Some of the plums had already fallen, so I knew the others were ready to pick. As I stood there pulling them into the colander one by two, I heard the steady, whispered “whoop, whoop, whoop” of raven wings. At beat four he flew overhead and whoop-whooped out of sight. There were a lot of plums.
On the way back to the kitchen, I passed by the carved stone fish from Michoacán my wife bought from a roadside vendor there in ’78. Yesterday I spontaneously hosed it down for no particular reason, and it was like something popped inside! The instinctive ritual blew more than a few circuits, connecting me with something normally obscured (meaning that the symbolism worked). It’s just the thing to do, so this morning I set up the camera and watered the fish again. You have no idea how good that feels, but maybe this video will help.
The soundtrack is from an early instrumental version of “Thank You Jesus for the Nails,” a work of dark vigor and questionable taste fortunately still very much in progress, as the part where I play the keyboard with my knuckles will attest.
[That's an HD version above. You probably want to play with the settings in your YouTube toolbar and play it again, anyway.]
UPDATE: You know, last night I had to watch this over and over. Something completely unintended happened as a result of pouring the water: the drab, dry, dusty fish is completely transformed, with the water on the flagstone reflecting the blue of the sky—air, water, and earth in triumphant oneness! It’s like an inadvertent manual for earth wizards.
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