There's something about

I was thinking today about my life: taking tally of those humble achievements, goals attained, and rites dutifully completed that together comprise the curriculum vitae I might present to the Universe.  You know?  When the End comes.  Or, rather, the Great Transition.  As Dr. Manhattan said, "Nothing ever ends, Adrian."

There's something about stepping off a train to a gray, rainy morning in a little town in western France, not knowing a soul, with no more than a dozen French words in one's vocabulary and, nonetheless, feeling completely at ease and assured.  Confident in one's self and in humanity --crazy, bewildered humanity.  I don't believe I have experienced anything like it.

Unless it was sitting on the pier in Stockholm harbor, with the warm wind drying my hair and the yellow diamonds blinking on the choppy surface of the gray-blue Baltic water.  I remember being proud that day, and being embarrassed at my pride.  And I remember I had a deep sense of solace.

Or strumming my guitar on a bench at a sleepy bus station in Pucón, being fascinated by the vaporous white ejaculate emitted by that macho old Chileno:  volcán Villarrica.  The sky was clear and blue and forlorn and that day haunts my memory like a grief-wizened, young widow, with sad, hollow eyes.  I don't know why. 

Or standing on the deck in back of my house, face turned toward the stars, dimmed and faded though they were by Portland's electric halo, imagining those impossible distances and the implications of scale.  But I knew then as I know now that every wave emitted must factor in to the equation.  And anything we might call God must certainly penetrate the infinitesimal.  And so I cast it out there:  "Lord, what have I done to deserve these blessings Thou hast bestowed upon me?"

Humbling, I tell you.  Humbling.