This Morning

I am asking myself: just what do I think I have, that I am so afraid of losing it?

Sarah is here in Portland. I'll be seeing her at morning puja in less than an hour, if I don't cut and run. I could have gone up to the retreat land and seen her there yesterday. I didn't.

---

My mother-in-law -- long passed away, now -- once took a painting class, and her teacher told her that water will be the same color as the sky. She used to repeat this bit of painting-class lore to us from time to time, dubiously but obstinately. "They say," she would begin -- "they" being a whole pantheon of authorities whom one had to accept -- "that the water will be the same color as the sky."

Whether we were looking at the gray, brown-veined Columbia under a deep blue sky, or at a green mountain stream under a white overcast, she would cite this oracle. Just one of the many authorities she accepted, and would have defended strenuously, but didn't entirely believe. I've often wondered if that really was exactly what he did say, or exactly what he meant.

Anyway. He would be gloriously vindicated today. The luminous gray of the wet pavement in front of Tosi's is exactly the color of the cloudy sky. Iron and polished steel, edged with tarnish. The weather that means home, to me.