In the Heat

There was no relief even at the beach, where the air was hot and thick and surprisingly still, and I walked along an empty stretch of sand, seeking quietude. There are fires in other parts of the state, some directly impacting friends of mine, and an unease here, as usual. Last night the sky was hazy from distant smoke, giving it a sickly, jaundiced look. Everything feels ominous, but that is becoming a familiar state of mind.

We have pomegranates, though. I’ve always been fond of them, and our little tree is beginning to bear fruit. They take me back to Istanbul (I just wanted an excuse to say that) as well as to childhood days, when my father used to refer to them as Chinese apples. I have now seen that they are flamenco dancers when in blossom, and then gradually swell into the hard vase of fruit, those clusters of sweet rubies, almost too fantastical to be real. And I may as well mention that the citrus trees are heavy with fruit—the wind has been dropping lemons, oranges and grapefruits to the ground faster than we can gather them.

At this very moment I hear the buzzing of a saw and growling of a wood chipper. Dale is here today. He’s a legendary local tree trimmer who approaches his work as an artist as well as a scientist, sometimes acrobatically clambering up a limb, and sometimes standing still to let the wind be his guide. Watching how branches respond to the wind reveals many secrets about their weaknesses and propensities, he says, and before you cut a limb, you better know where it intends to fall, which seems obvious, but a mistake can be fatal. Dale grew up here in “the land of oaks and eucalyptus” and has been doing this work for forty-five years, so he knows a thing or two.

But oh, it’s hot. As I pushed myself through the thick torpid air I thought perhaps the heat would be head-clearing, and I’d sweat out the toxins from my system, or arrive at some new insight, but nothing made itself known. A few nights ago, in one of my vivid Covid dreams, I visited my poet-friend Dan in search of answers. I have never been to his house in the real world, but in my dream it was surrounded by a thicket of trees, and filled with books and clocks, and a winding wooden staircase led to a turret with a narrow window that looked down upon a meadow where horses grazed. Dan was kind and patient, and he looked up from a poem he was writing and offered me the knowledge I was seeking. But when I awoke in the morning I couldn’t remember what it was.

Good old Dan. I wrote to him about this dream yesterday. He said he remembered my visit and assured me that the wisdom I was seeking has already been deposited in my memory bank, if I can find it.