10.28.2002
The water to the south of the pier is dotted with moths. The allure of dancing light on the water's surface is too great to resist. They float with the light prevailing wind to the north towards the shore of the cove where I expect that they will land once again on shore but they rarely do. I sit for awhile in the sun and watch. The small waves lap and a moth alights briefly on the sand, but the next little wave immediately floats him up again. The moths don't seem to recognize salvation when their feet touch sand. They don't realize that they should hurry forward before the next wave pulls them back to sea. Eventually they get tossed upside down and perish or get pulled back out to float beyond my cove and to a fate I can't see.
I can't resist rescuing a few of them. They merely shake out their wings, and blithely walk up my arm, or up the sand, really not caring where they are. I feel that I have to save a few moth lives for all the oakworms I killed a few weeks ago when they invaded my home (and before they became moths). I saved a couple of ladybugs as well. Didn't really need a reason for that -- they're ladybugs after all. Good luck, pretty and comical, everybody loves a ladybug.
Birds are returning. A couple of days ago we saw some buffleheads that hadn't been around until recently. Today, two gold-crowned sparrows hit the window by my desk. They migrate each fall down from Alaska, where they've never seen windows, cars or cats. At this time of year there's usually a warning in the local paper to look out for these naive birds. So many of them perish here. Tomorrow I'll hang ribbon in the windows to warn them.
Tonight I walked the ocean beach at sunset. I wear gloves and hat now as a flirtation with the coming winter -- they won't really be necessary for awhile. But the shortened day promises all the joys of the season: wearing sweaters and favorite scarves, red-cheeked stomping and sloshing in rubbers, big warming fires, mushrooms, first rain, and breath that is visible.
posted by Lisa on 9:25 PM link |
10.26.2002
Aaaaah. A peaceful moment in which to write. It's like a soft, comfortable chair in a cozy room at dusk and a good book and perhaps a glass of really good wine. A moment that is just right; a place where slipping into the space between the worlds is possible. In Ireland it's called the crack or craik.
In popular usage the word has come to mean a good party. But I think it's deeper meaning is about finding access to the other world -- the place that is more than just these appearances and everyday chairs. If you go to W. Ireland, I'm told, and ask where's the best craik, you'll be looking for the place where the conversation is likely to slip into that other place.
Ireland is a place like that. There are fairy rings and cairns and craiks and people who feel their connection to the earth in an everyday kind of way. I haven't been there...but I'm told.
Here in Inverness there's a lot of activity as we prepare for winter. Firewood is stacked and covered with plastic tarps, squirrels are busy in their upstairs lairs, and the ubiquitous oakmoths are laying eggs everywhere.
I have finally figured out why they only have highly successful years every few years. The moths are supposed to lay their eggs on the underside of oak leaves so that emerging larvae next spring will have proper food immediately available. But if the oakworms that preceded these moths have eaten every leaf from every oak tree as they've done this year, the moths must make other arrangements. They are laying their eggs everywhere. I just scraped eggs from a pair of pants I'd left out in my bedroom; eggs cover the succulents outside my door as well as the ferns covering the hillside. After a couple of good rains, or a dousing of the garden hose, many of these eggs will be washed away, finding their way into the creek and into the bay, food for some lucky crab, or dissolved into fish food. The worms that emerge from the eggs that manage to hang on will have to find their way up to the tops of the oaks before they're able to feed, and that lower the mortality rate of that generation.
I've noticed a particular group of moths who've emerged from their larvae underneath the woodpile tarp, which is clear plastic. They fly in the space that exists, they mate, and they will lay eggs all within this plastic world. At a certain time in the afternoon, if you walk nearby, you can hear their fragile wings beating softly against the tarp, but it is a soft sound -- unpanicked. They don't seem to mind the limitation, unlike flys who hurl themselves at windows when trapped indoors. Yesterday, I meant to release some of them. One end of the tarp was unfastened so I lifted the logs holding the tarp down. I pulled at the tarp and no moths flew out. I had to dislodge them one by one from the places they were holding on to -- be it tarp or wood. I guess I did it more for myself than for them.
Here's a wonderful poem I found this morning in Orion magazine:
Prayer
I'm cutting my swallows from black silk,
China's best, Father, so that when flying
they meet with the least amount of resistance
and thank you again for the abundance
of insects over the green rice fields
this evening, the water bumpy with frog eyes
reflecting a pink west flowing sky
Now I'm sewing into the material
my red heart because the dead, lately,
have been a little noisy in my sleep
and about this prayer, Father,
I don't want any confusion --
I'm mud deep here
in love and would like to stay on
a while longer at least until I get the sun right,
its light over the rim of this bowl
we all eat from, and to watching,
while I'm at it, the little spot fires
appearing over the back of my hands --
my age, a quiet invitation
to bird watching
where light around the grey heron,
alone in the water,
dies down, in time, to black,
and what the imagination can rescue.
-Tom Crawford
posted by Lisa on 10:25 AM link |
10.23.2002
In the last year my dog has gone from immortal to aged. The first signs were a chronic limp on her front leg which I tried valiantly to normalize. We tried prescription anti-inflammatories, new zealand mussel, x-rays, glucosamine and good old advil. Finally it became clear to me that it was here to stay. I stopped playing throw the ball with her because it increased the limp. I still didn't believe she was getting old, not really. But that first symptom was followed by a general creakiness in her rear joints, a slight glaze over her eyes, and unbelievably, times when she wouldn't go for a walk.
I was devastated. My one and only was going to die someday and it hit me hard.
But I realized on our walk this morning that I'm used to it now. She's an older dog. She still loves to swim and I try to provide her with one every day. She still has the power to knock over small buildings when she wags her tail, she can hardly contain her enthusiasm for visitors, and people still ask me if she's a puppy because her coat is so shiny. But she's old.
It's not the worst thing, frankly. I'm finding that she's a better companion than ever. She'd rather have affection than food and she is content to just be near me. She looks into my eyes quite often throughout the day, and holds the look until she finally lays her head back down. She didn't look into my eyes at all her first three years.
I find that I don't mind my own aging so much either. It's been said before, but youth is overrated. As I've gotten older my values have deepened. I'm more interested in stillness, and in the spaces between events than I used to be. I'm more interested in friendship than sex. I'm intensely curious about what's right around me, and not so anxious to keep moving as I used to be. I like to get a good night's sleep, and I don't worry that I'm missing something -- I know that I'm missing a lot, and for the most part I don't mind. I have what I have and it's pretty good.
posted by Lisa on 9:37 AM link |
10.20.2002
rationale for not writing.
I've been wrestling with my old friend sciatica for the last five days. It's amazing the reductionist powers of pain. Life is distilled to its necessary core: the course of a day is measured by levels of pain -- from mild to unbelievable; the simplest tasks like picking clothing off the floor are demanding and the accomplishment of them rewarding; reading and writing become distant memories. At the peak of the pain, I remembered other occurences of pain and those times in my life became vivid again. There was a time when I felt this searing knife down the back of my leg for well over two years. That's why I call it my old friend. Maybe more like an old companion -- one that is always there, or inevitably just around the next corner. The weird thing about pain is that you can get used to it. Pain pills taught me how to do that. I took only one because the grogginess that follows is miserable. But I discovered that it didn't take away the pain, it did allow me to drift away from its grasp and find sleep.
I think I'm on the other side of the peak of this episode. My day has been more than just struggling from one uncomfortable position to the other...and here I am writing. yeah!
posted by Lisa on 4:32 PM link |
10.14.2002
There's a lot of great music in the world, and so much of it that I love. But what is it about certain albums that go directly to one's soul?
That album for me now is 'Rabbit Songs' by Hem. Somebody said of writing, "It's easy, you just sit in front of your typewriter and open a vein." That's partially how I feel about Rabbit Songs. If I'm feeling disconnected, I listen to Hem. The first bare melody of that lullaby..."blow, blow the moon out" just opens me right up. I'm transported: surfing in warm green water; gliding above Mt. Tam, watching trees rush by and hearing the wind; floating in a cradle off Roan Inish with lil' Jimmy. (If you don't get that last one -- go directly to the nearest video store and rent 'The Secret of Roan Inish').
The other album that comes to mind which really struck me in this way, and which I played over and over until it wore grooves right into my character was Dylan's 'Blood on the Tracks'.
"I've seen love go by my door,
it's never been this close before
Never been so easy or so slow
I've been shooting in the dark too long,
when something's not right, it's wrong
You're gonna make me lonesome when you go"
Reverie...I've spent most of today on the phone talking with people that I love. It's the best way I can think of to spend this day, this birthday.
Now off for a swim with friends, some salmon and wine, bread and pesto, an apple crisp, and a Giants game. It's the simple things, yes?
posted by Lisa on 3:46 PM link |
10.13.2002
Smoke
Smoke's way's a good way -- find,
or be rebuffed and gone:
a day and a day, the whole world home.
Smoke? Into the mountains I guess
a long time ago. Once here, yes,
everywhere. Say anything? No.
I saw Smoke, slow traveler, reluctant
but sure. Hesitant sometimes, yes,
because that's the way things are.
Smoke never doubts though:
some new move will appear.
Wherever you are, there is another door.
William Stafford
Smoke's Way
posted by Lisa on 8:32 AM link |
10.12.2002
I've been swimming since I was a toddler: certified by the Crystal Scarborough school in L.A. when I was 2 years old. As kids, we always had swimming pools and afternooons spent there remember like blissful suburban days. Our house was the only one on the block with a pool and we were popular, kids tan and competent sliced through the blue water and the air with shouts. We swam not like fish but like beavers: in the pool we constructed complicated worlds of play and enterprise. The diving board could be the store, the stairs a castle, the ladder a pathway into the other world, and the drain buried treasure. We competed with each other, my brother and I: who could swim underwater the most laps, who could hold their breath longer. At times, we also held each other underwater in anger, but we survived that like we survived the other slings and arrows of childhood which lurked always just outside the pool's perimeter.
Later there were swim teams: mindless hours daily spent in the back and forth of the too-warm chlorinated pools. Swim meets with the Downey Dolphins, striped speedos and terrycloth robes and the promise ribbons. Summers at the beach we learned the salty side of water, the up-down scary joy of getting tossed by a too-tough wave; the fun that could be had on a borrowed raft; the delightful taste of salt licked off one's own sun-dried arm.
I try to swim every day now in Tomales Bay. It is both practice and compulsion. Even on days when I think it's too cold to swim, the water calls me. I love the October water. It's cooler, but still and glassy and often I am the only cause of ripples. I love the bubble that wells in front of me as my hands rise up together in swimful prayer and then part to the side as I glide forward, embraced by still more water. I swim in the reflection of the blue and white sky, and the water is cool and fresh, and my body is still strong and healthy, and it is more than enough.
posted by Lisa on 8:32 PM link |
10.09.2002
Metamorphosis
From the Greek meta for after; metamorphoun to transform.
The oakmoths have begun to emerge from their pupation stage. They are called a night-flying moth in the literature, but the delicate moths fill the days' sky as well. Especially in the afternoon light, they are quite beautiful and enamoring. They flutter around the trunks of the defoilated oaks, around the woodpile, their gossamer wings reflecting and filtering the sunlight in small, miraculous ways.
In its larval stage it has a bulbous head and invades my home (see posts 9/17 -9/23). I only see a live worm about once a day now. Mostly the little buggers have pupated. The sides of my house are covered in the mystic bundles. They are whitish with dark markings resembling a scarab beetle. The moths must be emerging from the first of the worms to have pupated. I don't know how long they will be with us before they lay their eggs and finally die.
How incredible to have these radically distinct stages within one life. They go through two generations in one year, and if we were to have a warm, dry winter, they might possibly have a third. Each stage so singular and focused. This one climbs and eats oak leaves, then finds a suitable spot to pupate; that one flutters around a bit, then lays eggs on or near those same oak trees -- all so the pattern can repeat again and again with varying intensity from year to year.
I try to compare these metamorphoses with the stages of my life. It is more difficult to say what the purpose of these human changes are. Meaning is discernable only from a distance, and changes with perspective as well as with time. Were the days I spent in the confines of a stuck relationship a pupation period? Am I fluttering to dry my new wings in the northern california sun here now? It feels that way, but it's hard to know for sure.
Even if I have sprouted wings now, that is not the final word. This ain't no child's fairy tale with one happy ending. It's a real human story, with stops and starts, realizations and darkness, happy kingdoms and dungeon trapdoors, worms and wings.
posted by Lisa on 7:21 AM link |
10.07.2002
I'll be back tomorrow with more stories from life at the shore...meanwhile a poem from the greatest american poet:
Ask Me
Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.
I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden: and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.
William Stafford
Stories That Could Be True
posted by Lisa on 10:54 PM link |
10.04.2002
I've chosen to live a simple life: to do some work that makes me happy; to help my friends; to recycle and compost; to swim and walk my dog; to read and write and love and cook.
But days like today make me think I should have chosen a different life. When the idea of war brings me to tears I wish I were in a position of power, so that I could do more to try and stop it. But I've chosen a life where beauty is valued more than ambition, where peaceful days are more important than a high powered job, where being still and listening is more important than speech-making.
I'm afraid that what's to come may destroy much of what I value in the world. I know that it will bring more hatred, destruction, and division.
What can I do? Today, I swam and worked and bathed my dog...and then I made some simple phone calls and told people on the other end of the line that I don't want a war. I hope they were listening.
senate
congress
white house
posted by Lisa on 5:39 AM link |
10.02.2002
Fall lurks. I feel it around the edges of morning, and in the evenings' cool, dark approach. A nip in the day's early air, less sun in my afternoon window, and a woodpile that's growing bigger but can't get big enough to console me.
This will be my first winter in this house. I've heard around town that it's cold. Total strangers have said to me, "Oh, you live at Drake's cabin. That's a tough place to keep warm."
I'm looking forward to the storms through these windows, though. El Nino is imminent and I wonder if my winter will be mild, and how long I'll be able to swim in the bay without a wetsuit.
Because we swam at low tide today the grasses had to be gone through. I've grown used to feeling them, sharp edges but lithe bodies give way finally to breast stroke. I can't see them but I know them to be brown with mud and that they are being cleaned as my body pushes through them. They are, in part, becoming green again.
In the open part of the bay the wind urged us eastward. We knew waves and spray and the last warmth of indian summer water. Wool and fleece awaited us on the beach. Fall lurks in my blue toes.
posted by Lisa on 10:16 PM link |
10.01.2002
On the bank of the Klakamas river I attended a wedding last week. The rituals intertwined the couple into a marriage over several hours: sacred drumming, blessings, poetry, and song. The waters of the Klakamas converge in this place where their house sits. Scattered along the bank are beautifully prepared shrines for each of the elements: water, earth, fire, and air. A fifth altar enshrines nature or spirit -- the fifth element. Flowers sit at the base of each shrine. Nearby a teepee overlooks the waters as they come together after embracing an island in the Klakamas. On the wedding stage near the drumming circle and behind the couple is another shrine devoted to them.
The ceremony opens with drumming and then spirit is evoked and invited to be a part of the day. Suddenly, on an otherwise still, hot day, a great wind comes down the river and into our clearing by the bank and under the trees, blowing hair and dresses, sending a thrill through the gathered friends, knocking down flower vases, and reminding us that there are forces greater than our planning can know at work on a day like this.
The next to speak is Michael Meade who leans over one of the altars and knocks down a vase of flowers that had been righted after the wind came and knocked them down. He says that the flowers should not be picked up. He says that if there are no mistakes in the wedding, then there will be mistakes in the marriage. Let the mistakes happen in the wedding so they don't have to happen in the marriage.
This moment has stayed with me. Life, or nature, is messy and flowers get knocked down. Despite all our planning, trucks break down and block bridges and we sit in traffic; oakworms invade our homes; clients cancel contracts. And the soul works in this way. A slip of the tongue reveals our hidden anger; the strange path of a dream our true desires, and sitting in traffic we write a poem.
Embrace the oakworms and the traffic jams. Nature is here, invited or not, and her ways will run tangent with your plans. But notice the direction the wind is blowing. Listen to the sound it makes as it stirs the leaves, listen and let it steer your heart.
* * *
Connections
Ours is a low, curst, under-swamp land
the raccoon puts his hand in,
gazing through his mask for tendrils
that will hold it all together.
No touch can find that thread, it is too small.
Sometimes we think we learn its course--
through evidence no court allows
a sneeze may glimpse us Paradise.
But ways without a surface we can find
flash through the mask only by surprise--
a touch of mud, a raccoon smile.
And if we purify the pond, the lilies die.
William Stafford
Storie That Could Be True
* * *
posted by Lisa on 7:52 AM link |
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