking, talking about her. She knew. She knew it was about her. Why? Why did she know? The words were about her? She had heard her name - oh memory flee I don’t want to know. No, she had to look, and inside the the studded star dark sky she waited to see the image again, the memory of those who she thought of as friends, men. “She does like to do things unh huh,” his slouchy hat across those grey eyes she had looked into so many times with sweet affection, Joe Smith. “I can’t say I never got close enough to even ever knowed that, Joey” Winston, what a cur, his subtle words played out. He continued, scratching at his crotch and letting his lower lip drop while his left eyelid drooped as if following his lip, “Yes, that girl always kept me at a distance, she did and good enough for me it was, she’s trouble. “Now Wins, how can you say she’s trouble if you never got close enough to know?” Joe replied a hint of laughter in his words to take the edge off the male aggression. “I know Joey boy, I know, and I know what you was doin’ dancing with her after Tom left the room.” Winston rolled his eyes as he spoke, the white of his left eye struck by yellow light stark contrast in a darkened room. “Come on boys, we all know what she is about just no one wants to say it?” a new voice from the back shadow was it Ray, or his brother Dave, she knew them both all too well. That voice was cut off by a laugh a tentative laugh that rolled around the room. Someone spit, someone cleared his throat, someone shifted a foot , rocked back in a squeaking chair. “I never knew how much I couldn’t talk to my wife until she stopped talking to me” Joe says “ You mean your wife or her?” The voice from the shadows again, the one from the man she cannot see or identify. “Her of course, my wife she don’t come dancing, she don’t even lay with me in our marriage bed lest to go to sleep” Winston, his cutting bark of words. “she can sure play piano can’t she?” a new voice, young, unsure, tentative, Jackson - Mary’s boy, now what was he doing with this group of shadowy everyday scoundrels? “Damm boy, we are not talking about the piano, but are talking about how she walks” Joe again Laughter. “She sure can walk.” the shadow voice She had heard enough, any more would break her. She continued to remember, walking away, on silent steps, forgetting and not remembering until she slipped into her bed. The gown rising up around her thighs, she pulled it down and then she knew she needed to go to the well. Here she was. A streak of light butted up against the towering pines on the ridgeline. With slow deliberate effort, around the thought of temptation, the echo of memory - every bit of her being longed for the light, as she looked into the dark black well and saw no studded stars, only black. On the ground her pail lay forgotten, an open empty vessel.

Blog title explained in brief

Why this blog is entitled as such Once, long, long ago - early in the morning, after being up all night, under the influence of a substance, I lay on my bed, in a small house, by a pool of water, and watched the horizontal stripes on my sheets move about, extend themselves through the wall. The stripes will still move, fortunately, if I am very still.