In dark woods, the right road lost.
—Dante, The Inferno
My life as a writer in Toronto had become a beautiful but pointless blur.
I didn’t feel I had accomplished anything other than making a comfortable living, and now I couldn’t even manage that because my well was empty
There was nothing left to do but to run away, so I chose Florida’s Gulf Coast because that was all I knew in the whole world.
I had lived a sheltered life and now at thirty, wasn’t even sure of who I was, but something within me was calling and I needed to answer the summons of whatever that was.
So, here I was on Anna Maria Island, like Dante being led through The Underworld by Virgil, except in my case, it was a pelican named Gus.
Somehow that seemed about right.
But now Gus had led me to a strange, bohemian woman named Rose. I had no idea what her role was.
I looked closely at Rose. She was in her sixties, or so I figured, with long gray hair and dark piercing eyes.
She was wearing a floral dress, and had on flashy earrings. Her fingers were nicotine stained from chain-smoking.
“You’re here to find the pace and rhythm of your life, are you, Roger?”
She said it more as a statement than a question.
“I guess you could say that,” I conceded.
“Well then, you need time to be—to hear the melody and follow the music. Does that make sense?”
I nodded, fascinated by her perceptions.
“You’re blocked in many parts of your life. What do you do—are you a musician?”
“No, I write.”
Her eyes lit up. “I see—you use words like an artist uses a paintbrush—so, you must paint.”
“But I can’t paint—I mean, I’ve never done it.”
“Before you were born you never lived—don’t limit yourself to what you have done.”
“I’m not like you,” I protested.
She frowned. “How’s that?”
“You’re more free-spirited than me—I can see that—you’re unconventional, Rose.”
“I live an inconvenient life, if that’s what you mean.”
“I don’t know what I mean,” I sulked, “ all I know is I’ve disappointed a lot of people.”
“Have you now? And what’s that got to do with your art?”
I stared at her blankly.
“Life is demanding something of you, Roger, whether you disappoint people or not.”
“But what’s painting got to do with that?”
She took a deep drag of her cigarette, “It’ll free you up to know what you want because right now you are following every one else—you must learn to follow your heart.”
Gus had been sitting patiently, but now he arose and flapped his great wings and soared gracefully off into sky.
“You’ve been called, Roger. Gus is a peculiar bird. White pelicans don’t stay in the fall, but he stayed for you. It’s up to you.”
She got up and went into the cottage, leaving me with the cries of the gulls, the moan of the surf and the wild impossible sky.
It was up to me now, she said.