Sunday, Gil Stephens mused. Loose ends hovering over the morning. The
psych center stories. Helen and Alicia and the conflict he felt. The way he’s
lurching around as he rises out of passivity to a more proactive creativity.
Moonset outside on a light coat of snow, sky clear. First light and an
occasional illumination from the motion sensor light on the cabin from a
foraging animal passing by. The aroma of coffee, warmth of the pellet stove and
the hum of its fan. The moment, the now that never leaves him, the way that
awareness slips, disappears, returns, present. Spirit. The notion that each
being, each entity unfolds the creative edge, a contour that to his spatial
sense seems irregular, but what could he possibly know beyond what his senses
allow to enter a brain with limited capacity. Now his eye and his nervous
system’s adjustment to a new way of seeing he’s gradually getting used to, able
to negotiate with as he moves through space. Gravities and orbitings and the
cosmos unfathomable, as science struggles to understand. So much learned and
yet to learn. The planet, its fragility, how temporal it is, the solar system
too, so dependent on the Sun, itself doomed. His conversations, even prayers,
with and to an entity he likes to think of as a guardian.
Then the philosophical world he’s had fascination with, the
postmodern, perception, interpretation, cultural study, the political morass,
more loose strands hovering. A passing movement behind him into the bathroom,
the scent, the soft sounds, the touch on his back. The creak of the loft’s
steps as another movement descends, breathing, touching, reaching for coffee,
sitting alongside him as the other movement returns and does the same. How is
it, this? All this, and just this, now?
