I Remember the Pristine Days...

Starting the day

Barely awake, I pulled the shade. It was a pristine day out, in that the blackberry brambles were so real in the emerald light, dew drops on them, with the symmetry of quadratic curves, and so I turned from being a number cruncher to a wordsmith; either way, I was going to penetrate the ordinary.

How Zen-like when the world holds still and you can peel it layer by layer until naked existence remains. Then a freight train rumbles across the dirt field, beyond the children’s playground, beyond the pipeline, and already there was glory in the morning flowers. It was summer in Aberdeen on Bay Avenue.

I am a being in the world. I had come with a set of baggage but I must not lose sight of them. I can travel all day in my mind and travel light and far, rounding the curves of infinity, only to come back to the familiar. The familiar was sparrows and robins. But once I saw a blue jay and that was truly a lucky day.

I was twenty-four and it was a Saturday morning. I hurriedly got up and wrote longhand on a legal pad. I was not a lawyer but nevertheless I sought to write clearly and economically. Papers was cheap and so were pens, but my time was ticking and what was lost can never return. However, when I was that young no one thought of alerting me. They had their own stakes to harvest, so they planned. I was still starry eyed and I purchased a Writers’ Market, and a day old donut and a Styrofoam of cold coffee were enough to kindle my hopes.