First morning. What to do? I lay there in bed and recalled the only thing I remembered from science class, the principle of displacement; a body immersed in a fluid is subject to an upward force (buoyancy!) equal in magnitude to the weight of fluid it displaces. So here I am plunked down in a room called Cadillac Jack, in an inn called Lonesome Dove, in a town called Archer City, population 1800. And that’s Texas, don’t you know. Whatever spills over I’m leaving behind. First thing that’s got to go is the metric system. I’m going to walk miles and miles. And Celsius? It’s 75 degrees Fahrenheit, which means T-shirt and a breeze. I walked up the back alley, bare branched pecan trees waiting for their leaves. The winter grass, dry coarse stalks, in the subtle palette of brown to sweet pale golds.
Right there, top of the alley is the Archer Public Library. I go in and introduce myself and within minutes I’ve been issued my very own card. How can I liken what this means to me? A traveller, a dreamer arriving on Ellis Island? Having my hand stamped at the coolest club in town, the velvet rope taken down? Whispering the secret password and the hidden panel sliding open…welcome.
As Archimedes stepped into his full bath and the water ran over, I emerged from the library and stepped onto the street. I surveyed the still broken down town that I’d first laid eyes on more than one year ago. On the corner one blinking red light swung suspended from a wire. I looked to the north. I looked to the south. Archimedes ran naked with his discovery, “Eureka! Eureka!” he cried. I started laughing, my feet walked liked dancing. I looked up, “Azure, Brandeis, Indigo! Dodger, Majorelle, Royal! Cornflower blue!
And that sky sang the high notes.
Good Life
diane
I’ve been checking in, watching for updates, wondering what’s going on … This all seems so slo-mo, almost quaint, considering how fast-paced most of our lives have become … I won’t use a Blackberry – don’t want it to be that tuned in, to have info come (with the expectation of response) quite that quickly, yet the sense of being out of sync here is so acute … the maddenly delicious lag in these postings makes it feel like I’m waiting six weeks for the ship to cross the Atlantic with the latest letter … I’m hooked and watching, waiting for the next …