20 AUG 06
Lost track of the weeks, 28 sentences:
Dear When-I-allow-myself-to-think-of-the-songs-I-see-the-roads,
Drove out to the 4 Corners, first time since we moved my parents from the farm to a house in town. Signs that said "No stopping any time," and indeed no time was stopped: everything had been replaced. A Lutheran church in the Ballfield. I sat awhile in its pleasant courtyard, somewhere between where the pump house and the big barn had stood.
"She's beginning to see colors around people. Do you see colors around people?" (Family reunion.) "How was your flight?" We seemed to be kids in our pajamas (businessman with his tiny pillow) watching TV together, staying up past our normal bedtime. "I've got to start understanding what states touch each other."
C and K talking toward evening's end, moved by the sound of it, strangers so soon sisterly. I meet somebody one day, and by the very next day we're dear friends. The hugging I call "California style." Not sure when (or where) I came to prefer the handshake. ("But aren't you from California?")
To know the shapes of trees. To know the longitude and latitude with certainty, amidst erasure of landmarks, the topography altered. Each tree I'd loved, felled/uprooted longsince; only one on what were once our acres seems older than I am, though I can't specifically recall it. Put a hand on its trunk, to say hello and to take a bit of comfort.
She and I put together two jigsaw puzzles on the floor. She's six and doesn't yet understand the meaning of edge pieces in the scheme of things. "Do you believe in Buddhist?" she asks, deeply deadpan, then shows me points of interest on the shrine. "I can touch this," she assures me as she carefully picks up a carved figure, tells me his name. He was a guy once, now an idea made of rock.
Walked to the top of the best hill I could see. Didn't make any photographs. Walked down with a leaf.
ps:
I like him, I like his poetry, and I admired his keenness and eloquence at the after-reading dinner--but it was the quality and delivery of his driving directions that impressed me most.
. . .
