Tuesday, September 3--
4:48 p.m.-
Hard sun, shadows unrelenting. Hard wind, leaf bottoms silver against
blue. Boat bow shoved into the sedge between shore and grassy Bald Head. EZ
has thrown up, looks satisfied with it, is sitting on shore dangling a ten-inch
bile slime from her upper lip.
It's
fall. I don't want it to be. Sun hot on my back--no clouds but a single white
wisp in the west, evaporating. Now gone. Angled tree trunk groaning itself
against a mate. EZ had another thorough shampoo yesterday, but still stinks, an
omnipresent state I am helpless to erase. She's still sitting, dry surface furs
fluffed straight up and shiny in the wind. Her cancer must be gone; she yawned
hugely some minutes ago. I'll bet it feels nice.
The
river is higher again. The board on the dock is nearly all under and Bald Head
we're pulled up against shows only a small crown. Sunday night's rain amounted
to an inch, and yesterday after getting back home, another inch-and-a-half
lowered it while I napped.
5:42-
Beige
seed heads. Sun washed dead. Laying in the bow looking up, nothing but
unfathomable blue air, buff grasses blowing. Hollywood sun starlets dancing on
undulant aqua. Standing, I push through the four-foot high wall, breaking an
opening EZ didn't understand she could do too. She looks up, waits for my "okay,"
and bounds into the thicket. Noisy tree has been leaning for several years, top
weathered and bark-less.
6:07-
From
this spot we've been in for an hour or more, doing nothing but watching and
feeling melancholy, I looked up the channel into the trees where we'd first set
anchor a little before 3:00. Dark somber shade in there, not dappled with cheer
as just moments ago. Despondent for what goes away when I'm looking somewhere
else. Hurrying to enjoy what's at hand, knowing it's going, can I stop the sun
from dimming and shutting us up inside where dry air and artificial heat
shrivel skin and the spirit? I want June's infinite summer back so I can
squander it and it'll not care being taken for granted. I promise to pay closer
attention and do better at noticing.
6:28-
Two
men talking out of sight in the direction of the blueberry patch. I shove out
into the current, not wanting to meet up with men walking there. Life moves on.
Do those men's voices have to do with building a house there, altering the
Summer Office somehow with many houses and septics and water access through
dragline lagoons? I've learned well how everything changes, is always changing,
though this place seems not to have changed in the years I've attended service
here, it has and is. Look back on life, and by insignificant minor events, it's
evolved gradually like cloud formations. When I speed up the motion by memorial
review, what seemed static and interminably stagnant is a long way back.
Drifting,
a man's petulant cry bursts onto the wind. He was chasing a fly with my yellow
fly swatter. It has hurt my legs thrice and skipped out of range, is now
washing his face on EZ's tail. I don't want to give in and go home. EZ snoring
in the front. An insect is pummeling itself against the river, just like the
one last week. But this time it's me inside, dashing itself mad.
I
have a mild headache. Maybe it's concussion, or maybe West Nile starting in
from yesterday's bites.