Just After Sunset(80)

Eight. Always were. I'm sure now. Today the field was silent, the hay dead, the trees at the foot of the slope bare, the Androscoggin gray steel beneath an iron sky. The world waiting for snow.

And my God, best of all: a bird roosting on one of those stones!

A BIRD!

Realized only when I was driving back to Lewiston that I didn't bother counting my steps when going back to the car.

Here is the truth. What must be the truth. I caught a cold from one of my patients, but now I'm getting better. Cough gone, sniffles drying up.

The little joke was on me all along.

December 25, 2007

I shared Christmas dinner and the ritual exchange of presents with Sheila and her family. When Don took Seth to the candlelight ritual at the church (I'm sure the good Methodists would be shocked if they knew the pagan roots of such rites), Sheila squeezed my hand and said, "You're back. That's good. I was worried."

Well, you can't fool your own flesh and blood, it seems. Dr. J. may only have suspected something was wrong, but Sheila knew. Dear Sheila.

"I had a sort of crisis this summer and fall," I said. "A crisis of the spirit, you might call it."

Although it was more a crisis of the psyche. When a man begins to think the only purpose served by his perceptions is to mask the knowledge of terrible other worlds-that is a crisis of the psyche.

Sheila, always practical, said: "As long as it wasn't cancer, Johnny. That's what I was afraid of."

Dear Sheila! I laughed and hugged her.

Later on, while we were doing a final polish on the kitchen (and sipping eggnog), I asked her if she remembered why we used to call the Bale Road Bridge the Fail Road Bridge. She cocked her head and laughed.

"It was your old friend who thought that up. The one I had such a crush on."

"Charlie Keen," I said. "I haven't seen him in a dog's age. Except on TV. The poor man's Sanjay Gupta."

She whacked my arm. "Jealousy doesn't become you, dear. Anyway, we were fishing from the bridge one day-you know, with those little poles we all had-and Charlie peered over the side and said, 'You know, anyone who fell off this thing could not fail to kill themselves.' It just struck us funny, and we laughed like maniacs. You don't remember that?"

But then I did. Bale Road Bridge became Fail Road Bridge from that day on. And what old Charlie said was true enough. Bale Stream is very shallow at that point. Of course it flows into the Androscoggin (probably you can see the merging-point from Ackerman's Field, although I never noticed), which is a lot deeper. And the Androscoggin flows to the sea. World leads onto world, doesn't it? Each deeper than the last; this is a design all the earth proclaims.

Don and Seth came back in, Sheila's big guy and her little guy, all dusted with snow. We had a group hug, very New Age, and then I drove home listening to Christmas carols. Really happy for the first time in ever so long.

I believe these notes...this diary...this chronicle of madness avoided (perhaps by bare inches, I think I really did almost "go over the bridge")...can end now.

Thank God, and merry Christmas to me.

April 1, 2008

It's April Fool's, and the fool is me. I woke from a dream of Ackerman's Field.

In it the sky was blue, the river was a darker blue in its valley, the snow was melting, the first green grass was poking through the remaining ribbons of white, and once more there were only seven stones. Once more there was darkness in the circle. Only a smudge for now, but it will deepen unless I take care of it.

I counted books after waking (sixty-four, a good number, even and divisible all the way down to 1-think about it), and when that didn't turn the trick I spilled coffee onto the kitchen counter and made a diagonal. That fixed things-for now-but I will have to go out there and make another "house call." Must not dither-dather.

Because it's starting again.

The snow is almost gone, the summer solstice is approaching (still over the horizon but approaching), and it has started again.

I feel

God help me, I feel like a cancer patient who has been in remission and wakes one morning to discover a big fat lump in his armpit.

I can't do this.

I must do this.

[Later]

There was still snow on the road, but I got up to "AF" all right. Left my car in the cemetery parking lot and walked. There were indeed only seven stones, as in my dream. Looked thru the viewfinder of my camera. 8 again. 8 is fate and keeps the world strait. Good deal.

For the world!

Not such a good deal for Dr. Bonsaint.

That this should be happening again; my mind groans at the prospect.

Please God don't let it be happening again.

April 6, 2008

Took longer today to make 7 into 8, and I know I have much "long distance" work ahead of me, i.e. counting things and making diagonals and-not placing, N. was wrong about that-it's balancing that needs to be done. It's simbolic, like the break and whine in communion.

I'm tired, though. And the solstitch is so far away.

Its still gathering its power and the solstit is so far away.

I wish N. had dyed before coming into my office. That selfish bastyard.

May 2, 2008

I thought it would kill me this time. Or break my mind. Is my mind broken? My God how can I tell? There is no God, there can be no God in the face of that darkness, and the EYE that peers from it. And something else.