Now available: Saltwater And Glassmoon
thanks to Stellar Auditorium Productions.
Meanwhile, I have departed Santa Cruz. The fog is encroaching. The chorus of amphibians is lurking ever seaward amongst the rushes and the night herons are grey in their slumber. Soon you may expect strange news from an other star.
You cannot understand the sound of Procer Veneficus unless you have walked at the edge of Los Osos past midnight.
19: Seven years of rain.
The rain poured on us into deep thick grey murk. The rain pressed on us, making its way through the gaps in our bones, our tongues, seeping through the soil of our flesh and flooding our hearts with briny stormbrew, the greyest of all grey liquors, opaque, endless. In the morning of seven years of rain. In the morning of murkblossom clouds obfuscate, obscurate, the diluvian wall above. In the morning of the angel – I was standing beneath a meager shelter desperately swept and soaked when I was approached by an angel. Quietude in the deep grey. She wore a blue nylon jacket upon the surface of which the water would bead into jewels, form sly rivers, and cascade back down through the air to rejoin its source. As I beheld this process of collection, individuation, and reunification, I was overcome wholly with the sensation of being the water itself. I am this water; all humans are as this water is. Birth into this world is a strange thing; it is the birth of the self and the death of the grand soul. In turn, when we die here, our self ceases to exist, and the grand soul rises again – phoenix – and reclaims its rightful place in the black and whirling slipstream currents of the cosmos, where it flourishes in blind spiral vigor, oscillation of joy light, kaleidoscopic fury-grace, until it is time to dissolve the pact of incorporality and once again die – be born as flesh. All of this I saw in the space of one split second in the glowing aqueous beads adorning this angel who’d come to visit and remind. She would sort of jump up and down on her toes without actually leaving the ground in an attempt to reinvigorate circulation and stay warm. She once ran out from under the small roof and into the rain, just to jog down the sidewalk and come back again. The way she moved was extraordinary to me – it was entirely honest and filled with a simple joy that spoke the word “home” to me. This gorgeous jumping, jogging angel reminded me of home. When the bus finally arrived she offered to help me in racking my bicycle. No such help was necessary and she was quite aware of this, which is exactly what was lovely about her offer. On the ride into town she smiled in a way which was both warm and polite, and she spoke kindly to the old man sitting beside her, who had become elated merely due to her presence. She drank water from a plastic bottle, and offered up the insight that she “often forgets to drink enough in this sort of weather.” It was such a beautiful statement that I wanted to laugh and hug her. Her hair was long and plain, light auburn in color – she wore glasses which were much too large and were extremely endearing. Beneath her blue nylon cloak she wore a brown zip-down knitted sweater with deer emblazoned on it, and a blue knitted cap. When she got off the bus at River and Extension she waved to me as she said “bye!” despite the fact that we had exchanged very few words. All of this struck me with the most amazing intensity, and I was overcome. She disappeared just as quickly as she had arrived, departing outward into some swirling black whorl of a galaxy to bring joy and peace and hope to any others she encountered on her wild journey. For me she served as a true friend and a reminder of all that is ephemeral – all that is beautiful – in this and all worlds. If ever there were an angel walking amongst us, it was certainly her before all others.