2:34 PM, Thursday -- and the memory of time moves like cloud shadows over a wide calm landscape. Perfect lips. The heat, fading: remembered saturation. Air like a slow thick wall. The enfolding shine of sunlight and the trickle of sweat on the Fourth of July.
The slowly lifting engine of a tequila buzz.
Peppery Garden Burgers. Ray-Ban shades. The night sky traced and trickled with pops and trails of color. Glimmering lines, falling. Sharp white smacks that echoed off of the hills and thudded within my chest cavity. The shape of a rustling tree acting as a deep green mask. And the river: dotted with boats. Music. Shimmering light.
And, after that day, more time. Like steam escaping from an over-heated pipe: stress. Loneliness.
Compassion too, though.
A long drive to the airport in the rain. Fruitless; hours to go. Tension -- and fragments of Beetlegeuse on the Comedy channel. Conversation with a special friend. Arrivals.
A hundred year old print from Ireland.
Gritty eyes, tired. Sneezy from some recently emergent allergen. A dish cloth wrung dry. But small pleasures, too. Coffee and sweet company. Erotic dreams. Just phantasms, though. Still alive: the dream of something more.
Accepting the reality of the situation, however.
So.
Today? More cool, still cerulean and sunlight. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich in my stomach. Sleepy eyes. Something new? Hopefully. Now, a quiet anticipation of leaving this state -- for a time, at least.
Those clouds sliding by: days and hours. Too tired to write, too tired to think, at times. Soon running to the South, to the coast. The sea and sand -- long time paced-out in novels and heat, sun, and the wash of salt water. Waves. Deep sky.
Clear skies.
--- JWR, 7/8/99