The train drops off in the dell. To become acquainted with the subsequent upswings, we climb the walls of the bowl to the cruising spot, to the Victorian delta. Imagine you follow on her shoulder, so subtle is the we here, because to her she is joyously alone.
Triangulating the first path with the second is a simple matter. Hike up Clayton, pause for the overgrown lamp shining toffee yellow.
The air is so good.
Our girl finds a market and stops in for a bar of chocolate. She is already feeling beautiful. The man behind the counter says, "This bar is my gift to you today, because you have beautiful eyes." She accepts. She agrees.
The market is on Uranus street, high above the city, and she starts to sing "Top of the World" by the Carpenters.
I'm on the top of the world lookin' down on creation and the only explanation I can find ... is the love that I've found ever since you came around your love put me at the top of the world...
She feels radiant. She turns right on Mars.
Our girl has an idea about God. Belief? Hm, no. She is making and then meeting God. Prayer usually goes something like this:
In a dark room, with eyes closed and hands tucked together, she begins by getting in touch with the idea of God, which can be done by envisioning the paths water droplets follow when flung off an object in motion or the random collisions of molecules in a gaseous state. Realizing that the veins of stone printed on the linoleum of her bathroom are the same as the sprawl of alluvial fans and flood planes, we can add these to the list as well. Then, she says, "Hello, God," and imagines that there is a heavenly phone bank where a representative picks up the line and eventually passes on her information to the main entity.
This is a very good way.
In the bustle of this place, it is easy to worry that God is not here. But upon reflection, to look out a back window at sunset and see a scoop of sorbet sitting on the horizon was an affirmation. God showed itself to her, to assure her, to usher her in. Perhaps the God encounter is to be in the discovery of things, like walking out from the dell to crest sequential wooded hills.
And to quote herself, God has left the building, but He is still in the room.
It is a good thing to arrive to where she is known and unknown, interceded by four years of more flesh and living.
There are many things to say, apparently. Questions to be asked about the appropriate cultural categorization of various animals -- cottage, cabin, trade wind? There are so many statements that prompt her to ask, "Today?"
She says "Behind my house there is a garden, next to my house is another house, because I live on a street, because my street lives in a city." They all laugh, him especially.
One day around a large table in a small library someone read a poem aloud, perhaps about the sea. He began to cry. He took his water bottle. He left the room.
One day he arrived to the large room on the first floor carrying a small homely tea cup pinched out of clay and glazed a morose yellow.
One day he tacked two long sheafs of brown paper to the wall and two people took up position writing single words at the same time until they came to the same conclusion.
Sweetness.
Our cosmic family. Is that what friends are? Is that why love or some promise of it seems whispered in the touches and glances of men with wives and girlfriends?
A sing-song name to call him baby.
Really, wondering if the pope will come to pizza. Is it enough to sit shoulder to shoulder in the plaza?
Perhaps. It is good.
