Visiting The Church of Writing

Sometime this weekend, you'll discover this post. You'll be seated in front of your computer screen, not expecting much of a return, maybe an answer to a comment you left, maybe just a howdy, and wham! bam! there will be a new post. This will naturally floor you. Your jaw will likely drop. Who in their right mind... but the thought will fade as quickly as it explodes in your brain because you know that those words don't apply to the one known as ICON.

Vacation has been gentle. Soft rain caresses my windshield as I drive north to Mendocino. California is a shamrock green. The water flows off the hills like tap water into a hot bath. Gray skies embrace the mountains and the trees. I drive deep into the woods, swerving over roads that would take me days to hike. The ocean beckons me and at last is in my sight. I drive out to the very edge and climb the tower. A lighthouse that no longer serves its function has the best view of the Pacific Ocean. Seagulls and seals and whales and waves sing nearby. I follow the song south along the coast watching the sun edge closer to the surf until I can no longer feel my driving legs, then I skitter up an inlet, follow a river towards its source, and return home across an orange bridge.

Movies, basketball, restaurants - everyday things, mundane reality, that slips into my vacation dream and seek to corrupt it. I don't let it. I maintain the restful demeanor and absorb energy from around me. My internal balance is restoring. I feel the weight of the world shifting to a more comfortable position on my shoulders. There. That's it. I am almost back home.

I visited the Church of Writing two days ago. In words and pictures, I absorbed the Salinas Valley like the soft loam that nurtures a head of lettuce and adds its earthiness to the taste. I still have no idea how the great saint of this church manages to convey his everyday words in such poetry. Here is the true ideal of what I have always wanted to become. I feel intoxicated with the possibility of his prose - the thought that I might be able to write like him one day. This is not the mecca of writing or the vatican or the Jerusalem temple - it is just a church, dedicated to the concept of the written word as a meaning beyond mere conveyance of ideas. Though its principle saint is a local writer of some world renown, he is only a man who points the way to the ideal - that of the perfect story. He has worshipped at this trough. He has venerated its principles. But he never achieved true divinity in this calling. In his example, I hope to allow words to be my praise. But sometimes the plain word is best.

So, on Monday I went to Point Arenas Lighthouse. On Tuesday, I went to see V for Vendetta. On Wednesday, I went to the Steinbeck Center in Salinas. On Thursday, I worked at the NCAA Sweet Sixteen - Oakland Bracket. Today, I went to see Inside Man. Tomorrow, I shall work the Elite Eight. Sunday, I will go to church and bring my vacation to a close - and then back to work again.

I like the prose version better, but you can say a whole lot more in plain English.