field notes:

8.27.2005

When geometric diagrams and digits
Are no longer the keys to living things,
When people who go about singing or kissing
Know deeper things than the great scholars,
When society is returned once more
To unimprisoned life, and to the universe,
And when light and darkness mate
Once more and make something entirely transparent,
And people see in poems and fairy tales
The true history of the world,
Then our entire twisted nature will turn
And run when a single secret word is spoken.

-Novalis 1800
translated by Robert Bly

posted by Lisa on 8:54 AM link |

8.13.2005

Lake Merritt. The couple approaching on the trail both talk in gentle voices, both talking at once, both talking with no pauses. As they pass I make out her words, “we praise the trees, we praise the grass...” His praise harder to make out. Beaming faces. Where I stand, to the side, while my dog sniffs out feral cats at the end of an improvised leash, their voices are drowned out by the slap of runner’s shoes on the cement path. More runners follow, their subtext unheard cadence. On a grassy slope, men and women, in every color we find humans, move in unperfect coordination in the slow dance of tai-chi.

posted by Lisa on 2:42 PM link |

8.12.2005

I’m sitting in a corner cafe near campus. Cars and buses roar by, all around me the bustle of freshly arrived students, a rare family, and the exuberant voices of afternoon. The sun is warm, but there’s a cool breeze. Cell phone conversations baste the soundscape, but the buzz of conversation is too loud to allow one voice to penetrate the buzz. I feel at home. If you’ve known me, you’ve known me to write from the solace of Inverness, writing from within the easy sounds of water lapping, wind blowing through trees, birdsong, or the sizzle of logs in the stove. All are a part of the life I’ve left behind. Now I’ll write of these other things, from this other place.

I live in Oakland, California. I’m in a neighborhood called Bushrod. It borders the Berkeley neighborhoods of Rockridge, Elmwood and Claremont, but it is not them. It is an edge neighborhood. I live with my partner, Ignacio, his daughter and her puppy, Luna, and gratefully still my dear old dog, Dinah.

I wonder if my writing has only come from the place—Inverness & Point Reyes—from the wild. I don’t know if I will be able to write from the city.

On the way to the cafe, I had a moment’s hope that I will. Mussorgsky in Marrakesh played on my radio, for me alone, from KCSM. A street vendor on Telegraph Avenue danced beyond my carscape, as if she as well heard the music. She danced, her braids swinging as she undulated and twirled, loose hip movements, flowing grace, red t-shirted ampleness carving out a place in the street, a tribute to the sidewalk, a sky's drop of human--as clear and unwavering a motion as any hot-blooded animal of the forest. Watching her, a sweet epiphany.

The light turned green. I am here. This is my place now. These my people. My new field. My notes.

posted by Lisa on 5:55 PM link |