House on the Bluff
My home is a grand sight — the yellowness of the light through the kitchen window, and all the love it shelters inside
Lori is my child muse. When life is complicated, I bring Lori to me for her innocence and her simplistic views on the world and the creativity she brings to my work.
Far beneath the bluff, the ocean crashes and tumbles ashore like a restless spirit. I’ve always been drawn to the sea, in life as in my writings, beginning each new story in my garden overlooking the waters of the Pacific and finishing at my desk in the study looking out to the dependable but momentary flash that is Point Arena Lighthouse.
“Mr. Harry…” I hear my name being called, a child’s voice; one never too distant from my creative imagination. “Help me with the gate will you, Mr. Harry.”
“Hello, Lori?” I call out. “I’m coming.”
Lori pushes on the iron gate as I pull, swinging it wide. Her fragile hand quickly finds mine and the sudden joy of her grasp is almost painful; as if the warmth therein leads me back to my childhood. I was a pirate back then, sailing away, my skull and crossbones flying. Always my own glad adventure.
“What have you been writing about today, Mr. Harry?” She asks — matter of fact.
Before answering, I think about her question. You see, writing for me goes beyond the documenting of facts, it goes to who I am and why I do the things I do? I write to put flesh on my bones.
“Well now, let me think. Today I’m writing a story about a magical unicorn,” I tell her.
“You are!”
Her curls of wheat colored hair appear aflame, her eyes unnaturally blue. Hand in hand we reach the old bench, rickety with age, and sit down in the evening shade of the Cypress tree, bent and misshapen like an old man.
Lori tugs at my sleeve, looking scornfully down at my crossed legs. I uncross them. She sprawls onto my lap, pulling herself upright, happy, her tiny hand touching my face.
“Does the unicorn have a name?” She asks.
“Daniel,” I reply.
“I like that name, Mr. Harry,” she says, and the momentary flash of Point Arena’s light reflects the blue in her eyes. “He lives in the sea,” I tell her.
“Mr. Harry, you are silly, unicorns live on the land,” she giggles, floating a smile that sails into my heart.
“Not Daniel, Lori. He lives in the ocean, beneath the waves, beyond the trees, distant from the foghorn’s blow, past ancient times and it is there he becomes a sea creature called the Narwhal,” I explain.
“He does…?” She says, her eyes questioning.
“Absolutely.”
“I always learn something new when I come to see you, Mr. Harry,” she says, “I think it must be fun to be born on land but have the sea as a playground. Is he hiding from someone?”
“I don’t think he’s hiding, Lori. I think he wants to be remembered, and so he visits far away shores.”
“Looking for someone to play with, Mr. Harry?”
Her question reminds me there are people hiding in plain sight who need to find love, maybe not here by the sea, perhaps in restaurants or inside office blocks and these people want to give the other a ring to kiss.
I remember a time when all I had to offer anyone was me, shabby most times, dreaming all the time. I wasn’t much, I figured, but someone will come. This is what I told myself. Anything to keep my empty heart open, knowing I would one day find her. Perhaps she would arrive on an Alitalia flight from Rome, or see me while having her hair done in the window of a New York coiffeur, or looking out from a rickshaw in Rangoon.
“You will remember me, won’t you, Mr. Harry?” She asks.
“How will I not remember you, Lori? You are everything and everyone I’ve ever lost.
“That would make me a child of love, wouldn’t it, Mr. Harry? I’ll be safe here in your heart,” she says, her hand on my chest.
How I found Lori, I don’t know. I’d been everywhere, seen everything, been afloat on every ocean, left my shoes under the beds of strangers, been lost in cities, found sprawled in gutters, flown in skies, trod barren ground. Then one day, out of the blue, sitting on this very bench, I heard her voice…Mr. Harry.
I have bones out there in the ocean, bones of my bone and my flesh. Bones that go to the pride of what dad was able to accomplish. How he contributed to who I am today. Bones all the way back to respecting his hardships and his losses, the never giving up, each day building on resoluteness. In writing, I get to put flesh on his bones, and not just his, but all those I’ve loved and lost.
“Of course, Lori. No matter what chilly wind blows, you’ll be safe in my heart.”
“To know true love and beauty, Mr. Harry: you must first reside in its midst. Your imagination ensures I will always come back to you,” she says, “but now I have to be going.”
Lori slips from my lap and holds her hand open, raising it to me, a child befriending a man who has the unique ability to lose himself in a mist that covers his reality.
I have protected myself well. I will always be what I write, be made happy, sad, rich or poor, I am just what the words say and no longer feel any ambition to prove otherwise.
“Will I see you tomorrow, Lori?”
“Maybe, Mr. Harry, maybe…” she says, her voice laughing.
Love, I’ve learned, never wears a disguise. It removes any necessity for masquerading or making false assumptions. When you carry love in your heart you are lifted aloft. My work gets done. Life moves along, and there are times — a few minutes every day — when I forget about my unicorn, Daniel.
Well, maybe less than a few.
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