Category Archives: Dreaming

The Visit (2)

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I dream of cats and hummingbirds. I am in a small walled outdoor space where a cement slab overhang juts out from the building. There is an airy gap between the overhang and the top of the wall, open sky visible to the southwest. I meet a skinny Calico girl cat who makes me want to love her. Reluctant, I put her down. I don’t want to collect more animals because one day I need to be free to walk the Camino de Santiago. There are many of us in the walled space, mostly birds and mammals, I believe, though besides meeting the cat I don’t focus in. I sense this place is a shelter for all life though maybe not of this world. I am with a younger woman who I don’t know. She lives here, I think, or works here, and is showing me around. She has a pale, narrow face and dyed black hair that falls straight and glossy below her shoulders. There is an iridescent purple near her left cheek, a big metal earring catching the light, or maybe a streak of color in her black hair. I watch as a hummingbird alights near her right shoulder, makes itself comfortable against her neck. The woman is unsurprised. “Oh my,” I say. I gape at them. “Never before,” I breathe. And then I feel a fluttering near my own shoulder, my left. I know without being able to see it is a hummingbird. She nestles into the dip above my collar bone. I know by the quick movements of her beak she is preening, supported by my body. The feel of her reminds me of the same trusting way Boo will lean against me in bed, his gentle weight rocking as he licks his black fur clean. My heart goes soft with memory and with the tiny bird cradled against me now, the honor I feel, this gift of surrender. After, I stand awake before the bathroom mirror curious to see how much room she really had. I rub my fingers back and forth along the curved space behind my collar bone. I can still feel her soft fluttering against my skin.

Agradecimiento at the Kitchen Window (52)

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view from the kitchen window (palo verde, mountains, lime green umbrella)

I am standing beside the pine table in front of the kitchen window mixing the tuna and medicinal herbs for Sofia. My own watermelon juice was first, the jars full of pink clustered together now on the top shelf of the fridge. I move the blender through its speeds, my body on automatic with the familiar steps. I stand looking outside but not seeing. I am glad I’m finally taking care of this. I’d put it off for too many days, something always getting in the way, robbing the time or the inclination. I flip the lever to slow the speed, turn the other to shut the blender off. I am still staring out the window when I come to. I see Serena, adorned with her yellow palo verde blooms. I see the lime green umbrella, the mountains in the distance, doves in both the tray feeders, late morning snack. Pleasure washes through me. I take it in all at once like a song. I really, really love our new home. Gratitude pours out. This appreciation comes often now, slipping in at odd moments, seeming quieter and deeper than I’ve known before. Maybe that comes with age. Maybe it’s tied to the fact that this one belongs to us more fully than before. Or maybe it’s just her own magic working on me, her spot on the planet, her mountains nearby, her birds, her sky, now her palo verde, her bougainvillea, her human, her cats. I feel like we belong here. And so lucky. I hope she’s glad we came.

Sunday Air (51)

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close-up of a sunflower in sunlight

I roll over on the bed, extend my arms out, flex my hands. It’s Sunday morning, and I relish lounging in bed, indulging in that sweet place between sleeping and wakefulness, soft dreamy half thoughts floating through me. I stretch again, spread my fingers wide. When I arch my back, I see the tiny crescent of the waning moon framed in the clerestory window. I love to see the moon in daylight, and this feels like the perfect beginning. I get out of bed, and I see the sun has already reached the courtyard. The two tallest of the volunteer sunflowers are alive in their namesake’s light. My movement at the window startles doves from the ground. More doves take flight when I open the door, and Boo charges out. I remember it’s the one day of grace from the construction site across our little road. I scurry back inside to do what I revel in doing once each week—I open the louvered windows at the front of the house. The Sunday quiet is the only thing that enters. I stand for long moments looking out the open window in the gentle air.

Seven More to Go (49)

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This is my 49th post since I turned 55. Before I become 56, I have seven more to go. After falling so incredibly behind in my tumultuous year, I didn’t know if I’d be able to catch up. But now I can believe I’ll reach my goal. Forty-nine and seven, all those magical seven numbers. And I’ll become eight sevens soon. I’ve been trying to decide whether or not I want to have a theme for my 56 posts while I’m 56, or if I want to leave it wide open again for a second year in a row. So far I’ve alternated each year, chafing when I “narrow” things to a theme, floundering when I have no theme at all, no scaffolding. I know one year I want to build my year of posts from sleeping dreams, but I’m not sure I’m ready for that yet. I consider returning to my first blog, to nudging myself again to have new experiences and report on them here. Or I could write about the topic that’s grabbing me now, El Camino de Santiago de Compostela. Or pilgrimages as a whole. Or walking and noticing, being present and connected to the world. (These last three are all of a piece in my mind these days.) So I could write this coming year about the walks I take, or the walks I research or the walks I read about. Or maybe I can allow myself to let this next year be one juicy messy mish mash, be all of the above, even flash fiction added to the mix. And mix rhymes with 56, so maybe there’s a fun title alive in there somewhere waiting to emerge. I’m tossing it around now as I write this, cooked dinner in a bowl. No choices made yet, no drizzling of olive oil or sprinkling of cayenne. No nutritional yeast, no curry. Only the bright green of the bell pepper, dark brown of the mushroom, the tofu stark in contrast, resting against the blue sides of the big ceramic bowl.

Three Goldfinch (48)

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One little bird flies into our courtyard garden, alights on the tip of the palo verde, then perches on the wooden fence. He is making a sweet sound, but I am not sure I can place him. He hops from the fence to the tube feeder. I think he might be a verdin, but I don’t even know if they can cling like this, don’t know if they can reach the thistle seeds through the wire mesh. In case it is a goldfinch, I tell him I hope they will be coming back. “I miss you,” I say, and he flies away. Later I see a flicker of movement, and there are two goldfinch at the feeder. I think, how cool is that? I am sure this time they are goldfinch, and females. I picture them living down the street somewhere, just popping in for a bite to eat in the middle of the afternoon. Hope rears its head. I imagine this idea might spread. The two of them are eating now with gusto. “You go, girls,” I say. Maybe word will get around.

Walking in the Dark (38)

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I keep running out of daylight, so I’ve taken to walking around our trailer park at night. I study each home. I like to see what people have done, the choices they’ve made depending on the configuration of the structure, the orientation of the lot, the emphasis on indoor versus outdoor space. I have years of wandering my neighborhoods at night. I love seeing windows lit up. They used to make me feel lonely but not anymore. The other night when I was walking, an odd awareness came over me, almost more physical sensation than actual thought. It lasted several paces, maybe half of the short block I was walking, heading west in the dark. I was struck by how rich in life these homes felt. The rows of colorful handblown glass, bottle after bottle stretching across all the windowsills I could see from the road. A covered patio, pristine, with artwork on the walls, bright abstract designs, the bicycles stowed just so. The sounds of music playing, TV, the opening and closing of cupboards, the clank of metal on metal, pot to the stove, someone preparing dinner. All these homes seemed so much more alive than my own. I felt a little awed, a little sad. Later, I wondered if what I sensed was an accumulation of life over time, that row of bottles spanning the years. I bet it began with one bottle on that first windowsill. A fresh coat of paint on the patio wall, the impulse to hang the abstract. I can almost see them now years ago in my mind, before life was laid down, these small acts of love, layer after layer.

I Dream Robert Redford (36)

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I dream I am ordering a burrito from Robert Redford. He is behind the cutout window of a little makeshift stand inside a large building, maybe a low-rent lobby but more the feeling of a second floor nonprofit, part workspace and part shelter. There is a handmade note attached to the side of the flimsy stand telling what they serve, and there are three different kinds of pork, so he needs to explain them to me. He is completely warm and kind and gives me his undivided attention. There are other people waiting, but he acts like we have all the time in the world. We talk about all kinds of things. The conversation feels flirty and fun. At one point I look at my feet and tell him I have forgotten what I wanted to say. A Mexican woman arrives to tell me the third pork option has something mixed in with the pork. I understand everything she is saying except the Spanish word for what is mixed in. She goes away and returns with this four foot long bundle of branches with dried leaves. I think it is the leaves she is talking about that must be added to the pork mixture, and then I follow the curve of the branches with my eyes and see they are covered with raisins! (After I wake I wonder if they ever do this, leave the grapes after the harvest, let them dry on the vine and then gather them together like this in the pruning process. I look up the word for raisins. Did she say pasas? Uvas secas? I don’t remember now.) At one point in my infatuation, of being so drawn to Redford, I am leaning in toward him while we talk. “Too close,” he says, and then he goes back to whatever he is telling me. There is no judgment of me in his warning, no recoil in him. I am just reminded in his warm, quiet voice to back off a bit. There is such sweetness in it all. I wake up filled with pleasure (and hungry for a pork burrito).