The Precipice Trail

"In Acadia National Park there are over 120 miles (193 km) of trails. The Precipice Trail is among the steepest and most dramatic. Beginning here it scales the glacier-steepened eastern of Champlain Mountain. The ocean view from the top is impressive.

Although the ascent is precipitous, climbing gear is not needed. Iron hand holds and steps of native stone are placed at strategic points. On hot days it is better to start out in the afternoon when the sun is behind the mountain. The Precipice Trail is not recommended for small children."

Engraved on the Precipice Trail plaque

Berlin Wall revisited

Whose side of
the iconostases
are you on
where priests and police
once patrolled
our grafitti?

No more checkpoints.
Pause between the acts
and stations of the U-bahn
before crossing,

twenty years
after the fall
of the wall

orchestras tune up
waiting for a master key
a common beat
new rate of exchange

Dominus deus
Domino Day
Nothing stands still
forever
yours,

Shakedown at the Brazilian Room

Lina really didn’t want to get onto this subject again now, but Louis had taken off up into the hills again and she had to follow. Said the weather was perfect for another shakedown. The plan was to practice an emergency landing in the parking lot of the Brazilian Room in the regional park district not far from her desk in 1971. The evening fog had become so thick that this was apparently a perfect opportunity to practice landing with 0 visibility.
They had to fly low, following their noses as they hung out along Wildcat Canyon Road, breathing the fragrance of the Eucalyptus and Bay Laurel to stay on track. Suddenly, headlights appeared, turning down onto what appeared to be a modern hacienda, an old colonial gem where there was evidently a party on the go.
While Lina had been invited to Monique’s birthday party, Monique hardly expected her to fly halfway around the earth to be there tonight. Nor did Lina for that matter. And since only Lina and Monique had any personal associations with Louis, they were both surprised and perhaps even a bit disappointed that Lina had actually showed up. Suppose no one likes to be reminded of the past when they’re in the future. Rubble vs. bubble syndrome, East vs. West. Berlin Wall.
Unprepared as she was, Lina happened to have what she hoped would be a very personal and dear gift for Monique in her Sierra Club backback - an etching of a famous battle that took place during the Enlightenment in Paris - which she left at the entrance to the Brazilian Room. Monique probably thought it was just a card, since it was a flat piece of paper in a brown envelope, no heavy box or glittery paper. Why else, when she had read the dedication on the back, would she throw an antique into the wastepaper basket beside the gift table?
The party was just getting started. A quick look around and Lina could see that most of the guests, apart from a couple of relatives, were unfamiliar. And so she took a seat at one of the round tables with covers for twelve, where she had no professional or other affiliation with the others, all of whom turned out to be members of APA. Conversation centered on Monique’s relationship with her husband Bill. Lina mostly listened, since she didn’t really know much about him. They said they didn’t know him very well either, but that Monique was depressed and had confided that he was the reason. They related browraising stories about Bill. Since Lina was the only one at the party who had known Monique back in Paris, before she met Bill, they were curious to hear Lina tell them how she met Monique. Lina didn’t tell them that Monique had been depressed then too, but stories about their safaris together.
Then suddenly the band tuned up and Monique came and sat down at their table trying to get people to dance. Since no one was game, she changed the subject. Lina saw her mother in a long white dress with gold brocade, and a lemon meringue pie hairdo, clearly enjoying the dance floor. The party broke up fairly early, and a couple of APA members thanked Lina for telling them about the safaris to Norway and Spain.

November 6, 2009

Cool and overcast, but still, as I climbed the southern slope of Lake Mälaren this afternoon, on my day off. Proved to be a good place to ventilate the turmoil of my turbulent take off with Louis earlier in the day, replete with a brief account of a vivid dream that I have always intended to record, ever since it happened (only once) in 1971. Louis continues to nurture the dream on paper, making sure that we both land on our feet, one here and one there.

Gotta soften those stiff old garden gloves. High time to change into overalls, a favorite ochre yellow LL Bean jacket, Gortex just in case it rains, regardless of what Obama would wear if he were in Stockholm today.

Properly clothed for the occasion, I proceeded to pull up the last of the Jerusalem artichokes, earthen jewels, out of their settings, and turn the soil. Collected the biggest chokes into a paper bag and replanted the smaller ones, deposited their withered stalks into a new compost heap, along with dried pea and bean vines that I had just managed to unravel from their trellises. And as I sifted out twigs from the composted earth and shoveled the rich soil over the empty beds, I thought of mom, laid to rest again this winter. And as I raked maples leaves into piles on a tarp, and portioned them out around the fuchsias and roses, I thought of dad. Working together – from above and below.

Untitled

There’s a logo on Louis: Hoist.
Leave where you lift off, cannot stay, must get away up into the foothills, to the banks of the Hatch Hatchy Reservoir.

Flap. Flap. Flutter. Float. Ooh ooh ooh ooh. Tick-tick, tappity tap tap.
Days pass, hours, minute hands wave by, gotta give it a try.

Wind your weightless way along a dusty path, step on stones, slip on loose gravel. Let glossy evergreen groves, sugar pines and silver firs keep you warm. Your stores are plenty in this dense foliage. Examine their fine needlework, textures, patterns and interlacing. Phantom robes will wrap all around you. Stay on that path, without repose, until stubs, pale gray trunks, gnarled and twisted branches weave their way alongside you and grasses dry. Snakes slither and slide across, or coil on a sunlit slab. A little hurried, but quickly hushed. You’re making progress.
Then look up: an opening. Listen: water tricking, flowing swiftly and eagerly like down feathers into a still room.

M just called and we're going to work in the garden, along the lake. Saved for the time being, by something as mundane as a bell.

Shakedown testing

The message was a blank paper crane she called "Louis".

"Louiiis!"

The spirit of Louis first take off had been a shimmy and shakedown that managed to survive a nosedive, just missing her wastepaper basket. Didn’t seem to hurt. After a cursory inspection, airborne early warning and control, Lina S. Berg propped Louis up on the edge of her desk.
“Louis, I think we’re just a couple of shakedowns from your maiden voyage.”
“Hit the sack, you need a good night’s sleep. This is gonna be a long haul.”
“But Louis, where are we headed?”
“Cross the Atlantic. Don’t worry about that. In the meantime, get some shuteye. My tip: rock yourself off somwhere between Herbie Hancock and a bit of Attitude & Orbit Control, and you're bound to fall up into the foothills. Believe me."

Welcome to the banks of the Hatch Hatchy Reservoir!
Further instructions await there.

Imprinted on pap…

Spring 1971

Be with the chicks as they fledge. And when they are ready to fly, send them an angel who can show them how and where to migrate, their only hope.*

The ‘message’ arrived in a windowed envelope, with that empty, official, staged look. Just her name, Lina S. Berg, behind an iridescent, soap bubble, butterfly wing window.
Even if the envelope had been personally addressed to her – in courier lettering that correctly spelled out her name and current mailing address – it was plain, universal, white, ultralight airmail. Who, but some young marketing consultant for a desperate publishing house might consider it worthwhile to make use of a cheap mailing list to promote their book club. Mass consignments, subscription offers sent out to an entire generation. Had it been a bank statement, a subpoena, a communiqué from the Internal Revenue Service, or a call to jury duty, there certainly would have been a sender. Nor did it have a commemorative stamp licked by a friend, just a barcode and U.S. Postage Paid, on an otherwise blank slate, Tabula Rasa.
Rather than throw it into the wastepaper basket, as any person in their right mind would have done, she was instinctively captivated, as though her survival depended upon it. In order to clear some space on her desk to write checks, pay more bills, and record a recurring dream before she set the table for dinner, she began folding it, into a crane. When she had completed her tasks for the day, she tapped on its beak, and watched it curtsy, before it began to rock of its own accord, and then take off.

Some glad morning, when this life is o’er, I’ll fly away.

* See blog entry. Fri Oct 23: “Once she showed me a photo of a goose in a silver locket she wore around her neck. Said the goose had been silly enough to think she was its mother. Blamed it on her father when that the goose ended up in a silver terrine on the family dinner table. So much for secret loves, and civilized family meals. Otherwise her lips stayed pursed as a roach clip.”

“Her hands were like broken wings, I suppose, and she knew it was best to keep them still. Hurts less that way, and probably heals faster.”