collaboration / transport - ing

In the distance a train. Why do I not feel forlorn by the whistle here in Oregon?  I consider the trainyards of California, urban or not, shudder at memories: loss, loneliness, punctuated by the long moan of freight trains...  did these sounds trouble my childhood?  Possibly later, in those years of uncongenial youth spent with relatives, the sense of loss having stiffened. Deeper aversion to train noises, especially at night, must have arisen later, connected with Santa Barbara by a palimpsest of one loneliness upon another.

Greece. Olga Broumas. Intimations of Sappho in summer 1993, West Hollywood: hearing Olga and T. Begley read collaboratively what they have written collaboratively, sheets of powerful words, loose-leaf orange swirling from one writer’s hands to the stage
floor, some picked up again by one or the other, given new meaning and resonance in alternate pairings and sequences... imagery swelling like brilliant blue mornings. Magnificent excitement.  With whom (with what?) may I collaborate?

Eucalyptus and the lure of the Mediterranean, olive trees, bitter of fruit but graceful, the mellow cast of autumn light in Santa Barbara. Towering sway of palms, their stylish fronds, the strong wind itself hastening my urge to harbor, breakwater, fishing boats; deep forests of kelp, wet sand, slick rock.... Azure and terracotta those brief afternoons. And seagulls, their cries in flight muted by wind and surf into an evocative chorus of unnamed desires and mysterious satisfactions.

Where else have you and I, potential collaborators, found ourselves together, sleek dolphins slicing salt water, our tantalizing silence bent with the weight of past knowing. You: my tongue like birdsong curving the inside of your elbow....

Do you know Santa Barbara? Salty fine-sand shores, delectable fields of anise, white limestone cliffs where I startled lizards.... Even the civic architecture harmonious and fine. Childhood place of geraniums and reprimands, of backdoor trellis heavy with honeysuckle while black widows roam the crawl space below, of arts in all abundance, of cultured elegance, of ancient tales of pain.

My skin starved even as my heart feels caressed, my eyes craving to open on yours along a silken turquoise pillow shared and coral dawn-light inhaled as one....

Rocks. My life now an island shored by stones. In childhood I collected stones from the surprising winter shore, iridescent shells left us by the sea, fine salt crystals I couldn't bear to wash off, wanting to wear this white crust like abandoned seaweed heaped in summer, brittle but full still of lingering fragrance, even stronger for being dried. And rocks. I lived then an island ringed by rock yet visited by pelicans and promise. Now I pray these stones would heap themselves into a bridge.

Collaboration may require a cherished landscape merely, an aura of longing—orangely curious; may ask only clear vision—summer blue to see without ceiling, and the finely patterned gauze of memory intersecting with any moment’s multitude of gifts.

begun in 1996, completed in 2016

(c) helen laurence 2016