The Furious Spinner

Just breathe. Keep telling myself to breathe. Tight. Been that way for days. My chest. Not drunk. Wouldn't that be different, to be drunk? Instead of...instead of...

My feet haven't felt earth beneath them for so long. Round hole in a square peg. No, that can't be right. But I don’t fit. I feel as though I'm in one of those end of the world science fiction novels I read when I was younger. Only on the surface it appears so normal because everyone has been brainwashed, and we only know it's all wrong because everyone is sick.

It's everywhere.

Please take me where my soul can touch the Earth. My soles. She's everywhere, but I cannot feel her. I need to touch the face of the divine.

Drive one way and we see the rain falling in the near distance. It looks like someone is drawing a foggy curtain on creation. Sunlit. The remains of the crater of an ancient volcano rises alongside the river and the light, like a shadowy beacon.

We turn around anyway.

Take me where I can breathe the sighs of trees, coyotes, and bears.

We drive up a mountain road close to home, looking for a way up. We stop and get out. An east wind moves through a stand of pines, and the sound is like a lullaby. We stand and watch, listen. Shhhhh. I stare at the tall dark beauties, and I can think only of the sea—as though these windswept beings are sirens—mermaids dressed in tree boughs—trying to lure me...

So I walk up the steep hill. The cold east wind pushes the trees back and forth, back and forth, like seaweed in an ocean wave. I say a little prayer, asking for protection for Mario and me. I turn to look behind me, and the pines look so tall next to my husband coming up over the ridge, sunlight at his back. He looks so beautiful. I keep walking into the dark. I breathe.

Breathe. I start to see for the first time in days. Weeks? Oregon grape: shiny, with light yellow green berries in a small cluster in the middle of it all. The leaves of wild roses just beginning to bud out. I am so cold, So cold. A deer print. Dear, dear print. The wild roams here. Can you put your hands on me, on the world, and fix me/it? Or at least pretend. Up and up and up. The music of the east wind through the trees masks everything else.

Then Mario points out a delicate purple, lavender deer's head orchid that rises an inch or two off the ground like a Barbie doll shoe left behind by a far-too modern fairy. Linda always says if there's one, just wait; there will be others. So we wait. Seconds later, we see orchids here, there, and here.

We come down out of the cold and head for Wind Mountain, away from the wind. It disappears, the wind, just like that. And swallows swoop and dive above us. I lift my arms up.

We discover a trail up the mountain. It's a surprise, an invitation in the silence, an invitation into the darkness that is beginning to spread across the mountain. I step onto the path that goes up through the mossy rocks, salal, Oregon grape, and fir and pine trees. I have to pay attention to every step. The path is narrow, and I could easily slip down the mountain. Ferns grow all around us, trembling slightly as we pass. The moss looks wet but is dry to the touch. Mario points out a lizard or salamander. I crouch next to the cinnamon-colored creature, and I feel altered, slightly in-balance, as I was once before on the coast when a lizard stopped me for a kind of mystical chat. They both said the same thing: "It's all a dream." It crosses the path slowly between Mario and me.

If it's a dream, it's a beautiful gorgeous horrific dream. It's all so beautiful. This. This place. This man. This moment.

We walk over recently downed trees. More deer's head orchids. Trilliums. Yellow violets. Teeny white flowers the size of a pin head.

The setting sun falls across the forest below us like a golden child stretching and yawning before sleep. Mario and I stare at the light and the coming night.

I breathe and breathe...

...and breathe.

Later, we walk on pavement again, and I try to remember the words to the lullaby. It went something like, "Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. It's all a dream.” Didn’t it? 0 comments

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