who knew?

Slants of sunshine are beginning to slip through the marine layer gray of the morning, gray nearly all the mornings the last few months. I see the day brightening out my window. There’s one window in this room I rent here in Golden Hill, a pretty big one, and the bottom half of the window sits just below sidewalk level out there on B Street. The glass is some funky sort, so people cannot see in – other than with the light on in here when it’s dark – and I can see out. And seeing out is what I’ve been doing here since mid-October 2021. I’ve seen the same people pass one way and then the other so many times they feel almost like friends. “Each being’s eternal radiance appears before us” is a Zen Koan, and there it is out the window.

Friday, Ann and I get the keys to a new home and the slow, physical process of moving will fall out. I’ll be back to Golden Hill a few times next week to gather more packed stuff – mostly books and notebooks, including about 80 of my own “W.B. Cushman” written and never sold books in bags I discovered in the back of the closet late last week. But Thursday night’s the last night sleeping here.

Who knew – right? – back in July of 2008 when I was walking on the Cape Cod Rail Trail in Orleans on a Saturday morning and heard myself say, “I’m moving to Portland” – who knew what I was really saying was I was on my way to San Diego, that I’d have the great fortune of meeting a remarkable woman willing to hang out with me lots, and as of Sunday will move to another part of this town, together, and begin what feels for me like an adventure both spacious and amazingly cool. And we laugh a whole lot.

Anyway, the sun’s dancing out from up above, and today I’m here and in seven days I’ll be there, and I once was way up there and before that way over there, and mostly I’m feeling rather giddy. And grateful. My eyes are wide with wonder, too.