WALKING AND REMEMBERING WATCHING THE SUN COME UP WITH MELVILLE AND PACO

The business of the area gone away, the hordes of people receded, the afternoon there calm, placid, kind of frozen in time. You can think of the trees, or under the trees rather,- as you go along the pine needle covered ground, past the few berries that bloomed and are now decaying, along the higher ridges where the valley thought it would meet the sky but instead only grew up to know more trees, bushes, shrubs. A deer that way crossed a road and well didn’t go right across but stopped, looking, pensive, ponderous. Why do they do that? The farmers truck out there on the road,- the secular people, old, with nothing else to do but play golf in the adjacent way,- thankfully far away,- and something scurries up a tree and something hides surely in a hole. There is a praying mantis eating something in the grass, and I had never seen a praying mantis before.- kind of spooky, disconcerting,- and there, by the yellow weeds that are ubiquitous and bright flies the oddest and perhaps ugliest moth or butterfly or hybrid that I ever did see. There is time to think of Ahab’s whale, and of whatever comes to mind, the readers who shuffle the cards and what the September 2017 Gemini Astro-Tarot will say. And Melville, who is obviously containing his own brand of genius, - but also is a bit sly if you ask me, - for he is prepared to tell you, quite literally in his text, that black is white and white is black. Melville could sell anything, and he is not without a point, a reference, an example (many actually), and definitely passion. Where is the world? The sun is bright, and it’s hard to imagine this is the same star that arches up and waits over Veradero, Havana, and the fourteen or fifteen provinces of Cuba. The canines run in the shade, and sniff and play and ‘tree a squirrel’ as the saying goes. I see the chipmunks that stop and watch and then run. They can go up, but often go down and then across a path or log and into the underbrush somewhere. There is chaparral up on the hill, and blue flowers, and clovers, but I only watch from a distance this day, as the beloved is with me, and time is short also,- and it’s not an afternoon to really explore. But I think then,- there will be a day, alone, soon enough if all goes well,- where it will be cooler, and the hues will have turn, and the low crowds might even be less,- and there will be time- for adventure and climbing and really going along the far back paths and perhaps venturing down into the valley. I wonder what happened to Paco the dog, the Caribbean dog, beautiful, homeless, friendly, loyal, lonesome, hungry, a bit scarred and somewhat scared. I wonder what would come of him. Did he survive the hurricane? Hurricane Irma. I hope he went inland driven by some internal instinct people talk about that animals have. Or that a worker or guest sought to protect him by giving him concrete shelter. I hope he made it. If not, his spirit is cooler now, as even he, a native, was seen to be suffering from the Cuban summer heat and he would dig a little hole under my chair in the morning sand and we would watch the sun come up. I had Melville and a towel and sunglasses and not much else save for the sound of the sea, the turquoise sea just as good as in Nassau or St. Vincent or Martinique or Saint Martin or anyplace. That is why the people travel there no doubt, because the sea is universal and this anyone knows and this especially Melville knows. And what else?- these temporal ellipsis’s,- and we are back- walking in the Canadian post summer but pre-autumnal pathways,- in great solitude- in a liminal time and way,- where the wildflowers are for the most part wilted and ready to perish completely but the new season as not quite begun. The business of the area abides by its own rules, ways, norms, mores, customs, nuances, dreams, mythologies, curves, mystical statues and decrees, poems, stories, and more………………………………..