We spent the weekend in San Luis Obispo, eating good food, quaffing good drink, and enjoying good company. On the way home Aaron coaxed me to go wine tasting at a winery for the first time ever---it didn't take much coaxing. Strangely though, for all its beauty and weather and culture, California unexpectedly feels foreign to me. This happens every now and then, I think most likely because I am not really from here. No matter where I go in the end, I know that California will remain glorious in my memory...On Sunday morning we woke up to pouring rain, which to be honest, I thought was really cool...but everyone else spent the afternoon complaining about it. Oh well, to each his own. I think I must be biding my time...I may know what I am waiting for, but I'm not sure...

Along the coast there is no age
Old and young are together distressed;
By might and salty pensive brooding.
Moss-wound oak and pungent sage
Green brown and musky dressed;
Rumbling with friendly foreboding.
Along the coast one is wrapped
With tragic waves
And terrible beauty forbidden;
Safe for a moment
desperate the next...
Around my feet ideas lapped
Echoed within the skull's caves
Ragged mind now dulled and hidden...
All to relent
All out of context.
Along the coast a smile plays
Dances and sings to the slate sky
Who's grin is this?
What mouth did it forsake?
A mile-post of days
Sometimes honest, often sly
A slow smile kiss
Who now will partake?
Along the coast you are lost
Long later to be found
Caressed awake
Windy tossed
Dying without a sound

Groatus and I went motorcycle riding Sunday afternoon in the mountains. The temperature was perfect, the sun was shining, and the bikes were running great. So relaxing...

I fell asleep last night with an image rolling around in my brain, put there in part by the book I was reading, part by a very dark movie I saw not long ago, and the rest a mixture of imagination and blotchy black-and-white photographs from old books on the War. I'm not entirely sure why it assailed my tired mind or why I couldn't clear it from my head...

It was a still night in winter near the limits of a small town in northern Italy, during the later part of the Second World War. A scrawny adolescent girl was sitting in the snow by herself, leaning casually against a battered brick wall. A sleepy, thoughtful look hung about her half-closed, dark-rimmed eyes. Bundled close about her small body, held in place by obviously chilled fingers was a worn-out wool overcoat, all rumpled and smudged with age. She wore a tired but faintly contented smile and looked rather comfortable despite the harsh night air.
"'S cold," I commented, lighting a Camel. I wondered if she spoke English. She looked vaguely Slavic. She didn't answer right away and I took my first drag.
"Do you have a place to get warm?" I asked. I bent toward her, to hear her reply.
There were holes in her coat. Little tears or rips here and there, filled with rich red-brown syrup, frozen to ice in the bitter night. Slipping from my fingers, my cigarette went out in the snow beside me as I gently touched her face. She was dead.

I recently finished Lewis' stark and incredibly powerful Great Divorce, and am currently in the middle of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, a very very different sort of story, though also powerful in it's own right. The striking thing that ties these two books together is the uneasy sense that everything we do here on earth is ultimately utterly pointless and insignificant. Well, not quite; C.S. Lewis' words flow with hope and joy, promising salvation based on the choices we make throughout our lives; so by his account our actions do have some value. Yet the fact that all our great achievements and endeavors really mean nothing apart from the love and charity that accompany them remains. Vonnegut of course is much more bleak. It makes a person think though, and reminds one that all the struggle for money and possessions and security is pretty empty, despite the fact that it is nearly impossible to live or have any influence, good or bad, without these things. This is another example of where hope and faith become essential, the only means of survival. Without the belief that God wishes us to work and live among his other creatures, to be 'in the world but not of it', we wallow in directionless distraction. Another good comes from these rather dismal thoughts though, and that is the reminder that the only things that are ultimately worthwhile is loving God and others. We can have and enjoy many many different things, we can be entertained, but when life doesn't go our way, leaving ourselves out of love for Christ and for the sake of another is the only true peace we will find. The reward for the gift of self is greater than any prize we may demand or think is owed. But I am just lonely today, and it is still cloudy.

So it goes.

This morning is a quiet one
Oppressed by a damp marine layer
From the cold nearby sea...
Everything seems indistinct and distant today
Like I'm not really awake
But I've already had my coffee.
Voices traverse the long chill to reach my muffled ears
But my mind is home in bed,
Back in the little apartment;
The alarm is off
I am wrapped in comfort and warmth
And I know I will never be lonely or sad again...
The jealous morning gives an elbow in the ribs
There is dirt on this floor
Things to do and put away
I am not home,
I cannot reach the arms in my dream...
...I shove back
A smile
A simple thought
An image of Our Blessed Lady.
It's okay to be lonely
It's okay to bleed
Jesus remembers when He was there...
And the clouds will lift
The morning will give way to the fullness of day
Did I still sigh, hiding a hopeful smile?