"As if leveled by the scythe of Saturn"

Adrienne invited me over last night to have dinner and relax together, talk a bit, and see how we're both doing. There is hope I think, that we can understand each other, and salvage our relationship for another time, or at least our friendship, which is very important to both of us... We're both the sort of person that don't frequent a large circle of friends and prefer the company of one or two close companions. A, I'm afraid is quite scared that I'm lying to her about wanting to save us, and I admit that I've heard that whole excuse before but it's true, I find her to be a wonderfully person, one of the smartest people I've ever known, and plus she has sympathy for me...

Anyway. So like the clockwork of the clock that has just been build, winded-up and set loose to dissect life I have picked up my copy of W.G. Sebald's "The Rings of Saturn". The first time I read this was in Olympia, right around the that SP called all the way from Vermont to tell me she's been sleeping with someone else. It was winter, February even but it was actually quite temperate there enough that a defining moment of that painful time was the day that after class, I took a drive to where ever and on the way stopped at one of the little espresso kiosks that are everywhere in the pacific northwest, got a caramel latte, and a pack of smokes. I drove past the safeway, past the shopping centers, and up into this middle class neighborhood that sat high enough up on this hill that after exploring on foot for a while, I found a tiny park containing some children's play things, a swing, and castle and a few benches, that over looked all of downtown Olympia and the Puget Sound. So I sat down on a patch of long green grass, with my sunglasses on facing the Sound with warm (!) February sun on my back and read the first third of "the rings".

I couldn't really tell you what it was specifically about the location or the time or, but generally it was all of it, and the emotions that I was (and I think always am) trying to contain. But this book, that is like a dream, but is also, the authors true accounts of his walks through the English country side, observing the passing of of centuries of time and it's erosion of memory and truth resonated in me in such a way that after the events of late with me and A. I've felt compelled to pick it back up again. It is an amazing book, JB is reading it right now I gave him my copy, I hope he gets something from it as well, sometimes I think JB feels acutely the same feelings of joy and fear facing inescapable annihilation, that I do.

The one exact memory from that time period that I do know I have because I remember as I looked up from my book, before I found the park (directly behind me) I was sitting next to my truck on the side of the road, facing the sun, with my back against a fence (behind the fence, a yard, with strange west coast shrubs, winter-dead, but with branches like strange insect arms and legs, and at the ends dried pods that were as hard as rocks, and looked like scorpion stingers.) and I remember looking just to the right of the sun, and down a bit and I traced a power line (or phone line) from where it connected to someone's home, to a Pole, and along from the pole, across the street, to some birds sitting on the line, and then to another home, and in that two second moment, combined with what I had just read, and what I was thinking, I had a thought that said "Your going to remember this." And so far I have.