October Rain

She was looking out from her kitchen window at the hillside behind the barn, where, in another time, she would have been buried, the ties between families and their land being something that the government left alone. Now there were laws about things like this. But she still thought about it, being buried on that hill, being able to be a part of things after she was gone, flowers waving under the sun over her, over the place where she lay.

He was standing on the balcony of the Belvedere Castle in Central Park, looking out over the pond in front of the Delacourt Theatre, looking at the turtles swimming around and sunning on the rocks, when the shadow of a cloud swept over the landscape in front of him, a quick passage that sent a chill through his unconscious, or whatever one calls the part of someone that feels but cannot articulate or express that which it is sensing, a place where limousines cruise next to cornfields and men in black suits stand waiting at country crossroads. The shadow didn't last long, and that was just as well. It was the kind of thing one wanted to keep moving on.

It was a morning for swimming. The sun was already hot long before noon and he could almost smell the water at the beach even though he was miles away, the salt and seaweed ancient scent that reminded him of childhood and time. As he was driving through a little seaside town he started to think about the girls of his youth, and the way they would walk by in their bathing suits, talking to each other about something important, heads bowed down and laughing intermittently. Then he thought of himself thinking these thoughts, and caught a look at himself in the rearview mirror, thinking this mirror should have a sign, " Objects may feel younger than they appear," this solitary man on his way somewhere unknown.

He had never thought of himself as an especially reverent person, the word carrying too much freight--all sorts of false piety--for him to consider applying it to himself. But that is the way he found himself feeling that afternoon in July when he walked out of the building where he worked and paused to look around him at the light in the trees. That was all, just the light shining through the everyday suburban New Jersey foliage on an otherwise unremarkable day in July, the city roaring in the distance visible through the haze, geese waddling around on the edge of the parking lot, ragged white clouds sailing overhead. He stood there thinking of the stars beyond the blue of the afternoon, and the atoms that comprised everything he could see, the age of the water in the pond across the road, having been recycled endlessly since the birth of the planet, long before the emergence of life, same molecules in the clouds as in the pond with the ducks and geese. Reverent was not precisely the right word, but it was close.

When they met in Starbucks he acted as if he barely knew her, like he had to almost try to remember her name. The girl he was with looked younger than their oldest daughter, and she seemed nice enough, if you didn't mind having someone who is your ex-husband's lover acting as if she could empathize with the awkward way you felt in this unforeseen situation--the sympathetic, sincere look, the one that says, "I can see how weird this must be for you, and I completely understand, you poor thing." She almost left right then, but rather than make a scene she would have to explain to the kids, she stayed and tried to make small talk, picking up the new Dylan album from the rack by the cash register, not expecting that the girl would see this as a way to find common ground, putting her in the even more complicated position of having to act interested in this girl's Dylan fan stories, while her ex stood by, acting as if he had just met someone from high school after a long separation. As she was driving away she realized she would have to stay away from Starbucks. She enjoyed her lattes, but this could not happen again.

She didn't really have any complaints. She had been able to do many things that she had wanted to do when she was young, and while there were many others that had not been in the cards, she didn't have too many regrets, or at least some of the time she was OK with her decisions, while other times not so OK, but that was just the situation she found herself in after spinning through life for many years. Lately it felt like she was looking forward to something, or expecting something happen. She had no idea what it was. An open door. Wind in the trees. Leaves skittering across cobblestones. A small package wrapped in a bow sitting on a windowsill in the sun. Wood-smoke rising from a sugarhouse. Desert reflections in semi-truck chrome. An antebellum mansion burning in the Tennessee night.

She was walking through the woods near her house when she started thinking about the ways that so many things that had happened in her life didn't make any sense, or didn't make sense in retrospect, at least. From where she was now, or perhaps more accurately who she was now, the things she had done years ago seemed very far away, as if she was holding a shell up to her ear, translucent with swirls of shining pearl, ridges of bone, arcs of floating altars, whispered eons from the bottom of dark seas where grains of sand mirror tentacles and guide the circles of the stars, and she could hear faint rustlings, shadows of those years when she was running wild, a pretty girl in a convertible heading out of town.

He was sitting in a church in central Europe. As he had walked in, there had been a couple in the aisle at the back of the church. They seemed to be having a disagreement, clearly, but they were speaking a language he did not understand and could not identify. All of a sudden an organist started playing something that sounded like it was probably Bach, so loud that it might have sent the pigeons cooing on the eaves into the air. A priest opened the door of a confessional on the other side of the church and walked down the aisle on the opposite side of the sanctuary from where he was standing. He stood there looking at the couple with the bowed heads and moving hands, listening to the organ's thunder, and wondered if the priest had been asleep in his little box and had been awakened by a bolt of lightning sent from the organ loft. This all took place so quickly that he could almost not process it, and as he found his way home through late afternoon streets the scene kept returning, the arguing couple, the cannonade from the keyboard, the little priest walking next to the windows. But there also had been the light, the way that it played on the roofs of the courtyards and shone through the stained glass windows, the gray clouds sailing across the sky, the rising twilight moon above the city.

When they met in Starbucks he acted as if he barely knew her, like he had to almost try to remember her name. The girl he was with looked younger than their oldest daughter, and she seemed nice enough, if you didn't mind having someone who is your ex-husband's lover acting as if she could empathize with the awkward way you felt in this unforeseen situation--the sympathetic, sincere look, the one that says, "I can see how weird this must be for you, and I completely understand, you poor thing." She almost left right then, but rather than make a scene she would have to explain to the kids, she stayed and tried to make small talk, picking up the new Dylan album from the rack by the cash register, not expecting that the girl would see this as a way to find common ground, putting her in the even more complicated position of having to act interested in this girl's Dylan fan stories, while her ex stood by, acting as if he had just met someone from high school after a long separation. As she was driving away she realized she would have to stay away from Starbucks. She enjoyed her lattes, but this could not happen again.

She didn't really have any complaints. She had been able to do many things that she had wanted to do when she was young, and while there were many others that had not been in the cards, she didn't have too many regrets, or at least some of the time she was OK with her decisions, while other times not so OK, but that was just the situation she found herself in after spinning through life for many years. Lately it felt like she was looking forward to something, or expecting something happen. She had no idea what it was. An open door. Wind in the trees. Leaves skittering across cobblestones. A small package wrapped in a bow sitting on a windowsill in the sun. Wood-smoke rising from a sugarhouse. Desert reflections in semi-truck chrome. An antebellum mansion burning in the Tennessee night.

She was walking through the woods near her house when she started thinking about the ways that so many things that had happened in her life didn't make any sense, or didn't make sense in retrospect, at least. From where she was now, or perhaps more accurately who she was now, the things she had done years ago seemed very far away, as if she was holding a shell up to her ear, translucent with swirls of shining pearl, ridges of bone, arcs of floating altars, whispered eons from the bottom of dark seas where grains of sand mirror tentacles and guide the circles of the stars, and she could hear faint rustlings, shadows of those years when she was running wild, a pretty girl in a convertible heading out of town.

He was sitting in a church in central Europe. As he had walked in, there had been a couple in the aisle at the back of the church. They seemed to be having a disagreement, clearly, but they were speaking a language he did not understand and could not identify. All of a sudden an organist started playing something that sounded like it was probably Bach, so loud that it might have sent the pigeons cooing on the eaves into the air. A priest opened the door of a confessional on the other side of the church and walked down the aisle on the opposite side of the sanctuary from where he was standing. He stood there looking at the couple with the bowed heads and moving hands, listening to the organ's thunder, and wondered if the priest had been asleep in his little box and had been awakened by a bolt of lightning sent from the organ loft. This all took place so quickly that he could almost not process it, and as he found his way home through late afternoon streets the scene kept returning, the arguing couple, the cannonade from the keyboard, the little priest walking next to the windows. But there also had been the light, the way that it played on the roofs of the courtyards and shone through the stained glass windows, the gray clouds sailing across the sky, the rising twilight moon above the city.

He was sitting in a church in central Europe. As he had walked in, there had been a couple in the aisle at the back of the church. They seemed to be having a disagreement, clearly, but they were speaking a language he did not understand and could not identify. All of a sudden an organist started playing something that sounded like it was probably Bach, so loud that it might have sent the pigeons cooing on the eaves into the air. A priest opened the door of a confessional on the other side of the church and walked down the aisle on the opposite side of the sanctuary from where he was standing. He stood there looking at the couple with the bowed heads and moving hands, listening to the organ's thunder, and wondered if the priest had been asleep in his little box and had been awakened by a bolt of lightning sent from the organ loft. This all took place so quickly that he could almost not process it, and as he found his way home through late afternoon streets the scene kept returning, the arguing couple, the cannonade from the keyboard, the little priest walking next to the windows. But there also had been the light, the way that it played on the roofs of the courtyards and shone through the stained glass windows, the gray clouds sailing across the sky, the rising twilight moon above the city.