that time of night

After work today I went over to the ex-co-con's to do some brainstorming and meet the baby miniature hamsters. I walked home along the water just after nine o'clock.

The light was like the world reflected in a bright pewter cup, warm without being golden or ruddy. All down the cliff were the blown shapes of broom, covered with yellow bells, and the thick collapsing strata of wild peas, hardier and brighter than the tame sweet peas in our planter. The cliff's edge was gnarled with stunted oaks and blackberry brambles, the pale blossoms falling to pieces now, and the clusters of tight green berries clasped like babies' fists.

I walked through the tunnel of leaves and the smell of green just past Mile Zero. In a gap in the trees, I saw a view of ocean and sky straining towards each other, and three goblins conferring over some invisible matter.

I stopped quite still and watched them, but they carried boldly on as though they hadn't seen me. They were unperturbed by obviously being a fortuitous gathering of green branches rocking in the salt wind. They went right on being three goblins, one in a broad-brimmed hat, one rather small, and one with a great arched back, discussing their schemes at their leisure, with no more concern for me than if I were just part of the scenery.

I looked around me then, at that moment before the light becomes the dark, when it is on the verge of ceasing to illuminate and beginning to obscure. I saw everything not only alive but animate, inspirited, personified. Cloud beasts and giant birds of wind-bent bushes.

I expected the feeling to remain and intensify towards some vision or insight. I thought I might explore this landscape that was not so much suddenly looking back at me, as suddenly visible going about its own astounding business.

Instead it escaped. Thinned to vapour. Gone. Then I was standing in a very pretty evening turning to night. So I walked home up Cook Street and thought about love instead of goblins. Love seemed ordinary and familiar by comparison to the wild energy of the world.

You could, I suppose, tell me that both are mostly seeing things that aren't there.

* * *

I arrived home just in time to stop inlandsea and stitchinmyside from getting ahead of me in watching Battlestar Galactica, and we sat down and watched "Fracked", I believe it's called.

I am reading The Long Goodbye. Why didn't anyone tell me that Philip Marlowe was obviously gay? I am making notes. The length and detail of character descriptions, male versus female. The loyalties among men. The proliferation of terrible secrets. Above all, the insistence on withholding, on silence, on endurance.

I think I'll write a paper.

{rf}