field notes:

1.30.2004

Life is a carnival of humilities. So how can I choose my most humbling moment? As I scroll through the flip-cards of memory, I relive a parade of embarassment and awe. Hanggliding high above Stinson Beach, the day we had trouble losing altitude, when BC and I both had to pull down on the bar with all our strength to find the ground again; the two babies I've held, fresh by minutes; a fawn curled up on the beach, it's back broken--abandoned by its mother, beseeching me with its young eyes for relief; "caught inside" in crushing surf, paddling through it again and again, never to catch a wave; and daily, as my dog looks to me for her every need--food, water, an open door. Yesterday's humbling incident still bruises.

As I walked my dog, I said hello to my neighbor friend, owner of two barking hellions who announce each passing animal to the entire hillside. We call it 'running the gauntlet', this little street, a vital connector between two corridors. The beagle barks like crazy, but outside the fence is really a normal little fella, but the other dog snarls like a monster. He scares me. As we passed, my neighbor was preparing to take these two on a walk of his own. I rushed by so we wouldn't be on the same street with them. I wanted to get away from the noise of barking and the manic pull they'd exert on their leashes towards us.

Five minutes later, when we were safely around two corners, I heard the dogs coming at us. They'd gotten free of their master's hands. I've thought about this kind of moment, and did what I'd vaguely planned. I picked up my dog. This had seemed like a clever thing to do when I'd imagined it in the hazy safety of daydream, but now that I'd actually done it, I realized how foolish it was. I had a snarling, scary dog coming at me--my arms full of 54-pound labrador retriever--both of us completely vulnerable. I'd taken away my dog's ability to fight or flee, and if the dog attacked, we'd both be in serious trouble. But there was no going back now. To set my dog down would leave her vulnerable until she'd gotten her feet under her again, and worse, I'd robbed her of her instincts, so there's no telling how she'd react. I yelled at the dog to retreat. I yelled and hoped, and finally the dogs both turned away. I turned with Dinah in my arms and began to walk away--I only set her down when I saw both dogs run up the hill and out of sight.

Looking back, not only do I realize I did the wrong thing, but in the same situation today, I'd do it again, not having a better answer than I did yesterday. That is classic humility, the human conundrum.

As I hurried home, I realized that my friend might need help. He'd lost the dogs, did that mean he was lying helpless in the street, having suffered a heart attack or a fall? I jumped in my car and raced to find him, castigating myself for my great conceit if he was in trouble while I worried over a matter of dogs. Fortunately, he was okay, master of the leashes once more.

It strikes me that humility should have an inverse cumulative effect on our belief in our own control. But we wake mornings, each with our own custom blend of hubris, faith, and folly, thinking we have some say in what's going to happen to us. We tend to throw around words like "mastery" and "karma" like monopoly money, and are always surprised when a random throw of the dice lands us in Jail.

As far as I can tell, there's no remedy for being human. There's only a way of wearing it, easy like a comfortable shirt, or proud, like a suit of armor. Maybe that's why I like living in a place of such great beauty--it's easier here to remember how small I am, how little depends on perfection, and how amazing the world can be, even just the way it is.

posted by Lisa on 7:35 PM link |

1.26.2004

Yesterday the sun graced the shore long enough for a short catnap on the sand. Fully clothed, unjacketed, I lay face upward, hands stretched above my head and dreamt of god and stars. Photos of Mars appeared in my computer, taken the night before by our little rover. We're all made of stardust, of elements forged in stars that then died and blew. We've taken those elements up again as life and now we're exploring the world that made us, seeking our elemental lineage.

There's no smell quite like the salt water, like great expanses of the stuff. There's nothing that lets you smell it when you're far away like a little girl with
a conch shell pressed against her ear in Las Vegas hears its roar. A briny rope that's washed up with the tide holds something of its smell, but only a stale reminder. The real stuff comes on a breeze and fills you with thoughts of god.

If we're made from stars, then what is this feeling that binds me to everything? I can't find it in the Periodic Table. It's not the stardust itself, it's the music you hear when you're quiet and you follow that gentle flute home.

posted by Lisa on 7:55 AM link |

1.22.2004

Feast your eyes on the King.

Just look at that beauty, that fat, stout little man of a mushroom. Found near here over on the...oh, wait a minute, I can't tell you where he comes from. That's a closely guarded secret and I've sworn not to reveal my sources. It was a gift from a duff-hunting friend. His flesh was never cut--he got a little too ripe. I hope for more mushrooms this year. I haven't eaten a single one, not even an oyster.

The past couple of days have been beautiful, with an ever-reaching-higher sun, and clear, open skies. My kayak has a split up the seam, otherwise I'd have been tempted to leave this work-laden desk for an hour to glide across the beautiful blue life of the bay. I did think about going out in my whitewater boat, which just needs to be checked for a half-years' worth of crawling things before I skirt myself down into her. It's a dream I have. I'm project-bound at work. So many things I could be doing, and hard to pull myself away.

Still, my mind is free. I woke in the night and wrote down a snatch of something:
Each day new cause to doubt

I dreamed last night of sitting at a traffic light at an intersection with a highway that paralleled the ocean. By moonlight surfers rode giant waves that carried no consequences. No matter how badly they were ridden, they set their riders down gently, beside and all around me on the washed out road.

posted by Lisa on 7:36 AM link |

1.19.2004

I've been noticing an unusual creature amongst the rocks at low tide. It's pale orange, filmy and long. Mostly, they've been attached to mussel-encrusted rocks, but some were loose and I've been able to pick them up and examine them. Their orange color tapers off to a clear edge. I hadn't "looked them up" to see what they were, but had speculated with friends. I called it an animal, one friend thought it might be a mold of some kind.

Yesterday, walking at low tide, the water was unusually clear and I saw it in its watery habitat. When out of the water, this filmy substance lies messily against the rock, but when the water covers that rock, its true nature is revealed. The creature is attached to the rock in a spiral, so that the gently moving water encircles it, holds up its edges, to create a beautiful flowing flower, opening from the rock to the watery world like a rose, swaying with the tides and shore currents.

**

In unrelated news, I saw the movie, 'Une Filme Falado' or 'A Talking Picture' by Manoel de Oliveira the other night at the local art house. The film is billed as a meditation on the Birth of Civilization, but comes off more like a lecture. The filmmaker uses the construct of a mother who is a history professor, taking her child on a mediterranean cruise and pointing out all of the great monuments of civilization. The big problem with that first section of the film, which encompasses about 4/5ths of the movie, is that the child is 7 years old. The questions she asks are childish, "What is Myth?," and so the filmmaker tells us that he thinks we need to be told our history as if we were a little child.

The next part of the film falls apart completely. I won't go into the details (unless you write me and then I'll happily spill all) except to say that near the end of the movie, just when the film expects to shock and horrify us with something very serious, the entire audience burst out laughing, and laughed all the way through the "horrific" ending. I've never seen anything like it. And, I confess, it was a great relief when the laughter began. I think we'd all been waiting patiently for some payoff, a great director, a great cast, weighty material, Europe ...how could we know that it would all explode in silliness, like a bad B-movie?

This movie was part of the annual 'International Series' at The Rafael, which tries to predict the films that will be nominated as Best Foreign Film by the Academy. I wonder how many academy members, watching this film alone, without the benefit of a giggling audience, would be swayed by its weighty material to vote for it?

posted by Lisa on 8:14 AM link |

1.17.2004

The herring are in, bringing glad tidings. Thousands of birds mass off our shore, too full to startle at my arrival on the beach. The sea surface ripples with herring chased to the sky-edge by fish below. Seals float the tidal currents, gliding by like aging ballerinas: graceful vaudevillians. Even the heron under the pier has ceased fishing, this abundance goes against his serious nature.

The sea and sky are painted in mute tones that center on grey. As I sit on the sand and watch, more colors arise in the scene, as if my eyes are an aperture, letting in more light over time. This saturated plate will stay with me, captured with light and time as memory.

Cormorants fly from west to east in small daily migration as the sunset deepens. The day loses light but I, camera, expose the fading day to more light, and as night falls I see more and more of what's true. The apparent gives way to the real.

My dog is with me, as always. She lies on the sand, watching the birds, listening to their calls and cries, smelling the gentle evenings' approach. She's happy just to be near me, to feel the sand on her belly, the aftertaste of forbidden roe on her rough palate.

A feeling rises in me to match the day's ecstatic eclipse. I remember: it fills my belly, surprises me both with its return and its familiarity. In losing it I'd also forgotten that I'd had it, like a magic spell meant to keep me in the dark. Somehow, this fragile fullness of spirit returns. Who am I to turn away?

posted by Lisa on 12:00 PM link |

1.13.2004

This next quoted material follows up yesterday's post. This is Kim Stafford writing about his father, William Stafford:

As my father once wrote, in a fragment that later became an essay:

If you begin to believe what others say about you, you become like a compass that listens to the hunches of the pilot. You may be good company, but you are useless as a compass--I mean a poet.

In contrast to the compass too easily persuaded is my father's direct way--the writer of "inevitable" poems, the ones most congruent with the self. He wrote in his daily writing, "We are surrounded by brilliant people who don't do much." I find this strangely consoling: I do not need to be brilliant by anyone's standard, but I do need to be fiercely alert to my own contribution. (A voice in a dream explained this to me: "When others don't understand you, you must be clear with yourself about your own purpose.") About this clarity, my father wrote, "The last star will not know how small it is" (Daily Writing, 21 December 1968). The authentic act of writing is more about clarity than magnitude. This kind of writing I call being "scribe to the prophet." The prophet may be any quiet voice near me--a child, a cloud, a river, an idea in the air. I write it down.

--Early Morning: Remembering My Father

posted by Lisa on 6:26 AM link |

1.12.2004

I was away this weekend, celebrating my Mother's 70th birthday and soaking up baby rays and seventy degree sunshine in southern California. I'm reading a biography of William Stafford, oft-quoted poet of these pages. It's called Early Morning: Remembering My Father by his son, Kim Stafford. It's beautifully crafted and makes me love William Stafford even more. He was a conscientous objector in WWII, exiled to a camp for CO's. He lived his life according to principles of pacifism, raised his kids that way. It's fascinating to read about the quiet gentle force of his personality and ways. This book is unusual in that it's both a biography of the father and an autobiography of the son, as Kim Stafford writes about how his father's ways and words affected his upbringing. The family was a place where the ideals of pacifism were practiced and nurtured--the children didn't fight amongst each other; and the parents didn't raise their voices in anger--to fight was to fail.

W. Stafford writes in Down in My Heart, "a war is a time of rest for a pacifist; the war itself is an incident, a lost battle in itself; it is just a part of those cheatings, bluffings, maneuverings, which we have got to stay out of all the time." The biography makes me curious about the later lives and achievements of some of his contemporaries from those camps: Brother Antonius (William Everson), Glen Coffield, Adrian Wilson, Kermit Sheets. Kim Stafford says their contributions were less important than others at the camps who spread out and contributed to higher education, the arts, the treatment of the mentally ill, and international relations.

I'm excited by the talk of pacifism as a way of life, a way of thinking. It jibes with some ideas I've had, and with my nature.

Meanwhile, in my family's unpacific story, 33 of my mother's people bonded over fondue tables, communally dipped forked foodfuls in boiling stock, cheese or chocolate, shouted across steaming pots of laughter and remembrance, wine glasses and voices raised in joy that another of their tribe had made it to 70; and in hope that they would all live to see another year.

posted by Lisa on 7:45 AM link |

1.07.2004

Sunday some friends called from Oakland; they wanted to come to the country and wondered would I be home.

We sought out the elephant seals. There were only a scattered few, sprawled like overfed commas on snatches of sand around Chimney Rock. We were lucky enough to see a brand new pup, harassing its mother with sand-spewing tail-thrashing puppyhood and howls about her head like blows. She lay there oblivious--spent. The nearby sand was covered with blood, and a raven ate afterbirth not two feet from a huge male--the quiet possibility of stored menace. The confidence of ravens.

We sat on a grassy cliff edge and looked out at the wide sea. We watched for "puffs of smoke," indicator of distant whales. We talked of all things lifebound. We thought of love. We shed the burdens of checkbook balances and unfinished manuscripts. We scanned the horizon and saw nothing coming, and nothing going.

Some days are like that.

posted by Lisa on 8:03 AM link |

1.06.2004

hmmm. Thanks to Butuki I have comments again. Thank you. I miss you all.

posted by Lisa on 6:56 PM link |

A friend was visiting on Sunday, and saw the hefty volume 'The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart' lying on a bookshelf. She said that her favorite poem was in it. I like it a lot too. It seems particularly appropriate for me and many of the people I'm talking with, who went through some dark times during the holidays and the shortest days of winter.

Throw Yourself Like Seed
-Miguel de Unamuno
-translated by Robert Bly

Shake off this sadness, and recover your spirit;
sluggish you will never see the wheel of fate
that brushes your heel as it turns going by,
the man who wants to live is the man in whom life is abundant.

Now you are only giving food to that final pain
which is slowly winding you in the nets of death,
but to live is to work, and the only thing which lasts
is the work; start then, turn to the work.

Throw yourself like seed as you walk, and into your own field,
don't turn your face for that would be to turn it to death,
and do not let the past weigh down your motion.

Leave what's alive in the furrow, what's dead in yourself,
for life does not move in the same way as a group of clouds;
from your work you will be able one day to gather yourself.

posted by Lisa on 6:56 AM link |

1.04.2004

I walked with friends yesterday. We walked 2.7 miles in under an hour. I've never walked at that pace for that long. That hike usually takes me an 1 1/2 - 2 hours, depending on how often I stop to look at something, or how many birds I see, or which views I want to savor as the trail bends around the ridge, now and then offering a glimpse toward the mouth of the bay, or toward Black Mountain. It felt unusual but good. One of my walkmates told a story of walking in an Italian mountain range, wanting to end up at a shrine. She didn't know how far away it was, and had her Tribune tucked under her arm. She kept hoping there would be a water fountain at the shrine, and was pleased to find instead a cafe where she ordered mineral water and a plate of prosciutto. She sat down with the view and her Tribune.

That story and the brisk pace lent a European feel to the walk. I felt healthy and invigorated, which is in wonderful opposition to my recent mood of languor and loneliness. I realized it had been at least two months since my last walk that wasn't a dog-walk, (which are now shorter than a walk, and limited to dog-okay places).

We ended up at Shell Beach, and sat each in our own spot, gazing at the water. I wanted to swim. I wanted to dive into the perfect blue water. Instead I clambered over some rocks to discover that it is true as I'd thought: I can see Mt. Tam from the bay. We saw a white-winged scoter too.

After a bit, we walked from Shell to Teacher's and home for crumpets and tea. As my friends said, it's nice to have a goal when you walk, a place to end up. I'd like to incorporate that idea into my life. Never too far from a cafe...even at the top of a mountain, a little culture can be a good thing for the soul.

posted by Lisa on 7:37 AM link |

1.02.2004

Happy New Year!

"I resolve to write more in my blog...."

Found the above sentence on a scrap of notebook paper floating around in my subconscious, right over there with situps and pushups. Not a pretty place, that. Filled with minor regrets and unfinished poems, friends I've put off calling, and the barbeque sitting out in the rain.

Truth is, I don't know whether my blog-writing pace will pick back up to what it once was. I suspect that it might for a while, since I miss it greatly. I miss the writing, I miss the discourse, and mostly I miss the community, yes--you. I have other writing projects and goals now, and I attribute their development to my writing here at Field Notes. I'm going to write a book this year. So I'm contemplating a loose structure that has me writing here every other day, and working on my book material on the "off" days. Don't know that I'll ever stick to anything like a rigid schedule, just ask the pushups and situps, lonely floor exercise regimens that have been disappointed by my midling goal-making in past years.

On my way to an Open House NYDay party in Oakland yesterday, I listened to an interview with Louise Erdrich. At the end of the conversation she said, right in my ear, that a writer should know, as she has been surprised to learn, that each day's seemingly insignificant writing will add up to a book, if one persists. So that's what I mean to do.

This isn't the book I thought it would be, and by the time it's written, won't be what I think it is now. It comes from the group writing we've done at Ecotone. I've been surprised more than once by what I wrote about there. That when asked to write about 'Trees and Place,' I didn't write about these oaks, redwoods, and madrones, or even my incense cedar, but about coco palms in Nayarit. So it's a different place and time in my life that's wanting to be written most.

I hope that I can resolve the conflicts in my heart. I hope that I can listen to the whispers in my heart and faithfully render them into words.

I thank you, my readers, my friends and fellow-bloggers for your inspiration and encouragement and for being a part of my life.

Lorianne Schaub, a New Hampshire writer has recently begun blogging, and she's asking the question for herself, "Why blog?" I remember asking a similar question, and it comes up often enough when people ask me about Field Notes. I know the answer for myself, it's multi-layered and rich, it's surprising. It's one you can only answer by writing, like so many other questions.

So, because it's the New Year, and toasts must be made....I'd like to offer one: To words and ideas, to community; to a world brought to greater life through art; to self-discovery and recognition; and to personal art that seeks neither fame nor riches, but only to find its mark in some other heart.

posted by Lisa on 9:41 AM link |