field notes:

9.12.2003

Last night I watched my windows fill with marauding, light-hungry termites. They flung themselves at the window, then stayed, nowhere better to go. But soon, they were coming in through the window. One by one, smacking into the overhead light. Horrified, I searched for the opening that they had found, but gave up, because as I looked for that crack, I could hear them smacking into the lightshade, and I had an idea of hundreds of termites flying in, dropping their dark wings, and scuttling about inside, looking for the weaknesses in my house. I turned out the lights, lit some candles, and read by flashlight. Let the termites have another house, another light-filled night, not mine.
posted by Lisa Thompson on 7:48 AM link | comments []

9.11.2003

It's great to be home. Oh! You say I've been here since Sunday? But today is the first day that I've woken up feeling viable and truly awake. Articulated and semi-articulate. I may have to give up driving through the night without sleep. I think it's just too hard on this post-forty body. I'll still drive at night, when I drive to LA, but I'll do it with some sleep behind me. I can't give up my night drives, not yet, anyway.

I love watching the sun come up on the road, and driving those almost-empty highways, knowing which parking lots are best for quick naps, or for dog walks. Mostly I like the emptiness, that uninhabited space all around me. I like speeding through it, passing semis on the left, giving ground to faster cars.

But for my next trip, the one I'll have to take within a few weeks so that I can hold that new life (whispering: Isabelle Bianca, Isabelle Bianca) in my arms once again, I'll take an airplane, and I'll do it on the weekend ...like a grownup.

I won't give up as much of my health, or my time, or money for that matter. I've been making this road trip since the late 70's, first as a southern Californian visiting here, and then visiting there from here, and the price of gasoline has gone from around sixty dollars to one hundred and fifty. Of course, I've gone from car to pickup truck, so my mileage isn't quite what it could be. Flying will be cheaper, really, and not having my dog with me will get me home faster.

For the second year in a row I missed an event I've really wanted to participate in. Folks around here do a cross-bay swim, and it happened last weekend. A whole flock of people take to the water at Shell Beach, accompanied by a small flotilla of kayaks and rowboats, and swim to Tomasini Point. I'm in shape for it, I'm ready for it in every way, but I missed it--again.

So, I'm going to have my own cross-bay swim. Maybe this weekend. I'll be looking for a one-person flotilla to cross with me, or a companion or two to swim with me. If you missed the big swim, or if you're ready to go again, give me a call!
posted by Lisa Thompson on 7:47 AM link | comments []

9.10.2003

There are Great White sharks hanging out at San Onofre State Beach. That confirms it--shark-free waters are an illusion. Those babies are always around, which makes the rare attacks on humans even more unusual for their infrequency. Myths abound about whites, and I admit to a fascination with both myth and beast. The thrill and deadly fear of them is the flip side of my love for the ocean and of swimming and playing in salty waters.

Great Whites are known to be at every shoreline in both oceans, but I could never really imagine them liking southern California waters--there isn't much food down there--only ocassional harbor seals. And the water is pretty warm, especially near the San Onofre Nuclear Reactor, which is, by the way, one of the great surf spots on the planet for longboarding. Yet, a local surfer has the sharks on video, filmed from a cliff above the beach, and the sharks have been positively ID'd by a shark expert via helicopter. According to the reports I've read they're 15-17 feet long. Watched from above they cruise right next to surfers all the time, ignoring them.

Avila Beach on the Central Coast had a fatal attack a couple of weeks ago. A woman was swimming with sea lions. People watching first saw a fin, then watched as all of the sea lions disappeared, and then saw the attack on the woman. She was struck once and then left alone, but bled to death because of the location of her wound. The beach has been closed ever since because juvenile whites, a mere 5-7 feet long, have been spotted in the waves.

Experts are saying what they've been saying all along. Great White sharks don't feed on humans. They mistake them for other food, like sea lions, and mistakenly strike. Once they have the limb or the torso in their mouths, they realize their mistake and let the human go. The feed rarely, nobody knows their schedule very well, and need extremely high fat content to survive. So it would be detrimental to them to actually eat something with such low fat content as a human bite would contain. For most people who are attacked by whites, this fact saves their lives. Mostly, these attacks are not fatal. That's a really good reason to stay on that Atkins diet.

When I swim, the idea of sharks swims at my feet. Mostly, the fear is well submerged, and I can chase it away from consciousness by turning away from the thought. Other times, I reason it away with facts--millions of us in the shoreline waters of the planet each day, only a few attacks each year, few fatal. Rarely, I swim like a demon for shallow water or for the shore.

Manifest destiny and "Go West, Young Man" brought us here. It's sharks keeping us confined to this sea edge. Fear of Islam, crime, and the dark are nothing next to the fear of sharks and other creatures that go bump in the murky, unknown waters that surround us.
posted by Lisa Thompson on 8:45 AM link | comments []

9.8.2003

It was hard to tear myself away from the newest member of my family, but it is good to be home. There's a certain beauty in Laguna and Newport Beach, but they don't hold me the way Inverness does. I drove through the night Saturday, and after a few hours of sleep here I walked down to the beach. The openness of the scene in front of my eyes was instantly restorative. Since both my drive south and the return drive north occurred at night, I hadn't even had a road scene of open space in the entire last week, except for the view west when I swam in the ocean one day in Newport.

Looking across the bay, the streaked blue sky mirrored in the blue water, the horizontal slash of hills on the opposite shore, the familiar slip of sand at my feet and the calming delivery of water as a gentle breeze moved the surface, I sank to the beach grateful for the feel of home and the place on earth that knows me. I'm pulled south by new life, but anchored here. It's a familiar dilemna, a tension that's occupied me for the last five years.

I don't have any answers, but for now I swim and find relief.

posted by Lisa Thompson on 8:03 AM link | comments []