field notes:

8.24.2002

8.24.02
san pedro

I got a dispatch from home yesterday. My friend Stuart said there’s a new deer in his yard. He appeared recently and was noticable for being a big young buck, healthy in every respect but one. He has no right foreleg and instead has a piece of bone where that leg should be. The wound is healed, the bone bleached and shiny. The buck carries himself -- leaps fences, pulls apples off low branches from his hind legs, runs – no differently than other deer.

Two things seem remarkable about this. One is the lack of infection. Aren’t we taught that a wound left untreated, unwashed will fester and infect? How did the deer manage to avoid that fate. Either it’s easier than we know or remember, or this is just one lucky buck.

Secondly, what must it have been like to drag around that leg until it finally fell off. Whatever happened – false step, a trap, hit by a car, mountain lion encounter (although then we’d have to say he’s an extremely lucky buck) – the leg, or part of it, presumably hung around awhile before it rotted off. Some summer. Some plucky lucky buck.

L.A. is hot. I’ve gotten used to the cooler weather of the bay area. The fog that drives temperatures down each evening or every few days would be welcome right now. I love being able to walk about in a summer dress, tan arms white with salt from a recent swim in the ocean, but I’m not always at the beach here. I have less energy at 5:00 in the afternoon when I’ve been in the heat all day. I need more caffeine. Naps are out of the question with kids around. Oh ...wait, it’s all coming together! I’ve been with kids all day. That’s why I feel like going to sleep belly down on the cool kitchen tiles like a dog.

I don’t know how parents do it and retain any poise. Parents I salute you. And as much as I sometimes feel that not having kids I’m missing an arm or quite possibly the meaning of life, I’m not sure I could do this, or do it well.

posted by Lisa Thompson on 7:03 PM link | comments []

8.22.2002

8.22.2002

writing the blitz.
the ecstacy.

Annie Dillard says to find that one thing that is magic for you and that nobody else seems to notice – to write about. Find that thing, and write about it.
Back to the idea of threading. Follow the thread and go deeper.

I heard it calling me, that thread that thing, a week ago while driving as a passenger across the Richmond Bridge. The electric cool blue light glow in the sky, the blue steel stretch of the sea, the sky cut by girders into blue passing triangles. The conversation in the car slipped away and the ecstacy filled me up. Nobody noticed that I had gone. I attended to conversational flow but it didn’t interest me. Once on Alameda I watch the shadows of the band play against the bar’s back wall. The bow moves across the fiddle strings twice, once in color and again in grey. Tony’s mandolin shadow hauntingly distorted in the corner.
Here, nobody expects me to talk. It’s okay to stop talking here. Thank god it’s safe in this place to slip away. I should let my life be more about slipping away.
Living with others requires more of this conversational tick-tock. My time drizzles out the window while talking happens. Not how I want to live my life.
Now I live alone and spend a lot of time looking out the window.

posted by Lisa Thompson on 6:39 PM link | comments []

8.21.2002

8.21.2002

First off I need to say this: my consistency has not been as promised. It’s about what I expected, though, so at least I’m meeting my own low standards.
I spent the last couple of days tying up the loose ends of this life of mine so that I could spend a week in southern California visiting my family. Too busy, too stressed to blog well. And dammit, if you’re not gonna blog well, don’t blog at all. So now I can see that my low standards really point to a higher standard and now I feel suddenly better about my damn self.
And really, isn’t that what all the fuss is about. If I can justify myself for only a moment, don’t I deserve to enjoy that moment. Like the poet said, the only sense of security is a false one. [Don’t ask who, I haven’t looked it up yet.] But lately, I’d rather revel in my unjustifiability. Yeah, I’m human, I’m weak and I’m wearing it like a badge. Michael Meade says to lead with your wounds, that your wounds are in the same place as your gifts, in fact maybe they are the gifts.
I listened to him for a couple hours while I drove this morning. The man is truly smart. He tells a story (I can’t remember from which culture it came) about the possibility that there are souls floating around in the universe, and that when a soul finds an image that it connects with in a powerful way, the soul is pulled back into time, into a body by the power of that image – by that imagination. So each of us is here and our calling, our purpose is tied to one image. We are threaded to it. If we follow that thread of what calls to us from our imagination, then we are living what we are here to live. That’s a very powerful idea. If it’s true, what is the image that you are holding in your core? Do you know? Are you pulling that thread?
If all that is true, then that image is the place that holds our gifts and our wounds. For me, the image has to do with waters: tidal waters, moving waters. I’m still looking, pulling that thread, beachcombing. I’ll let you know what I find.

posted by Lisa Thompson on 4:13 PM link | comments []

8.18.2002

Welcome to my little part of the world....west marin. I live in a cabin on the shores of Tomales Bay in the heart of some of the most beautiful land and waters in the world. Some of the local highlights include the Point Reyes National Seashore, Heart's Desire State Beach, Gulf of the Farallones Marine Sanctuary, Golden Gate National Recreation Area and Samuel P. Taylor State Park. But of course those are just names.

I want to make them come alive here in these pages, day by day. I'm lucky to be here -- I know. It's a priveledge that I'm grateful for and I expect that one day soon there will be a knock on my door and I'll be out of my sweet rental deal and out into the harsh realities of high-prices and low availability. It's a cruel reality but it heightens my senses. Each morning when I walk down the path to the private beach I see everything more clearly because of it.

I'm greedily taking it all in: learning the names and behaviors of everything around me. I'm watching the barnacles and the sponges, the harbor seals and the bat rays, the blue heron and the belted kingfisher. I climb the oaks, stare up into the highest branches of the redwoods, marvel at the antics of dark-eyed juncos and stalk the flickers for a closer look. It's all sweet and I'm soaking it up.

I'll try to keep it entertaining and informative. I'll try to be consistent. I hope that once in awhile I can communicate the wonder.

welcome to my world.
posted by Lisa Thompson on 11:29 AM link | comments []