just returned

from visiting middle child, Jeremy, and family of wife Ting Xuan and boys Etele and Nico, in malibu. flew back out at 2350 sunday which gave me 6 full days there. they bought a house up in the hills overlooking the pacific ocean 4 years ago, spent a lot of money remodeling it, but with increasing business interests in china, where they live, they're thinking about selling. so, he called and said come or you'll never see the house. was struck, even as i've been in similarly exotic locations, by how removed they were from the normal flow of the world. wind down the at-times precipitous road to the pacific coast highway and you leave olympus to enter again a writhing, jostling river of human activity. anyway, late conversations with Jeremy looking out over the ocean, working puzzles and playing old maids with etele, reading (re-read the floating opera, 1st time since the 70's, and phillip k. dick's the three stigmata of palmer eldritch), and continuing to try to refine my own life, from settling on physical choices to dreaming directions futureward. back in mississippi, sitting this morning with coffee on my screen porch and a wonderful slow dawn rain falling, the light slowly revealing the playhouse, camellias, south church street awaiting activity, again the realization east, west, north, south, it's just me. etele (3 yrs.) would rap on my door and ask, Pops, Pops, are you in there? even as swep V (4 yrs) comes down the stairs at his house and asks, hello, hello, anybody there? i'm always the first up and sitting in the big chair by the back windows reading, or working crossword puzzles.