All Those Stories

I have awakened in our new house on a new morning, refreshed and grateful for the elusive blessing of a solid night of sleep. Now I contemplate this different kind of light, and in the absence of ocean, I am pleased by the way white waves of fog curl above the mountains. I lie here in our borrowed boat of bed and let my mind wander in its random and ridiculous way.

For no apparent reason, I remember being at an outdoor cafe in a beachside town during my long-ago trip to Turkey: newlyweds Anne and Andrew are murmuring their private murmurs, the trio of widows are lamenting the loss of their husbands, and feral cats are scavenging for morsels, boldly leaping on tables and rubbing against my legs. I get up and walk to the water, wondering why I am here, but I guess that was the time when I felt I needed to go sailing to Byzantium, and I had the means and the whimsy to do so. The bigger question: why in the world is this irrelevant memory making its appearance now?

It’s just the way my mind works, in a stream-of-consciousness procession, an endless fount, continually replenished. Maybe it’s like watching old movies, random distractions. Maybe it’s a chance to see something deeper by revisiting. Maybe these experiences are what collectively form the person that is me.

This is one reason I am skeptical of artificial intelligence, drawing as it does upon a finite pool of preexisting input. I don’t believe it can factor in the nonlinear, irrational, unpredictable and infinite possibilities of the human mind, the way humans expand upon individual experience as well as collective awareness, creating and inventing in midair, not necessarily drawing upon precedent, or fitting into prior templates, or even seeking sense. And how can emotion be edited out, and the singularity of a voice, and the boundless, erratic trajectory of thought whose landings cannot be foretold?

Sorry for the digression. But anyway, years flicker by, my deck of stories shuffles, and there are so many scenes I could linger on in this lavish banquet of my life, but I decide it is time to get up, discover this house in its early morning mode, and make myself some coffee.

It’s a long walk through empty space to the kitchen, but the light is beautiful, and through windows all around, I see the greens and golds of the Santa Ynez Valley, and an oak tree I have already come to love. There’s a scrappy old orchard with a pretty persimmon tree worth looking after, and a few apple trees whose tiny hard green apples are beginning to blush, and sunlight is illuminating a particular curve on a mountain slope. It reminds me of the lemon slice of light that painted the hilltop as dusk drew near at the ranch that was our home, but it’s even better, because it is here, and so am I, and this is now.

It isn’t only now, though, after all. My head is stacked with all the yesterdays, my heart is weighted with accumulated sorrows and joys, and, if I am reckless, forebodings and anticipations of days ahead, often inaccurate, and not a wise indulgence. So I summon up more images over coffee, welcoming them in a spirit of fun and curiosity, and in free flight they wing toward me: my mother in her later years, pointing out cottony white clouds and a candy-red car and blackbirds on a lawn while we drive to get an ice cream. My little brother, when he really WAS little, telling me not to worry. He wears a tiny woolen overcoat, his hands are without gloves, and the cold is stinging. We have left our stalled car in a lot and begun the long walk home along Connetquot Avenue. “Don’t worry, Cyn, we’re almost there,” he says.

Then suddenly the scene shifts, and I recall the summer day when I came home to the gift of a shiny blue bicycle waiting for me in the living room, my father beaming with pride at having managed to procure it. I’m skipping the sad parts this morning, because the light is pure and the day is winking and the coffee is kicking in. Remember when the aspen trees were so yellow, I leapt with joy? (Yes, Monte would say, you could still get some elevation then.)

And here is a story within a story. Two nights ago, before a small gathering of listeners in a park near the waterfront of Santa Barbara, I told a tale from my Brooklyn childhood. The event was a feisty little endeavor led by Santa Barbara’s current poet laureate, George Yatchisin, and billed as “An Evening of Poetry and Stories”. It was hosted by the City of Santa Barbara Parks and Rec, Gunpowder Poetry, and the Santa Barbara County Office of Arts and Culture.

What enticed me was a chance to read from the iconic Plaza de Mar Band Shell. Built in 1919 as a venue for public concerts, its opening concert featured a 22-piece band and an audience of 5,000 people. Ours was a far more modest happening: eight intrepid poets and writers, a small stalwart audience of  humans and dogs seated on the grass, and an obnoxious drunk who kept shouting the F word from the sidelines, guffawing loudly and inappropriately at random moments. (We took the high road and ignored him, following George’s example of dignity and restraint, but it was rather distracting and dissonant. Later, I decided that it lent an air of absurdity and humor to the event, or maybe it was a kind of test, and we passed.)

But oh, there were fine moments. I enjoyed the words of fellow writers and marveled at their creativity, bravery, and skill. And I was giddy with the thrilling implausibility of standing on that beautifully restored stage, a girl from New York, imagining Santa Barbara’s citizens here for music and performances in the 1920s and across the decades. I could almost see the ladies with their gossamer dresses and parasols––but yes, I do get carried away.

And the story I told was a true one from my childhood, about the people that lived upstairs from us in the 1899 building on Coney Island Avenue where I lived until the age of eleven or twelve. Into the chilly Santa Barbara air, I spoke their names, remembered Holy Innocents, revisited kindness, the shock of a sudden death, and the beginnings of my understanding of how the world works, a process that continues to this day. Maybe my Brooklyn friends achieved some small measure of immortality by my telling about them here. Maybe I was an emissary from another time and place, demonstrating what we have in common with an elsewhere and a long ago. Or maybe I was just a silly woman with silver hair enjoying her moment in the spotlight. It was completely unlikely, and yet it was.