The weather cleared yesterday, and we
had one of those rare, early-fall days here: there's no sense of loss
or decay on this coast, with the onset of winter, for the simple
reason that nothing is preparing to die. Winter here is nothing worse
than a long cold shower. So when the light goes golden, and the spray
from the surf is hanging in the air, lit up with the setting sun, you
get the “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” without death
behind it: you could believe that war has vanished from the world,
and that no parent and child will ever be parted. The pelicans framed
their antediluvian profiles, black against the gold, slowly flapping
their ancient wings, with their pterodactyl heads drawn well back,
and the quadrilaterals of their wings shifting from diamond-shapes to
Tennessee outlines and back again: each with its neck proudly bared
to the knife.
In the Middle Ages it was thought that
pelicans tore open their breasts to make themselves bleed, and fed
their young with their blood: hence the pelican was an image of
Christ. There is something about the deliberate motions of the bird
that makes this plausible: it does not seem quite of this world.
We paused on grassy bluff, where we
could look back at the cliff above which our condo is perched, and
the little beach at its foot. The corpse of something was there on
the beach – a large fish? – a small seal? – and a couple
beach-crows were at it, dodging the surf from time to time. A seagull
watched them, perched on a rock a couple of yards away, but never
disputed the corpse with them. As we watched, a turkey vulture came
slowly, slowly down, in great circles, till he was skimming the
little beach and practically brushing the rock walls with his huge
wings. Eventually he settled on the gull's rock, a little farther
back, and observed the crows at their work. He was remarkably small,
with his wings folded: not really much bigger than the gull. We
expected him to drive off the crows, but he just watched, for a long
time. Eventually he stepped down, going carefully behind the gull,
and sidled up to the grey lump, whatever it was, that occupied the
crows. He never pecked at it, or interfered with the crows: all three
of the bird-kinds resolutely ignored each other. He just looked it
over, a long, patient contemplation, while the crows darted in and
out. He did not seem to like the surf much, and retreated from it a
couple of times. And then he took to the air, unfolding again into a
huge, magnificent bird, and rose in circles, as slow as he'd come
down. He circled a while and then vanished. The gull never moved.
We went on our way: when we came back
that way, an hour or two later, the tide was was slightly higher, and
everything was gone: corpse, crows, gull and vulture. Not a sign of
any of them.
The numen seems to be coming back into
the world. I am still at a sad loss to know what exactly I'm doing
here; I've run far past the end of my marching orders, but the
emptiness that distressed me yesterday has passed. We're going home
today, and I'm glad of it: I have massages and painting to do. But
it's clear as the morning that I must do some hard thinking, over the
next few days.
