Reveries on a Sunday Afternoon on a Terrace in West Hollywood

Actually, I am about to write about last Sunday as I sit on my little terrace THIS Sunday. It happens to be the same sort of afternoon, the sun is out, the hummingbirds are feeding, my two cats are on my right and left respectively. It might be a little cooler.

I have no doubt been in prettier places overall, and nicer terraces, but this little spot in West Hollywood is just enough for me on days like this. And days like last Sunday.

So, last Sunday, instead of just sitting out here and reading, I retreated to my little divan that has a nice new additional cushion courtesy of a friend and lay down. I never really fell asleep, but I spent about an hour, maybe more in that delightful in between spot between sleep and wakefulness.

Just as they are now, the wind chimes were being brushed by the wind and making that ethereal sound to complement my sense of well being. I found myself remembering other occa`sions of this sort, through my life and how they felt exactly the same--safe and peaceful, a taste of what paradise must be, what I hope it is.

I can think of two occasions that happened in Monticello, New York. My aunt, cousins and I used to take a trip to Sackett Lake from time to time. I don't know where everybody was, but I was laying on a small patch of grass or sand (there wasn't much beach), on my side, hearing the breeze, and the voices of the kids in or around the water. The sun was strong and, though my eyes were closed, there was a tinge of visible orange I still could see. It was, as last Sunday was, some more than fifty years ago, a joyful suspension of time and space.

Also, in Monticello, outside the little summer house my aunt and uncle owed, there was a large tree. I want to say Maple, but I never know one tree from another. It was big, wide trunked, and leafy, casting a large shady circumference. The grass by the tree always seemed longer than on other parts of the front lawn grass. Once, maybe more than once, I lay on the green cushion and watched the leaves cross in front of and out of the sun. A deep breath was my entire activity. Or maybe watching a cloud pass in the space the leaves left.

Later, in Freehold, New Jersey, outside of the rented house of my Aunt Peggy and Uncle Mike Mulligan's, a rather rambling old house, so different from my family's one bedroom in the Bronx, during a rare visit to this kind couple--in fact, I am not sure that Aunt Peggy was still alive--I sat by another tree, remembering one or two other times I had been there, and wishing that our families had been closer. Still, there was a sense of all's well with the world.

As I lay on my divan last weekend, facing the ficus, the hummingbirds, St. Francis' statue, a couple of pinwheels that spun from time to time in the breeze, I was in each place, more of them coming to me in memory, in the now, experiencing the exact feeling--all of those moments somehow coalescing into this one.

The phrase that comes to me as I conclude, as Tuxedo changes position on the arm of the divan next to me, is the "Everlasting Now". I must have heard it somewhere.