GLORY! (or Santa Cruz Island)

Glory, I say.

No?
Let’s try that again.

GLORRRY!
(and AMEN, as Henry Miller would say)

GLORY! says the bark of the sea lions from that yonder pointed rock, protruding sharply and hard-edged from the mouth of the cove that I’m overlooking from this rocky promontory.
GLORY! says the sun sunk behind the next island a few miles off, clouds rippling around its peaks loudly like streamers.
GLORY! says the sky, speckled with sun drenched clouds glowing heavily with summer’s honey-colored light even though the last week of October.

(soft streak of rose
petals and tulips
across the horizon
in one long painterly stroke)

This air is life itself — GLORY! — perfumed by the salty, aquamarine waters hundreds of feet below, crashing onto the shore, foamy-white.

And here I sit on the most luxurious rock, looking out at all this revelation.
I could be sitting on a pin cushion.

I discern no visible joy out there, only mystery and a raw primalness. But within, a sense of calm equilibrium and belonging.

I have merged with the salt-sea air, with the last remaining rays of the sun, with the wild, mangy bark of the sea lion.
I am no longer, as I once thought, just this flesh and bone but, I see now that I am this whole of nature.
This skin which contains me; which keeps me bundled up in this extraordinary body with its two legs and its two arms and a head which swivels this way and that, and a mind that thinks and creates divisions; this skin which contains me, which seems a boundary, is also contained within me. It is merely the surface of an ocean, the ground floor of an atmosphere.

It exists, but only in your mind.

So,
GLORY, I say!
GLORY & HALLELUJAH!

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