It wasnt so cold. It got down to 50 degrees -- fahrenheit. But its dark! I woke up dreaming as usual, and got to sorting through things in my mind, in my cloud-puff way. They are thoughts! They just arent concrete. They are cloud-puff thoughts, tumbleweeds -- but it is important to sort through them and a good time to do it is when you are sleepy. Or when I am. Sleepy like when youre waking up. I was sorting through the dandelion-puff thoughts, getting them all in order, wondering when it would get light in the sky when I finally got up and went to check the clock in the kitchen, hoping and praying it would not say 3:18AM. I hate it when I get up and think its morning, and the clock says 3:18AM. It puts me in a bad mood. I was braced for it but today I was lucky. The clock said 6:00AM, a nice time to be awake making coffee. But the sun has not come up yet, and it is nowhere in sight. I hear the waves. I feel awake. I am looking at my cup of coffee and the clock says morning. Yet there is no sun. I wonder if it will always be like this now. Will we have to remember what it was like when there was a sun? But do you know what I really regret? Of the many things? I regret I did not lend more credence to the long intricate tale a strange old homeless lady once told me on the steps of the Fifth Avenue Library in Manhattan years ago. Yes, thats what Im thinking about now in the dark morning with my coffee. What I was doing there on those steps I dont quite know. Many people sat there, and many of those who sat there were, as they said in those days, crazy. But anyway, I sat there trying to survive her tale, looking polite enough to look polite without looking encouraging. How rude I was! But I didnt know that then. I was young and there were things I was clueless of. Well, no, not clueless. I had a clue. I usually had a clue. But I did not have enough clues to solve mysteries I had not yet even formulated. And I dont know if Ive formulated them now, but at least Ive solved some. And in this moment I realize -- having no idea where this paragraph was going -- that I solved some of these mysteries by sorting through my dandelion cloud puff thoughts in the morning. Sometimes thinking is like that, I guess. But why this particular lady comes back to me, has come back to me with increasing frequency in the last few years, I dont know. And I remember nothing of the tale she told me. I remember only what I was thinking while she was talking to me. I was testing, in my own mind, the authority of what she was saying. In other words, I was trying to decide if I should believe any of her story, or not. Not whether it was true -- but whether I should believe it. This is quite different, and doing this is quite different than just listening to someone. She was unfolding to me her view of how things worked. But what things? If only I remembered. Her view was full of detail and intricacy. And she wore clothes that had once been fine. Whether they had been hers or not then, or only came into her possession later in their ragged state, I cannot know for sure -- but I will guess. I will guess they were hers from the beginning. She was so at ease in them. And she was so at ease in telling her story. In fact, I see it was me now, when I look back, who was so terribly ill at ease -- who couldnt even just sit still and let a stranger tell her a story without agonizing over whether I should be listening to the story or not -- like maybe listening sympathetically and with all my heart to the story of a person whose connection to society one could not peg might somehow be injurious to me. Maybe I was the crazy lady! Now its finally light. I can see the waves Ive been hearing all night. They are grey and choppy and moving along fast -- not deep and rolling like they were when I was at dinner last night. I decided to walk to dinner at my aunt and uncles on the other side of the Point. It just took hold me, the idea of tromping through the fields to dinner and Im glad I did. Its probably two and a half miles there, the last three quarters of a mile on a winding gravel drive through open fields where the wind can get you if it wants to, and it did. That wind was pushing me this way and that but I finally got there, and I wasnt a minute late. Their little rescue dog, Beth, yelped and cringed when I took my bandanna off, but we finally got her to remember who I was -- that I was not the person who did whatever was done to her before she was rescued years ago. And there was a nice fire, and a nice aunt and uncle, and nice food to eat, and giant rolling waves every which way out the window. We picked out animals in the clouds as the sun set and we had ice cream after dinner. And I wanted to walk home, but they wouldnt let me. They said they wouldnt be able to go to sleep if they let me walk home at night. Ah well, so I got a ride, and went to bed, and read Samuel Hopkins Adams Grandfather Stories until I turned off the light. And thats the story of this morning and last night.
Posted on: Sun, 05 Oct 2014 11:42:35 +0000
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