Where will it Happen?
Sometimes in places too beautiful to describe.
Note: Often when I write a piece of fiction friends write to me saying they believed it to be true. What is here is fiction based on many instances of fact. It is simply written from my point of View.
Those who have driven the CA 1 Highway heading north from San Francisco will have appreciated the drama off to the left.
Jenny and I had driven up as far as Bodega Bay, a couple of hours from the bustle of San Francisco, a small fishing harbor notable for once being the setting for the classic movie by Hitchcock, ‘The Birds’.
Driving along the CA 1, familiarly known as the Pacific Coast Highway, toward Mendocino, there are many places to stop and take in the coastline magnificence; find a piece of art or antiquity with which to adorn the walls or the gardens of your home.
Over many years, I have bought several sculptures, some impressive paintings by local artists, and stunning seascape photographs.
That said, we observed the most striking, unattainable art happening right outside the window of our hotel in Mendocino; the stormy weather that lasted through the night brought in high winds, painting a picture of immense power and beauty. The waves coming ashore were in a state of riot. It was, of course, nature’s art.
We had a great breakfast, marmalade and oysters, though Jenny preferred eggs, ham, and a glass of fresh orange.
As we left, we knew we had been treated to the nature of ‘art’ in one of its many guises; however, by the time we set off, the sun was out, the winding road gleaming, famously dramatic, fierce, inspiring, and beautiful. The Pacific Coast Highway is a tourist favorite for traveling, stopping, taking photographs, feeling the freshness, and looking at the hugeness. Trust me, it can be intoxicating.
We came around a bend to find several police cars blocking the narrow road, emergency services, and, in the air, a rescue helicopter. We stopped behind several cars ahead of us. I’ve come to understand life is a repetitious wheel of chance. A policeman is being helped into an ambulance, distraught, unhurt, but looking near to collapse.
The gods of joy had abandoned us.
The tongueless California pines will have seen what happened, as did the gulls, shrieking while the road has become blocked by people getting out of their cars.
We are likely to experience a severe delay.
Regret is a strange word that comes to mind for encouraging my curiosity. Crushed at the bottom of the cliff is a mangle of metal as if sculpted into the rocks below. The mood of the rescuers is sober grey as the manufactured wind pounds down from the helicopter above our heads.
On any given day, life is a banquet. On any other, the end.
It was evening, and the news on television said that two women and three children had been killed on the Mendocino Coastline, their car having left the road and plunging to the rocks below. Oh God, the clock of life had stopped for these innocent people. There seemed no evidence as to what had led to the accident. What a waste of treasures, out of the world, no longer to touch and be touched, the perfection of the day scattered on the rocks, a fall to nothingness.
The hallucinations I have of God are endless, but He refuses to hide me from grief, mine, or others.
The art of life is no longer living.
Lives are lived only to be extinguished — yes, but not to create sculptures of death beside a place as beautiful as the Pacific Coast Highway.
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Thanks for reading.
