Tea for One
There is no moon!
Not the moon I know. And I know the moon. After all these months, enough months for most would express it in years. And mostly I do, too, except for nights like this. Nighttimes spent walking, spent in the neighborhood, spent with Sam.
Or spent alone—or both.
Sam is off to a meeting. He and I parted ways after a quick dinner. He likes to get to the meetings early. The seats fill up fast, he says. There's a bit of sadness when I think about that: so many in need of help. There's a note of joy, too: so many helping those who need it.
He got there early tonight; he always needs to get where he's going earlier rather than later. It's a thing of his. It's a thing of mine, too, but only sort of: I just don't like scheduling anything for a given time. Ish, I say, and let's meet up at the bar next door an hour before ish. That way we're all collected at some point, at some time, ready for dinner, or ready to just be together. I guess it's how I can be compulsive and incognito. Compulsively incognito. And compulsive.
Nighttimes like this aren't meant for us who are earthbound. The Earth inteferes. The walk down 18th Street from Collingwood to Sanchez wasn't about footfalls so much as the gliding sensation of moving towards an amber, eclipsed moon. Not my moon.
There's a strange quality to the nighttimes in San Francisco. I've mentioned this before; I mention it often. Whether from being at sea-level or from moist air or from a thaumaturgy particular to the City...who can say. In any case the sky is touchable, almost, a shield-dome barely higher than the tallest earthbound thing. And on it is painted a black-amber moon. Not my moon.
Nighttimes like these are not a time for the earthbound, are not about time at all. Calendars don't make any sense, clocks make even less. Stranger still for a night when Sam has an hour-long 'on the dot!' meeting where he's receiving his 30-day chip. I am not, can not be with him so I sit at Samovar, drinking peppermint-jasmine-chrysanthemum tea which, strangely, makes my neck pain and back pain disappear.
I couldn't be prouder of what he's accomplished in this even though I can't possibly understand what it may mean to him. Simultaneously (simultaneity I understand), I am not surprised. Sam is a force of Nature with the face of an angel and a devil of a wit. Sam occurs. He's there with and for and beside, making it difficult to remember when he wasn't Just There.
Just like my Moon. Which is not my moon tonight.