field notes:

4.25.2004

Two towering tan oaks fell last week, blocking our path to the bay completely. They were twin trees of one base--one nearly dead, the other seemingly healthy. I see that one of them has barbed wire embedded in its trunk near the bottom.

I don't have a chain saw, but last evening determined to re-open the path I went down armed with a branch lopper and an old tree saw. I had a fine time. I quickly learned which sized branches I could tackle with the lopper, and rarely had to hack through anything. I began with the finest branches, clearing leaves and fine tendrils that might scratch beachgoers in the face. The mosquitos were buzzing in my ears, and the longer I worked the more they gathered, attracted by the mounting heat.

I worked not only the upper layers so people could walk through--over some branches and under others--but also the complicated branchings that covered the ground so my dog will be able to get to the beach with her dogsitter while I'm in New York next week. I wore my khaki green walking hat to keep worms out of my hair. I chopped and lopped a small area, then pushed all of my leavings outside the confines of the tree. Then I stepped over the last high branch back into the clear and stacked the brush to the side of the path. Then I'd climb back "in" the tree and begin lopping a new section, little by little making my way to the other side of the tree and to the downhill side of the path. As I passed the half-way point I looked up and saw two deer eating from the other fallen tree only 20 feet away from me. I was puzzled because I'd not been quiet, nor inactive, yet I hadn't scared them away. Even looking straight at them wasn't scaring them. I stood stock still, thinking their sight was confused by the leaves in front of me, and that they hadn't quite "made me" as human. They moved ever closer, to within 10 feet, happily munching away on the still green leaves of the other oaktop.

The mosquitos were in my ears and I finally determined that this nature encounter must end. I had to keep moving or become dinner to the buzzing hordes. I began clearing branches and pushing them out the deer end of the tree. They didn't budge, only looked up. I stepped out onto the path. They continued eating still. As I dragged branches and began to stack them, the deer finally moved up the hill, but not at a bound. They continued grazing but just at a slightly greater distance from me.

They never left the area and finally settled just above me. I was clearing the final bit from the newly opened pathway, and they were uphill, keeping an eye on me. A friendly eye rather than a fearful one.

A few weeks ago my friend camped at Coast Camp. He went for a moonlight walk and found himself within 20 feet of a group of deer eating grass. They didn't startle. He wondered if it was the night that fooled them into thinking he couldn't see them.

I wonder.

posted by Lisa on 8:19 AM link |

4.23.2004

Walking near Union Square last night, the streets yielded memories--ate lunch at that dive, walked over yonder, sat for hours one night in the park and talked after dinner with friends from LA, Lily Tomlin there. And down that brick-laid alley, he and I sat. He tried to find a way to reach me, held my hand, looked into my eyes. I was so far away and didn't know how to get back. We walked into a gallery and interrupted a lecture. The speaker said, "In Art as in Love, one must overlook small defects." A lesson that's been hard for me. History is the ground we walk on, it is also the way we walk, one tender step following another.
The past lays like a grid over these streets, over this great bay area. It's a map of the heart more compelling than treasure, potentially more disturbing than newly turned ground. It is my personal history. It walks with me.

I walked to 49 Geary to attend the opening reception of a friends' new show. It's beautiful work by Patsy Krebs at the Haines Gallery. (In one room her work stands opposite an Andy Goldsworthy wall.)

posted by Lisa on 7:56 AM link |

4.17.2004

Altissimo. It’s a red like no other. Easter day I learned its name and then used it days later in a friend’s garden. Climbing, an open rose, love unfurled. Like a high-reaching movement on piano’s sheet music, altissimo. No, not higher notes, higher reach. Reach with your spirit.

My piano teacher didn’t use the word spirit, a word for ministers. Not a word for old, slow moving, lemon pledge metronome ladies. An hour devoted to music with no smiles, no laughter, no spirit, no (god forbid) dancing. Now, I wonder how a child could fail to become a musician. No, only a caretaker of notes. A Mozart sonata played in front of a jacketed roomful, a phalanx of folding chairs. No one dared laugh or smile on those recital dread nights. Uncomfortable fathers and brothers, proud stiff mothers, breath-holding children, and a teacher employing the only marketing ploy she had in her arsenal. Later, many of us compare notes. How many among us shared nights like this, were dropped off in front of tract homes for hour-long piano sessions of extreme boredom? Rooms too quiet for living. Grateful to hear the screen door slam behind us as our mother’s car pulled finally up. The damned metronome ticking stopped. The mind could speed up or slow down at will again. Childhood moments uncounting, racing down Schwinn streets, hiding quiet in trees, swimming underwater where it was quietest of all, only the small ear sounds of the day cracking open.

posted by Lisa on 7:51 AM link |

4.13.2004

I’m beginning to believe in summer. I had my doubts in early April when all I remembered of the days’ accumulation were dreams. But these days are blustery and fitful like midwestern farm skies, unpredictable as teenaged diaries. The forest floor is blinkered blue with forget-me-nots and the day stinks of flowering wild onion. The sky can’t contain itself from one minute to the next with heartfelt changes in scenery like an ambitious off-broadway play. Clouds blow from puffed cheeks at imaginary kite tails that pigtailed girls fly from windblown hills. Smooth-skirted nannies chase runaway strollers and puppies unleashed, unspayed, unregistered nip at their thick ankles.

A piece of blue paper skitters across the parking lot, whipped from the hand of a stranger. He doesn’t bother to chase it because it’s gone too far, airborne and rising, swirling over the water. He turns away, too undone and doesn’t see the note spin on a lucky glide and land at my feet. The words seem cheerful as I pick it up—written in crayon-- each word a different color. “Don’t you love me anymore, you son of a bitch?” it says. The question mark is written in red and afterwards she’s kissed the blue paper with her red lips. Like a backwards ransom note, something’s been withdrawn but not offered back. Her heart is closed and his isn’t worth having.

He smooths his slick grey hair and ducks his head into the cab of the black Range Rover. He’s over—a backwards glance and he’d disappear—if he had shoelaces they’d be untied, if he weren’t sitting he’d be falling. He adjusts the mirror but can’t see his reflection—only eyes like holes, only holes like black water falling in the next room.

A swarm of bees, homeless and honeyed, passes over his car just then, just as he’s begun to pull away, just as he’s driving back to the empty room where he found her note perched on the collapsed comforter, the unmade bed. Bees strike like bullets. They die slowly, loudly on the expensive windshield of his hot car. He fumbles without thinking with his untethered left hand and the wiper fluid squirts across the window, sends the dying bees streaming down like children. The blade follows and he can’t stop it. His schoolboy easy charm regretted like careless rags, like uneaten cake...like money falling from pockets.

posted by Lisa on 3:48 PM link |

4.08.2004

I wish now that I'd have been kinder to the man in the boat. I could have reassured him, but I didn't.

Last month, he approached me as I stood on the beach. I was resentful that my solitude had been broken, and not too happy that a boat was nosing its way towards our quiet little beach. Also, I'd just thrown a tennis ball for my dog and he'd run it over. I'd probably never get it back.

He had a few people with him. "Do you have any buddies out swimming in the water?"

"No." I was waiting on the beach for a friend. We were going to swim together, but she hadn't arrived yet.

"The reason I ask is that we hit something big in the water and I know it sounds crazy, but I'm worried now that it was a person swimming. We were keeping a close eye, and didn't see anything, but still it was a loud sound and now I can't help thinking..."

It did sound crazy. But I know how a notion like that can take you and not let go. How it can wake you in the night years later and make you wonder.

I could have said that if he'd hit a person, he'd know it; that a swimmer would have heard him coming for days and would have waved him off; that he probably hit a partly-submerged piece of driftwood; that if he'd hit a person, there would be blood. I should have told him not to worry.

Instead I said something non-committal, something semi-comforting. I was thinking about my friend Terry. Could he have been swimming over near Millerton? Could he have hit a harbor seal?

I hope to run into him again. If I get another chance I'll do things differently.

posted by Lisa on 6:15 AM link |

4.06.2004

A six-month old boy sits up in his crib, his blue eyes wide open, his mouth open--voiceless. An old woman sits on the edge of her bed, smoothing the wrinkles from her long pink stockings, turning them so the diamond insignia lies smooth, at right angles to her feet. A puppy chews at my ankles, chasing me up a scaffold until he is distracted. Young boy and girl create a story, about the magic of a car trip. Then he remembers that she once loved him and he breaks down crying.

At center I find myself inarticulate. I wait to hear the voice that once sounded so strong within. I wait and dream, and in the dreaming I look for my voice, for the ecstatic shimmering light.

posted by Lisa on 7:21 AM link |

4.04.2004

I saw them across the dry desert. Four old women in blue chiffon dresses, long-skirted and long-sleeved, with white lace at the neck and the wrist. I made for them in my Subaru wagon. When I got closer I saw that one of them old ladies was really an old man. The heat and the long walk had made them weak. They were all four walking abreast, holding each other upright. Moving slowly. Small steps. Trying to find their car. They were grateful for the ride. It was my fault they were out there, that they hadn't known where to park to avoid the long walk. I was happy to give them a ride.

**

I looked around for crocodiles. They can be tough to spot. Sometimes, all they show you is a snout, or just their eyes, floating on the dark water. As I moved through the series of lagoons I began to make them out, watching me from the edges, from the shallows. I was relieved. Not seeing them is worse than seeing them. You know they're out there, and knowing it but not being able to verify the fact can give you the creeps. I like being able to keep an eye on them. If they're coming for me, I want to know it.

I maneuvered my little boat through the glade. Vines hung down in front of me and I could see huge shell mounds on the shore. I thought about pulling over to eat lunch but decided to keep going. I had somewhere to be--somewhere important. My boat kept getting stuck. It would keel over to the bow and I'd have to unstick it somehow, get the bow back up onto the surface of the water. Calling it a bow is being generous. The boat felt more like a life preserver than a boat--it was shaped like a bathtub with very little indication of a front and a back. It was made of extruded plastic with ridges around the rim. It was the ridges that kept getting stuck. The crocodiles made the excursion much more interesting.

**

I pushed my dog around in a large shopping cart. I'd given her a shot recently and now I needed to get her to the vet. I gave the shot because I thought she needed it, but I didn't really have the doctor's permission. Now I guessed that I needed to fill them in, so they could help me fix her up. She wasn't really moving. I didn't feel too worried, it was just one of the things on my mind.

I was collecting furniture from various dumping grounds and bringing it to a large room which I was going to share with my cousin and her husband. It wasn't going to be forever. She was being very generous about what was to go where, and how much space I'd get. There were interesting cutouts on the walls. They matched certain furniture. It seemed right that their dresser should go into the cutout that matched it exactly, and it was unique--no other dresser in the world could match it--completely Dr. Seussian in shape. But that spot was right next to my bed. I realized with some regret that I wouldn't be able to put my dresser next to my bed, as I'd envisioned. I let go of the idea. It wasn't forever after all.

posted by Lisa on 9:20 AM link |