Category Archives: Animals

As the World Turns (41)

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yellow palo verde blossoms and buds

The mockingbirds seem to be celebrating the equinox today, marking this turning of the world. I have heard them singing day and night, more of them than I can ever remember. So, I think they must be heralding in this changing time. Yesterday I walked beside the creek bed with Audrey and Bear. I left them near the bridge and walked back along the path in the late dusk. The big frog choir starting up held all my attention, unconscious of my head cocked toward them as I walked. And I could hear a large gathering of birds beginning to roost in big bushy trees on the other side of the wash, their high-pitched calls coming across to me in waves as they settled in for the night. But when I left the path, it was the mockingbird songs that followed me home through the neighborhoods. They sang from the fan palm to the east, the telephone pole behind me. And when I was almost home a mockingbird was singing across the street in the tree whose name I do not know but whose smell takes me back to childhood. I felt the warm silky air against my calves, my face. This would be summer weather, I thought, almost anywhere else in the world. But here we have a chorus line of deep-voiced frogs and spiky ocotillos blooming red and the bursting of yellow Palo Verde blossoms everywhere you look. We have warm night air and mockingbirds singing their hearts out in the almost dark. Here we are in the throes of late, late spring. Happy vernal equinox. Happy solar new year, everyone.

The Rainbow Is Lost on Her Human (39)

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rainbow over the San Jacinto mountains

My cat Sofia wakes me up, head in my face, so I can see the early morning rainbow over the mountains. I prop myself up on my elbows in bed to take it in. You can see our dry, rocky mountain through the shimmery spectrum of color. “Mmmm,” I say. “A magic day, hmm, munchkin?” I am still only half awake. I rub her head for a moment, and then I roll over and go back to sleep, leaving Sofia staring out the window wondering what is wrong with her human.

I Want To Write About . . . (28)

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Begin with the phrase, “I want to write about. . . .” Go.

I want to write about frogs and waffles, the way frogs come overnight in the ditches beside country highways after a summer rain, and you can hear them, thousands of frog voices all at once, when you drive along with the windows rolled down, and waffles crisp on the outside, pockets filled with melted butter, and you pour real maple syrup over it all and eat fast so they don’t get soggy. I want to write about trampolines. I remember how Del’s family had one flush with the ground in their front yard in La Crescenta. I loved that, not having that extra height of it being off the ground. I want to try one again after I’ve done more yoga and become less and less tight, less constricted in my movements. And oh! The trapeze! I’d forgotten about the low-flying trapeze and how somehow I was light enough and strong enough to move from one to the other in a large circle around Terri’s Berkeley studio all those years ago, like flying, like music, like being in synch, “aligned with something larger” as my blog reader wrote. I want to be that person again who can move around the room on the trapeze. I want to write about fossils. Fossils?!!? I would still like to go on a dig someday. And there is something to be said for holding a piece of life in your hands, rubbing your fingers against its roughness, along its ridges. I want to write about rain spouts in Ajijic.

Time’s up.

Crescendos (9)

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YellowKitchenCloth

It’s the small things that stop me, give me breath. The unbelievable yellow of the new kitchen cloth from Trader Joe’s lying in a bright wet clump on the edge of the sink, the fleeting perfection of its spotlessness. The messy lumps of peeled mango piled inside the red glass bowl, waiting for me to finish writing and open a chilled bottle of Topo Chico to go with them. The surprising thunder of the cicadas in the neighbor’s tree, filling our courtyard garden, growing louder and louder as dusk darkens to night, their wild crescendo crashing through the open windows, the abrupt silence at full dark. I still find myself rubbing my fingers against each other sometimes, evidence of my hidden anxiety. But tonight I listen to the now-quiet air and feel the kind of peace I’ve been longing for.

[Editor’s note: This was originally written shortly after “The Thinning Veil.” As I work to return to my blog, there will no doubt be a mix of things past and present, maybe off season–this was in the heart of the summer–and so on. But here I am!]

The Thinning Veil (8)

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This waiting to feel like myself again is mysterious, elusive. There are times when I forget I’m not yet normal, laughing on the phone with Colleen or glancing up from the computer to see the mountains spread before me, my fondness for our new home springing up. But other moments I feel flat, separate, behaving like the me I know but not feeling like her. There is still wonder everywhere. I know this. The big grasshopper on the sunflower, the mourning doves pecking at the fallen seed below the tray feeder, the roadrunner caught in the corner of my eye when I am working, the hummingbird alighting on the guava tree outside the window–gemstone through glass. A veil between us, I think, a muting of wonder. Unbelievably thin, subtle. Even the coyote watching me with his mouth full of raven, gossamer fluttering between us.

Midsummer Night’s Dream (2)

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Last night in between sleeping and waking I thought about my father. I wished he was still here, imagined being able to call him up on the phone just to chat. My dreamy thoughts drifted to ideas I’ve had for a short story about him, the first flicker of my writer self coming back to life. It woke me up. Lying in bed, I watched the moonlight on the mountains, our shortest night of the year. I really need to polish up “The C-Word,” too, I thought, and begin revising my material from my nine-year-old narrator. I tingled, dead limbs returning to sensation. Maybe Madhu’s sweet comment the other day (on my first lone blog post for this year of being 55) planted the seeds for the regermination of my writer. I am behind a dozen posts. I’ve wondered if you, my readers, will still be there. I fell off the edge of the earth, I think, have been dangling by my claws, tail twitching. But I’ve crawled to safety now, so glad to feel cool, moist dirt beneath my paws. I lie licking my fur.

The Woman and the Dog (52)

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I remember walking from La Casa Azul to downtown Todos Santos. It was late afternoon. I don’t remember where I was going, maybe to meet my Spanish teacher Guillermo at the cafe. I was taking the side streets north of the highway. I passed a woman washing clothes in her yard, another taking stark white dress shirts down off a clothesline. A man in a hat was hosing down the dirt road in front of his house when I passed. He smiled and nodded. “Buenas tardes,” I said. I passed a house with a garden in the front, vines climbing the wire fence, purple blooms. A woman was scraping food from a pot into a white enamel bowl on the ground, her brown dog dancing at her feet. “Oh,” I said. I was grinning. “She’s so excited about it.” Ella está muy emocionada sobre su comida. I remember the woman’s laugh, how it opened up her face. I remember the sweetness inside that moment together, of being part of her love for her dog.