In the still air - Gloria muses

Original art by Nancy Orme Mysak.

In rare times, when the sea winds stalled and shore birds waded trance-like in the shallow film of ocean on sand, in the trees of Billington's Cove, the warblers and trillers could be heard.  Avian song, not shrieking, not squawking, felt so pastoral, so English novel, so inland, that Gloria imagined she could see herself glide over a forest path opening onto a wildflower-spotted meadow, her floral cotton lawn skirt a classic Liberty of London print, her picnic hamper bearing a feast for body and spirit.

Rather than wishing for it to be otherwise, Gloria relished the variables that influenced her menu.  Weather was always a factor, a song that played in her head when she woke up, a color that appeared as though spotlit, the shape of a cloud, a dream, a memory, stillness or birdsong, mood, all had ways of dictating or at least suggesting what would most please her customers that day.  And what would please them would also please her with anticipation and diving into her tasks.  The spontaneous response to life was part of Gloria's works in progress.  She was unlearning ancient habits, the belt-AND-suspenders approach to days so planned and prepared for they lost all mystery.  A change of such magnitude felt like a series of chapters, rites of initiation, into the arcane art of living by intuition.  Its call was so insistent, its spell so magnetic, she might leave her house without shoes or dressed only in a slip, no longer reliably mindful of what she once thought was absolute.  How, she wondered, could days be as disorienting as the blindfolded spin of Pin the Tail on the Donkey yet leave her with no fear of stumbling.