Mexican Scherzino

Sunset near Carmet, CA, 5/13/08

This is a little song for guitar by Mexican composer Manuel Maria Ponce, a gentle little tune, and whenever I hear it I have to stop what I’m doing and just listen, savoring each note and chord. It has a touch of melancholy in it, too, like a soft, sad smile.

When I hear it, I see warm evening sunlight and lengthening shadows over the town of Point Reyes Station, California. The main street is quiet, with little traffic, and a touch of golden dust hangs in the air. Bright yellow poppies bloom in a flowerbed, and people stroll, while others sit outside a café, talking and laughing.

The image that I see is of the next-to last day I was in California, nearly two years ago. Ber and Helen and I had been up to the top of Mt. Vision, then down to the cold, windy Chimney Rock, and had stopped in Pt. Reyes Station for dinner before returning to Sebastapol.

I was not ready to come back home yet; there were still things I wanted to do and see, but reality and responsibility were not to be denied. So I stood in that dusty village next to Tomales Bay, with the green hills rising all around, a short drive from the city that had so captured my imagination, and knew that I was about to leave it all behind. I might never see it again.

That evening Ber and I sat on a bench at the top of the rose garden on the hill behind Helen’s house, and watched a glorious sunset over the Sonoma County landscape. Gold, orange, crimson, soft blues and lavenders, as Mt. St. Helena faded into the dusk, and lights appeared and sparkled in the valley. We didn’t talk much, but just watched she sky put on a show, until the colors faded like cooling embers, and we returned to the house.

Next day we returned to the city, watched a ball game, got stuck in impossible traffic in the middle of the city, and found our way to our last stop, the hotel near the airport. In the morning we caught our plane and flew out of the sunlight to the cold and colorlessness of a rain-and-fog-bound New York City, then back to Vermont, where it seemed as though nothing at all had happened while we were away. Time had stood still here, but I had been so far, and seen so much, and had discovered so much… no small amount about myself.

Two days later I was back at work – physically. My mind was still in California, looking at that golden sunlight, hearing the voices of people I had met, and with whom I had spent too little time… Seeing starlight in San Francisco, feeling the warm evening breeze beside Tomales Bay.