Pilgrimage

You can see Ross Island Bridge, back there.

Springtime sun was out and proud on the commute home.  Cumuli piled up in billows like blinding white glory.  The sky was so blue it brought a lump to my throat, the way it had all those years ago when I was on the beach with the Irish girl and I knew it wouldn't last.  She lay on the sand beside me and things were so perfect at that moment that I was afraid to fall in love with it --with the moment --because I knew it wouldn't last.  That was how blue the sky was as I was coming home.  It put me in a mood to go walking. 
Right on up Tabor's slopes.  The path is so familiar that I venture I might make it blindfold up to the summit and never stub nor stumble. When I'm pushing up the steeper slopes --like the potholed road that runs along the south shoulder, where it is always shady because of the lay of the hill and the big Dougs standing to either side, and where the blacktop is pitted and scarred and littered with fir needles, gold, orange, and yellow, and sword ferns look suckered onto the hillside like sea anemones in a tide pool --when I push up through there, I put my mind somewhere else; focus on something other than exertion.

But not the world.  Not Libya.  Not Japan.

Aunt Jenifer, Lucy, and me

So I thought about Aunt Jenifer, and how she broke the news to Mom about her cancer.  She called Mom from her cell phone driving home to San Pedro on some LA freeway.  "The good news is that I don't have to go back to work," she said.  "The bad news is I have 6 to 9 months to live."  She passed in 2003.  At the age of fifty-nine.

There is so much beauty that can never be captured even by memory.  It's hard, but you just have to let those things go.

When I made Tabor's summit, I looked around for photo opportunities, but nothing suited.  I spent a good while walking from vantage to vantage.  I was sure I would see something.   

The sun played on the city over across the river.  A springtime haze cast a phantom veil between my eyes and the spear tip glares coming off the glass towers of downtown.  Lovers sat on benches admiring the view.  A solitary figure stood by the Julija Laenen bench, paying silent homage to the Old Man.

The sun felt good on my face, I can tell you.  But though I sought intently, I sensed no cosmic wink, no conspiratorial nudge from the Great Whatever.

After a while, I set on my way back down, homeward to my honey bee.  And naturally, that's when I finally did see it.  It was right there in front of me, plain as day.  The hopeful omen, the simple proof, the irrefutable validation.

And I got a picture of it! 

What more proof does one need?

There it is!

Do you see it?

Do you see?