August 21, 2005

• cellar door
  
  Yawning, we wait for the old grey bus to Capistrano.  Kicking our feet, taking in the freshness of our surroundings, we are casually engulfed by large and steady habits, the movement of nuns.  From a distance, they are but an amorphous black haze, made jellylike by the rising summer shimmer.  A miracle in the desert, they are but soulful illusions, the possibility of camaraderie in a shared waiting.

  They shuffle their feet and congregate as a gaggle, noting the time.  Helplessly, we eavesdrop on their innocent chatter, topics spilling otherworldliness.  There must be over twenty of them, each woman hidden by shapeless religious wear.  Their faces but means to expression, we imagine the gaunt ones are severe and the pudgy ones joyful.  For their habits, all attention is drawn to their cheeks, mouths, eyes and noses.  Enough to fill ten rows, we wonder if there will be room for us on the diesel-fueled miles ahead.  But time of arrival need not correlate with one’s place in line and far be it from us to break their fellowship.   We hold hands and it is a beautiful day.

  Feeling lively, we wait for the bus to Capistrano and it arrives with commotion.  We let the sisters walk ahead and they climb metal steps gingerly.  They file into empty spaces and even so, we manage to find seats.  And we are on our way.  The ocean on one side and brown cliffs on the other, we find that one step closer to heaven has the scent of mothballs and cedar blocks, taking in the musty smell of women with little need for perfume, deodorant or fancy shampoo.  Gears adjusting for the rolling hills, the bus follows the contours of the landscape and we passengers sway together with every swerve and dip.  Though we lack their habits, we can’t help but mimic their movement as we edge closer to our destination, their home.  Strange how it makes us feel new.

  The bus to Capistrano halts gently and we exit to the sound of theological discourse or the clanging of mementos.  In linen bags, they carry pennywise souvenirs from a day spent sightseeing the city.  Our touring ahead, it is an ironic coincidence.

  Walking across a nicely kept lawn, we see a bell and we imagine the fun of ringing all that iron.  With mirth and aplomb, a portly monk in burlap drives a John Deere around tree roots and adobe walls.  A slight friar soars to the ether, caught by the music of spheres, counting reverberating seconds per the hour, holding a rope tightly.  Those are the images that keep us laughing and open to everything.  So if we were once like clenched fists, we are momentarily open palms, grin-happy like the gulls above.

  We are cognizant of an observed silence as we make our way into the sanctuary.  We sit in the front pew.  Blessed with commitment and a working convenience, we wait for the feeling.  We’re still waiting as we make our way to the gift shop where we flip through a pictorial timeline of the mission’s birth to present day.  From passion to hysteria to somewhere in-between, we agree that everything is a fine line.

  It’s beautiful.  Everything is beautiful.  But beauty is a sinkhole, a complete mess of an idea.  God is beautiful.  All God’s work is a beautiful creation.  Your smile is beautiful too.  But combined together, layered one thought upon another, what does it mean in the end?  Because even in sleep, when I close my eyes, you’re still there, pretty.  And when you’re gone – and that time will be here shortly – having stormed out of the building for some tantrum, you’ll still be beautiful to someone. 

  Two individuals completely accustomed to aloneness can collide in any chapel.  Our perfectionism, our idealism, our utter subjectivity turn our friendship into sport.  It was the fly on her shoulder, not the shapeliness of her dress that had me looking.  The conviviality of our hand-holding evolves quickly into a hurtful hand-wringing.  You walk out the door and stomp through a perfect square of ebullient green.  I’m embarrassed and angry but even then, yes, it’s beautiful.  Hume believed that a thing was beautiful inasmuch as its related sensations pleased us because of nature, custom, culture, caprice.  For fleeting moments, we are cruel in what pleases us.

  Apparently, you go home without me because I refuse to give chase in this place of heavenly purpose.  Instead, hands in my pockets, I pass by the former gaggle of nuns, now lining up for choir practice.  The struggling sopranos will work to hit the high notes and the altos will smirk because the low notes are easy.  I alternately muse and fume with a heavy emphasis on the latter.  I’m tired now.  Perhaps I’ll become a monk, a path with all the devotion minus the scandal, everyday the same as the one before.  Meeting the searching docent, I take the tour alone.   

  Later, on the way home, I’ll realize that vulnerability is a core element of what’s beautiful.  Everything is vulnerable, each moment completely malleable to choice and emotion.  And what isn’t subject to time?  Even the sun.  Even Galileo stood before the Catholic tribunal, no longer at the center of the universe.   

  The distance between us ebbs and flows.  In every sense, our connection is a marvel.  I may not know it yet but in the hours ahead, I will mull over questions of faith, be bowled over by the path of history, and fall in love again.  With the sun melting day, the attractiveness of Southern California at dusk sublimates into an essence of bright orange, purple, feminine pink and a fiery masculine red.  The afternoon shadows touch and spill past the mission arches.

  To my surprise, you are sitting on a bench, reading a brochure and a bus schedule ten times over, folded and unfolded with every latent emotion.

  Over a hundred years ago, an Italian immigrant was asked to note the most beautiful word in the English language.  Cellar door was his answer.  Cellar door.  Cellar door.  Cellar door!  You are my cellar door.  What we have – the collective whole of it – is cellar door.  One may enjoy a bowl of sauerkraut as much as another may relish a spoonful of caviar – the pleasure one and the same, regardless of class.  Because most things are better for the waiting.  

  On a Capistrano hillside, overlooking the Pacific, we wait for the bus again, this time empty & quiet for lack of habits and chatter.  There are fine and distant lines between earth and sky, certainty and faith, we agree.  No, we feel.

  
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            the poor man’s store (john peto)
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  Well I’m gonna go then. And I don’t need any of this. I don’t need this stuff, and I don’t need you. I don’t need anything except this…
           [picks up an ashtray] 
  … and that’s it and that’s the only thing I need, is this. I don’t need this or this. Just this ashtray. And this paddle game, the ashtray and the paddle game and that’s all I need. And this remote control. The ashtray, the paddle game, and the remote control, and that’s all I need. And these matches. The ashtray, and these matches, and the remote control and the paddle ball. And this lamp. The ashtray, this paddle game and the remote control and the lamp and that’s all I need. And that’s all I need too. I don’t need one other thing, not one – I need this. The paddle game, and the chair, and the remote control, and the matches, for sure. And this. And that’s all I need. The ashtray, the remote control, the paddle game, this magazine and the chair.
  - Steve Martin, The Jerk
  
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  So far, really funny
  

  Matt11:28
  

  • 11:43 pm
  • 31 Comments