invitations

There is no better time to write than when the dishes need to be done and the layers of dust that drifted in and will not drift out blanket every surface of my home. There is no more creative space than that created by avoidance. My own disturbed version of nirvana. And there is so much to do.... we are leaving for Newport in a minute, three hours really, and I need to run up to Riteaid and get K a seasick patch. He's going after more halibut--those great flat fish that cover the bottom of the sea some thirty miles out, all in a little cluster like there wasn't plenty of ocean bottom to go around. I remember going to the beach with Debra one time. She had a red something.... firebird? corvette? something flashy that she really thought made up for other physical shortcomings. (Now, if you're thinking my red truck serves a similar purpose, you'd be wrong. I'm going on record to say this: I wanted a white one.) So there we were, in Brookings, a sand wind blowing us down the beach. No one else was around. A perfectly good day for girl talk. We tossed down our blanket under the shelter of one of the many big rocks and leaned back to enjoy the sun. Not five minutes later, just as the gossip was getting good, a couple walked clear across the vacant sand, past miles of similar rock and flapped their blanket down right next to ours. Touching it, actually. Debra, in a rare moment, turned to them and said: "Big beach, eh?"

Anyway, we'll spend the night in some sleazy motel and he'll leave in the morning and I'm going shopping. With out much money anymore, but that's okay. I used to take five bucks and try to find the best candleholder I could.

Last night the lama told us about swallows gathering before they head south to Capistrano or wherever it is they go. Some woman had asked the monks to come to a cornfield to watch the gathering, and when they got there, several swallows were perched along some of the telephone lines, but not many, and my lama was disappointed. He thought she had exaggerated. Thought she'd called it wrong. This was no natural wonder at all. They waited, then the swallows began to come from all over. An estimated quarter million began to swarm above the cornfield, and as the sun went down behind them, behind the world, they swirled in the reddening sky, dipping and turning in that way they have, and as the light faded, they settled to sleep in the cornfield. It was worth waiting for.

I wonder how it is that monks get invited to watch the swallows-- that people think of the monks that way -- that they would take time out of their vespers to wait for a gathering of birds and I wouldn't.

I can't control my memories anymore.