The madness started in late April or May. Bilbao, a slow river and sun mixture of a city, shoulders of Basque mountains. “This all used to be factories,” a cab driver said to me pointing down streets all leading to art museums.
In the evening, the sun sets slowly and there’s a gold tinge to the alleys and old quarter. No one speaks English. I am lost and I have been on a boat for two days. And so after a few days here, I find a cheap flight. Bags on my feet, I’m in Venice. Bag over my whole body, the rain is close in there. Canals rise. They say welcome to the disappearing city. Welcome to the mystery of beauty.
Then the steady stream of people visiting Ireland. Friends all with their own way of seeing Ireland. Understanding themselves in Europe. Some just want to play pinball, others are looking for an origin story. Sling shot visiting and guiding and the toll and taxation of engagement. I’ve become more introverted. I moved to change and had to change to move. But all the while, there’s still a steady pulse underneath.
Last week, the slingshot inside sent me on another train (of the many trains I’ve ridden in the last 20 months) with a friend who came simply to play cards with me. And play we did. On trains going to places on the island. Belfast, Sligo, and back to Dublin. There was a sadness up there, in Belfast. And newfound joy. New music, a gay bar filled with laughter and he and I danced and then the next day, my friend got to stand where the giant ships were built.
I’m home alone. Roommate is off to France and sends me a picture of the moon above Lyon. I draw in my notebook, charcoal has a life of its own. The thick lines, smudges, erasures, grating bits of charcoal onto the white page and smearing it. Gazing at it until a face appears like the shroud of Turin. The Shroud of Turin is a fraud. Yet, a haunting fraud. I erase and blend what I think I see. It’s the live wire anxiety I carried all my life. It’s a face of time. It’s badly drawn. Can’t tell if it’s a boy with a headscarf or a woman from Inishbofin island from back in 1893.
But the moon was out last night. Ivy covering the buildings around my collection of estates is turning red. The rain drifts through and the clouds moved off for a half hour and I could see the faces in the moon. I could feel the difference now. The peace. Like an ice shelf broke inside. Will it flood the canals?
So far, whatever it was that I carry in some odd side pocket in this life is turning opaque. Dissipating. An odd kind of peace, one that drops slowly, is collecting. One doesn’t always get that kind of chance. To rearchitect your own world into a smaller house further away. To learn how to lift heavy weights at a new gym and feel the new muscles on every climb up the tiny dark stairs in the drafty old house. How to walk aimlessly every day. Learn how to make your own enchilada sauce. Learn how to not aim the arrows into the dark interior. To finally see the moon as your own mirror that never reflects and only gets seen on rare occasions, like some searchlight from the other side of things.
