the wind whipping the waves into weird shapes

The Santa Ana winds had already kicked up by the time I woke this morning. The water in the marina was blowing backwards, and I felt twitchy and weird. A couple of hours later, I had literally developed a twitch in my left eye. The twitch abated from time to time, but always returned. What am I not seeing, I asked myself. What don't I want to see?

Tonight after dinner, walking in the dark, the twitching lessened and almost stopped. Relief. And then two streetlights blinked out just as I passed them. Stopping, I turned around and watched as they flickered for a few seconds, then sputtered into black.

Is the left eye different from the right? I googled. Then I searched for eye twitching superstitions. Suffice it to say that there are many. All I've determined for sure is that my right eye is my dominant one.

courtyard at the Ventura County Museum on Sunday afternoon

The winds have mostly died down, but the twitching is back. A half-hearted gust rattles the dried palm fronds from time to time. They clatter like bones as if perhaps a few dead souls have forgotten to return to their world and are still walking about in ours.

a detail of one of the altars at the Dia De Los Muertos exhibit at the Ventura County Museum--the "sugar" skulls are actually eggs

At dinner on Sunday night, the man who loves me, M, and I told my mother about the Day of the Dead. The skeletons are happy, I told her. There are parties and food and drinks in the cemeteries. She said that sounded marvelous. But tonight I feel as if there are ghosts lurking just beyond the edges of my peripheral vision, and when I try to spot them they disappear.

Fall

There were many herons in the dark last night.

I'm not fond of the fading light. I think I may have done better with the autumnal devouring darkness in a previous life. Sleeping in a one-room cave with other hairy people. Gnawing giant hunks of meat around a blazing fire. Popping the cap on that firewater we've been fermenting all summer.

In this current life I turn on extra lights and grumble silently about my electric bill. I fight the urge to hibernate. I wonder what it would be like to run into the marine version of sasquatch (Replace hair with scale and fins--see it? Yeah) or an ax-murderer on my evening walk. I find myself in a Day-of-the-Dead mood at night. Honestly, with the natural death and decay and darkness that visits us this time of year, I so wish everyone did an all out Dia de Los Muertos. We should set up those altars on our patios and porches and light them with hundreds of candles and make a pilgrimage every night to visit one another's dead.

I find myself driving by the pumpkin fields near my house every chance I get. Orange is good this time of year.

But those dead lost ones are still with us. Even when they're not.

Here's a Jack Gilbert poem for you.

MAYBE SHE IS HERE

She might be here secretly.
On her hands and knees
with her head down a bit
tilted to peer around the doorjamb
in the morning, watching me
before I wake up.
Only her face showing
and her shoulders. In a slip,
her skin honey against the simple
white of two thin straps
and the worked edge of the bodice.
With her right hand a little visible.