All around me is great beauty.  The Pacific ocean entertains me from nearly every window.  Whales are frequent visitors and loll around with their pec fins breaking the surface, while the sea lions surf the waves or bark at the surfers. Steep sided sand bluffs form an irregular line down the coast only breaking for a magnificent river completes its journey at the Bay mouth.  Coastal cottages perch precariously along the bluff tops and Hang dangerously at times from its ever changing sides.  They are painted in a myriad of hues that would be obscene in any other setting and most certainly would not pass HOA guidelines if there were any.  So, my eyes feast on the lime green shacks, the over saturated yellow bungalows, the natural cedar shingled homes trimmed in magenta and in their insouciance and unwillingness to conform with the staid subdivisions found elsewhere - I am happy.

They remind me of him.  His flair for color. His love of the unconventional.  I close my eyes and I am 19 again and he is 26. He is wearing a light baby blue very thin silk shirt. A long fine Italian scarf in a riot of colors hangs casually around his neck.  I have on a pair of gold jeans with a cream colored silk shirt the first two top buttons open revealing my model like flatness.  A thick 22K chain with a cryptic Toltec looking hunk of gold that he had designed for a collection  at the former I. Magnums hangs in sharp contrast to my pale sheath of  youthful skin.  My feet are adorned with something strappy and high heeled from some recent pillage at Saks or Neiman Marcus.  He wears a pair of boots with some poor exotic animals hide reduced to leather.  We are walking by the marina in Sausalito.  He is singing one of his songs at the top of his lungs.  We are immune to the curious stares.  We are gold.

I have all the scarfs now.  There are dozens upon dozens that he collected over the years.  The latest ones have long silk fringe on them.  Last year, he tried to update several of his favorites by purchasing spools of silk thread and sewing it on himself.  The fringe is all different lengths and the knots are askew from his attempt.  I painstakingly remove the tassles and redo them one by one.  Each scarf has a story.  I don't know all the stories because there was a 32 year period where the we led separate lives and now by a glitch in the universe or perhaps her humor we are separate again.