One More

Never enough. And the long day limps to a close.

I have driven the gods away. Well, then, I just have to bring them back.

Clean the shrine. Light the candle. Take the time. Let go of the ambitions of the moment. I have become small, in the last few weeks, smaller and smaller. Wanting, clutching, fearing.

It's time to unwind all this. Enough.

I carry them both in my pocket, the skull and the bit of sea glass. But I'm starting to forget. At each turning, there's that risk. Though risk is the wrong word for something that's bound to come along. There's no turning that sharp. The whole crew of demons will be along, you can guarantee it. And if you judge whether it's worth doing by whether it drives them off, then -- nothing's worth doing.

Start again.

I have achieved nothing. I have gone nowhere. Which is good, because even to talk the language of achieving and traveling is to ensure that neither will happen.

The wind whips the Columbia into plumes of foam; at the coast the sea is plunging, and the trees fling up their arms in protest. The fishing boats that try to make it over the bar this afternoon will have their work cut out for them. It's a comforting thing -- if none of your friends are on those boats, anyway -- to know that even the Columbia, one the most tamed and manhandled rivers in the world, turns savage at the end.

Which is important, because to bring the gods back, you have to be somewhere that's out of control.

I get frightened, and I forget that.

I need to lift my eyes. I need to let the cold rain slap my face.

I have everything I need, right here, all the tools. Nothing is lacking but the doing.