I had noted that Cara had once told me something about Scelsi that I have never forgotten. It is this: the eccentric composer refused to allow his photograph to appear in conjunction with any of his musical releases, for he maintained a conviction that his music was much more than a simple outgrowth of his personal imagination. The sounds were a transmission from the greater Soul that transcends all matter and masks. Scelsi was, in his own words, merely a conduit for the music that existed well beyond his own private abilities.

In place of his own visage, distinguished though I later discovered it to be, Scelsi used the symbol (a circle hovering over a straight line) that appeared on the jacket of the recording Cara had presented me with. I have studied that symbol often and with vigour. Cara had always said that for her the image was a cleanly abstract vision of a sinking sun, but to my eye it appears as something else entirely.

Deep Eden

Deep Eden

Ash Lake occasionally embodies its name. On November days such as this, when the sunbeams can scarcely press through the leaden clouds, the lake roils grey and ghostly, taking on the appearance of shifting dunes of ash, like incinerated remains of one who somehow survived the crematorium.

How I loved days like this when I was a girl. In those distant autumns I would venture down to the lakefront, Dad and Rita by my side. Together we would toss stones and spy for any boats daring enough to brave the gales. Those days were buoyed by a feeling, very rare and very delicious, that my sister, father and I were the only three people left in Evendale.

Of late this same feeling has become a constant, but it has lost its sweetness.

Perhaps these pleasant memories sparked my desire to make the detour to the beach today. Was I clinging to the thin hope that somehow the sight of Ash Lake in late autumn might uplift me, give me the clarity to make sense of the senselessness that is now the norm in Evendale?

Standing on the beach, I scoop up a handful of fog-moistened stones, then let them drop unhurled. As I make my way back to the jeep, I listen to the surf whose waves sound much like mocking asthmatic laughter.

The fuel gauge begins to flash ‘E’ as soon as I turn the ignition, so I begin to woo the vehicle, coaxing it to carry me far enough to reach the Main Street filling station that still, as of last week, had fuel.