There are few drives as beautiful as the
17-mile drive on the Monterrey Peninsula. The mountains crash into the ocean in
such a way that would make even the most hardened atheist wonder if there wasn’t
some grand design to the universe. The place was that beautiful, and John found
himself thoroughly enjoying the ride. He felt the joy rising inside of him as
the wind whipped through his hair. Some places were powerful like that.
He made his way to Cypress point, and
hiked down to an area famous for a lone Cypress tree overlooking the ocean. He
thought it was a fitting spot for him given the current circumstances, and for
the moment he realized there was no place he would rather be. He had
contemplated bringing a bottle of wine down with him, but was able to resist
the urge, he wanted to read his book and experience the sea air with a clean
mind, and for today at least resisted the impulse.
He opened his book and remembered the
familiar opening,
“Cannery
Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of
light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and
scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and
weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks,
restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories
and flophouses. Its inhabitant are, as the man once said, "whores, pimps,
gambler and sons of bitches," by which he meant Everybody. Had the man
looked through another peephole he might have said, "Saints and angels and
martyrs and holymen" and he would have meant the same thing.”
It was, in John’s
opinion, one of the finest opening paragraphs in American literature. He
remembered the first time he had read it as a young man so many years ago. He
hadn’t been anywhere at that time, and the description of Cannery Row provided
John with an escape from the banality of his hometown existence. He had finally
made it there a few years later, and when he did, it was one of the most
exciting things he had ever experienced. He had something back then. Passion,
insatiable curiosity, wanderlust. This trip had proved to John that he at least
hadn’t lost the urge to roam. He was starting to believe in the restorative
nature of travel again.
He continued to read,
and was amazed how so much of the book seemed to mirror his current state of
mind. One passage in particular stood out,
“It’s
all fine to say, “Time will heal everything, this too shall pass away. People
will forget”—and things like that when you are not involved, but when you are
there is no passage of time, people do not forget and you are in the middle of
something that does not change.”
How
many times had he been the one trying
to guide someone through the darkest days of their lives? Over and over again
he had repeated some of these same platitudes, and now he had come to realize
they meant very little. Empathy was what worked, not trite words and empty
phrases. He made a point to remember this passage if and when he ever got back
to work again. He took it as a good sign that he was at least contemplating a
return.
As he was reading a gust of wind came and
nearly blew him off the rock that he was perched on. He chuckled as he did, and
thought of an old movie he enjoyed called Windy
City where a pivotal moment came when a gust of wind blew the main
character’s hat off, which he took as a sign from his recently deceased friend.
Was this gust some kind of sign? He
looked up and took a long look at the ocean sprawled out in front of him. Maybe
his wife was sending him a sign. He didn’t believe in these kinds of things,
but all of a sudden he was filled with a feeling of understanding. He also knew
in that moment that he had to return to work again one day.
It
was a feeling that overwhelmed him, and he knew that whatever power there was
in the universe was leading him back gently to this idea.
It
was a fundamental part of who he was.
