The Pearl

The best way to handle lonely times is to read a rare book which no one you know has read. I heard about John Steinbeck’s “The Pearl,” a novella. A short book that I will get from Diesel Books in Brentwood.

“That’s going to take a while, but we’ll order it.”

I thought it had been mentioned recently in The New Yorker. I loved the idea of tracking back through my own book, cutting it down to a pocket-sized book, neat. And I loved John Steinbeck’s voice, his way. Also, he’s a California writer, Northern California, as Joan Didion remains even though she’s in New York now.

The last time I saw her, she was translucent. We talked about my mother, how similar they are. They eat very little, walk a lot (my mother was on her feet from noon until 4:45pm painting back and forth, chasing each stroke). They both enjoy a touch of gossip.

I did ask Joan about the “rewrite” problem. “Sometimes when you need to rewrite, just start over. It’s lost its Verve.”

The more I write, the more my verve recovers zest, and I’m back with writing which is what to do when you are alone. A month later, Diesel calls, “The Pearl,” has arrived.

It’s 90 pages. The cover is shades of blue. There’s a giant pearl rising like a moon over a navy-blue canyon and in front, on a lake is a canoe. I read it in three hours. I went back to read each page again. There’s an infant, Coyotito.

Nothing adds Verve to one’s own writing than reading the perfect book at precisely the right time. I’m finishing my own recent story. I had a true, real life (and Victorian romantic death story). Saw the beginning, middle, and end. What will be the new story to tell?

I do not sleep easily. My dreams are always of myself lost in a canyon which is familiar, but it turns out not one I know. In every dream, I am searching. I am alone. Here and there, I seem to see a person.

I’m still with mask but mostly in my pocket. Any of the distant people are in no danger. We are on a large empty field, the dry grasses smell like rye. Is this Nate ‘n Al’s field? The dreams have senses; my main one is fear (is fear a sense? The sixth sense?).

The dream is modern, millennial, in that it is all present, rushes by, does not sit for talk. The vast field is silent. The only verve is my sense of fear. This is part of one of John Steinbeck’s mountains. Not my old Topanga. Mr. Steinbeck must have been here. I am in the Pearl book. I have put on my mother’s Pearls. This could be one of the lean translucent stories she’d tell me after my father went to sleep in his room. But here in this book, I must be very careful not to scare myself here, focus, as Kino does when he flees the hunters on each step. See how this torn branch will snap and spill that pebble, therefore tilting the ledge of stone where I might stand and be able to reach out to the person who is just beyond the rise to my left. I have the Oxford cotton bag over my shoulder, so it was not lost when I turned.

It interests me (distracts from fear) that I did remember to put a Pavilion’s snack salad, a bottle of water, three tangerines, four branches of fresh basil, and a Starbuck’s mini-coffee in the bag before I left. Dreams do not reveal how one has arrived. Nor, and this is the fear thing, how one will return to wherever one was.

An unreliable friend had told me there was a fantastic vegetable garden planted by the Hearst family over behind the Will Geer Topanga Theatre. “But it’s lots of hiking. You will get lost, and the canyon wi-fi is out. You shouldn’t go there.”

“Stop,” I said, “I have The Pearl book. It will interest me enough, so I keep going. And I have pens and paper.”

“No one’s even read that book,” she says, “and everyone reads only screenplays on hikes.”

“I’m hiking and writing.” I trip on the other pebbles and move on. I see the other wandering person is Stephen Colbert. He has on an LL Bean tartar shirt from the summer catalogue. These are the details which make Joan’s books so real.

I should not wave to him. I am glad to see him. I do wave (timid). He smiles. Leaps across a ravine. “Impressive!” I say.

“Don’t try that.”

“No,” I say.

He’ll find someone he knows. Famous people don’t have to be lonely. This is a lie. there’s nothing lonelier than being stared at by people who are uneasy about how to approach you. Jane Fonda has learned to be there with and for you, cutting the discomfort. I should not wave at him. My mother understood this. Some famous people are born bold, attentive. Size up moves, expressions, practice.

I see Colbert again on the next rise of the hill. He’s busy but says, “Hi.”

“We’re wandering.” There were fields like this all over Brentwood, all over California when Steinbeck wrote Grapes of Wrath. Maybe writing is the soul’s eternal hike. You can’t get the view, the whole story, until you climb all the way. Then, you can reserve some peace and appraise the story, the rise of the moon from the once restricted views from Mulholland.

“Don’t you want help?” Stephen says. He’s looking at the hefty bag.

“No,” I say.

He’ll find someone he knows. Famous people don’t have to be lonely. This is a lit. there’s nothing lonelier than being stared at by people who are uneasy about how to approach you. Jane Fonda has learned to be there with and for you, cutting the discomfort. I should not wave at him. My mother understood this. Some famous people are born bold, attentive. Size up moves, expressions, practice.

I see Colbert again on the next rise of the hill. He’s busy but says, “Hi.”

“We’re wandering.” There were fields like this all over Brentwood, all over California when Steinbeck wrote Grapes of Wrath. Maybe writing is the soul’s eternal hike. You can’t get the view, the whole story, until you climb all the way. Then, you can reserve some peace and appraise the story, the rise of the moon from the once restricted views from Mulholland.

“Don’t you want help?” Stephen says. He’s looking at the hefty bag.