by Cecil L. Disharoon, Jr.
What there is to REALLY know about this adventure, the Marc Kane summed up in a simple poem (which is really funny if you think it's about throwing a girl off a bridge, which it's not...)
Poem written after a bike ride and dolphin visit:
Why don't we let our bikes fly
Past the familiar where you and I
Can go explore
In a quest for more
Adventure?
If we do we are sure to find
A secret path in mind
To show me some fun
Out in the revealed Sun.
Sally, oh Sally, in sacrifice to it
We toss you from this bridge and sit
Watching you float along in the water.
Your roots had browned
Causing us, from this bridge to throw you down
In offering to the Universe.
I hope you know we tried to nurse
You back to health,
And your passing was deeply felt.
Now bob along on your merry way
While we feed the birds which play
Behind the Boat
That passed where you still float.
And though we must continue our ride
Within our energy you will abide.
So travel onward we did
Laughing as if once again kids.
You wanna go down this way to see where it leads?
Ah well, a man on Base intercedes
And makes up turn around and go back the way we came.
I guess we can stomach the same
View of nature as we ride in the grass
And have such a blast.
Save your sacred bread for the birds.
I don't suppose you've heard,
There are dolphins in the water
Doing their dance for to mate.
I don't suppose it's too late
For a pic,
If you wade in right quick
And now snap, snap, wow.
Such a blessing and how
Did they know it was needed;
What magic newly bought wooden wands seeded?
The Marc Kane
The Wands
Oh yes, plenty to describe here, as soon as possible!
But for now...our ride culminated in a visit with the dolphins!
I learned: even if you don't think you'll use it...the camera, Cecil, the camera!!
You could say it all started with the purchase of two wooden wands from the driveway store of three little boys who were brothers.
That night, I banished all the seriousness and pettiness from one person's hurtful comments from my mind. It was not really a pro job of trying to unhinge my mind, so long as my self-confidence was well-founded; it could even be taken motivationally, were one to re-charge its inaccuracy, ignorance and negativity...it just seemed a bit sad, for that to be what is left of a friendship. We really DO have bigger fish to fry as a race, but we get caught up fighting, brother against brother...and all that could be put aside, as if by magic, so The Marc and I could put together more of the videos we needed to promote our Soul Rocket party band, and see for ourselves what we had to offer. Turns out, those clips went right to work, when placed on the wall of an anxious person, and who knows WHO feels the love there and never says, too?
After "Hercules," "Rocket Man" and "Amoreena" we discovered the long-awaited enthusiasm for our next comic book, found the story we wanted by just being attracted to the lives of some characters and how they could be related, with sights and scenes from our experience and Marc's vivid soap opera past for the commune where Gabby Pepper and Celestia became friends for life. The story we came up with NEXT fit right in with a new one for our collection for Jenny's site, and the joy of two people finding each other and their animal attraction sticks with me almost a week later; I wouldn't have waited so long to write that part if I were already adjusted to simply writing the pieces out of order to be edited together later. The important thing was, in our way, we lived the love story.
The next day, we got out on our planned bike ride, we just abandoned the original plan. I was reluctant at first, wanting to press on to some place we'd never been, through a place we hadn't been to but once. A much quieter and introspective set of fantasies were met, though, when we got to the Spanish Landing this time. We went around the ship replica construction site and took a path under the bridge that made me think for a moment of the country, as though we were the kids I often fantasized about being while I tooled around, mostly alone, growing up. The Esplanade by Liberty Station promised more wide-open park space and spots for solitude, and we searched every bit of it we found open, even turned back by the Marine post guard, Lopez, who didn't seem to know about the Esplanade beside his own base, thinking we were riding to Point Loma close by.
I felt a little quieter than I had riding all summer, on this generally cloudier day; I didn't realize that was exactly what I'd missed until the sun broke through on the way back to the bridge. On the bridge, we'd paid our respects to one of our succulent plants, which I'd brought, withered, to toss over into the San Diego River, where I'd "buried" Buddy the cactus. WE've learned that if you are going to buy a small plant from Ace Hardware downtown, if it is flourishing too much already in its little cup, it may already be root-bound and dying. There's a metaphor in here, too. I can only speak with silence about the respects we pay to these tiny lives we try to nurture together, fated to pass away by some riddle within the space they have taken root that made even those short lives possible. I have hope for our family that wants-to-be.
Yesterday, we decided to combine the names of the two succulents into one and renamed the remaining one, who thinned but still looks strong. WE call it "Palomaues." No, wait, it was something else; guess that's what I'll put in this time when I wake up with the urge to revise! Just call it "Sal's Pal" for now. WE had discovered ourselves there on the Halsey Bridge between the trail beyond the Landing, and the Esplanade.
From the bridge.I think some recent comments made me think a friend of mine was still as troubled as he seemed to be at the beginning of the year, as he had been, he felt, on and off most of his adult life. I wished I could have some part in making that better. Many some light energies would help; I was wished some blue and golden light for guidance, and I think he'd like that, too. I often think of lighting my friends with vitality; I could only do MORE of that, not less! It all seems so grim, like I should be more grim about my life, too...as though that will help me get serious work done. It's really a request for empathy. This day felt like the end of summer on top of that, and that first fall day can be a very sweet melancholy if you know it for what it is. I was sure another very warm set of days lay ahead, what they call "Indian Summer" here in America, but the thought that our joyous daylight bike rides might be experiencing a passing of seasons left me introspective, even while we definitely had fun on our cloudy ride. You cannot resist the passing of the seasons; they each serve their purpose. To ride together all summer is the sort of vision one packs Heaven with. May we keep such places for all the future little wand salespeople, the wand makers, the wand finders, in the world to come.
Now, on the way back over the bridge, climbed nicely by The Marc's more experienced shifting, I realized how fortunate I had been to sing and smile all the way on those summer bike rides, and missed our threesome party leader the Smorg very much in that moment. There is something sweet but sometimes just a tinge sad about two that seems completely relieved by three; perhaps we missed the opportunity to simply stop and cuddle up the way we probably wouldn't if we weren't alone together, and perhaps it was just the goodbye to the dwindling daylight hours, an embrace of a metaphor about seasons of life, tinged with that tiny bit of wistfulness and fear that the summer of life has shined now in past tense, however happy those times really were and will be to recall.
By the landing, we completed the task of ridding ourselves of the baguette I had bought on sale. I intended it as a sacrifice for Suli, in a ritual to mark the beginning of the harvest season, but we were meant to have our own ceremony arise! Besides, an opening and closing of a circle is hard to do in a tiny apartment filled with so many signs of life and malfunctioning drawers; it's not hard to see why this is recommended to be done outside. First we had begun to share bread on the Halsey Bridge with the gulls, who swarmed after a boat dropping them food. Now, by the playground and the beach, we broke up what was left with our teeth. This slowed us down long enough to get a pair of texts involving fresh pralines from the parents of the children who'd sold us the wands. (They sold nine online! Way to go, boys!) I was thinking of going up to the two couples sitting beside their parked jet skis, with a beach umbrella and drinks and conversation, but we left them, for now, closed.
Suddenly, the Marc thought she saw a swimmer, then made out the back of---a dolphin! And not one, but TWO dolphins, frolicking in the bay! With only my weary phone's camera, I set about catching their memory, taking in moments I knew I'd continue to unpack for a lifetime of vividness. She took over, wading into the water barefoot, unsure just what she was really capturing on the phone's out-shined screen. When we started the editing process, we found lots of tiny, cool pictures of what our eyes saw so clearly; the backs of two swimming, diving dolphins, hanging around even after the boats came by. Dolphins, to me, represent relationships, a clear blue light of the west where we cleanse all negative emotions in those relationships, banish all those energies.
In the two of them, playing, I now see the two of us, playing, scampering on our bikes, still in a state of growing up together like we would've loved to do, for we always seem to have always been there in each other's lives. If it was a mating ritual in the sea, then ours was a courtship on the land, filled with a language more unique and complex than observers may swiftly understand. To reach out and be those dolphins...and for you to reach out with me, and be us and the dolphins...is to let your mind and mine play where things are too natural and beautiful to be either trampled nor entirely neglected by the senses of someone, anyone, who appreciates them. Life will take us to our jobs, our school, and less fortunate places sometimes, besides, and with fall those places will be a bit more quiet, though no less beautiful. But if, when you need their energy most, when you need their memory most, you will take out their picture in your mind and allow the breeze of a perfected temperature to wash over your body, where plants have flourished together in their prime, then you will find the dolphins always at play, and their play can become part of yours.
To Summer!
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