January 2024
She shared a text with me. An invite from a small group – “write the first line of your novel.”
In earnest, played along, the following, a 3 Act novella:
🌴
Act 1
Strange morning where everything suddenly paused.
After the coffee of course, strong, black with coconut cream, ghee and honey from bees behind our Lanai that faces east. Sunrise coffee seeds every day.
I am listening. Rain is beginning to fall, rolling off the Pacific, just now, and it’s meeting the tops of coconut trees, mangoes and palms, below pushing the grasses towards the earth no more than a mile away from here.
Overhead it is blue and clear. A rainbow was in our future.
But an uncanny stillness set in. I could hear a cricket in our neighbor‘s field but none in ours. The songbirds too, paused.
And just as fast, they all lifted out of the trees and flew in circles above, unsettled.
I knew what was coming. This had happened before. Wild doves that live along the Big Sur coast, they roost in the redwoods at dusk and leave at dawn.
But one night, after dark, like these songbirds, all at once, they left the trees. Songbirds left the rose bushes and hibiscus in our gardens for the sky
Beauty everywhere…and Pele had something to add.
The ground started to moan.
Act 2
The sea stretched for miles across our horizon, not a soul on the white sand beach in either direction. Just the two of us, backdropped by wild sand dunes and grasses on an island in the Outer Banks. 3000 miles offshore were the Azores. The winds blew our bodies dry from the Atlantic, hair curled and salt dried on our skin. Both our eyes were shining blue, shimmering really, with this affinity of place – sand, sea and impossibly blue skies, white foam circling slowly around our tanned feet, swirling as one moment, following another. Seamless and pure. It felt so obvious we would be together if we were able to conjure up and be met by Creation so magnificently as co-conspirators in being with It on a day like this. Anything was possible, together.
This was not a pause. This was flow – in motion with the sea, the moon and stars, seasons and circumstance that were simultaneously celestial and rock, stardust and dirt. All in motion. A dance of kisses and writhing. Being met and seeing the fire grow. Feeling the heat and getting closer. All while the waves from across the expanse rolled gently across our bodies as we ducked under the foam and surrendered.
She turned and asked, “What is this ?”
I replied, “This is contigo!”
Years followed. On that same beach. Late summer. Passports stamped, pages of them, homes and gardens in between. Cats and dogs together. Ceremony and vows
I turned and asked, “What is this?”
She replied, “This is over.”
Tectonic.
And everything paused, even the waves.
Act 3
The banana tree leaves fluttered. The air was windless. Their trunks swayed like rubber pencils. Birds flew in circles not knowing where to land. The ground underneath heaved and sighed all at once. In the distance above the trees not far away, molten lava rose to the surface and spilled seaward. Unending waves of magma pulsed like the sea, rolling incessantly towards the shoreline. All powerful, primordial, beginning of time itself, long before dinosaurs and plants. The earth had something to say.
Calmly, “What is this?”
Moaning, “This is happening.”
Not a question. A pause and then, flow. Agnostic. Without discretion or permission.
Peaceful and also, total destruction.
New land being created originating from within. New coastlines and eventual beaches.
There is nothing to do but surrender and allow.
Love swells from someplace deep inside. It is our heart, our soul reaching outward, across time, to create – contigo – together. It is where the tip of the wave kisses the air, the orange of flames singe the edges of our limits and we grow.
The birds circle above a moment longer and then, one by one, they settle onto branches. A breeze off the Pacific fans the banana leaves. A hummingbird drinks from a gardenia. Hands clasped together, a bow to Pele and the morning slowly lifts its veil.
A rainbow appears to our east, kisses between the pauses and the flow.
Contigo
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