Drove eastward, the ocean at my back, shining in the rearview mirror. It was not quite the point of no return, but more like a self-initiated sunset, because at some point soon again I will return.
Spent the day up the coast. Very windy. The dharma birds simply float in the air, expending just enough energy to not go anywhere. I can't tell why. Do they not want to get ahead and go somewhere, find food, etc. like the rest of the rats below? Or do birds just enjoy floating and flying aimlessly? There was an info sign about a bird that migrates 64,000 km. Birds come in all sorts it seems.
The city is, for me, like a memory-thing. Something that helps you remember. Driving today through pasture was like the landscape in southeast Georgia, rolling, with a lone road cutting through. The coast, with rough winds, sandy beaches, and surfers reminded me of southwest Melbourne, by Torquay. Trees, bent by the incessant winds, like natural bonzai trees, are like those that line Beach Drive in Victoria. Grant St., at the gates of Chinatown, feels like it could be on the foothills of Montmartre. And yet the overall canvas is like another version of Vancouver - the bridge, the trolley busses, the coastline. What does one call the place that is not home, though it feels just like it, as if this version happened because of all the particular what-ifs that came to be. As if there was a recipe, and it turned out this way instead of that.
As I walk along the beach, I find that there are few landmarks to help gauge how far I am going. The surfers and gliders keep moving, the joggers go back and forth, cartwheeling kids ramble around. The wind covers the steps I take, as if they don't matter, as if I had never come. Wind, and/or windiness, is so Buddhist. There's nothing to it! Two windmills in the distance, but like the dharma birds, they curiously don't move.
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