Category Archives: Gratitude

An Earthling Beholds (21)

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Tuesday before the little wooden bridge I glanced back over my shoulder as I walked and saw a big bird flying in my direction from the southwest. I stopped to gawk, and the dark, animated silhouette became an egret. She was flying too high for me to hear the sound of her passing, but I stood and watched the long, silent strokes of her wings until she disappeared. She was still in my head moments later when I rounded a curve and came upon the moon, almost full, peering through the lacy winter branches of the old palo verde beside the path. And so, in the way of things, the two images were linked inside me: the slender, graceful bird, the large, round moon near the horizon, their white shapes both luminous in the late dusk. Words can’t do them justice, I know. But maybe that doesn’t matter. Because the overlapping moments live in me now, their wonder, my awe, clay feet planted on the earth, all of a piece in our fragile, fleeting world. If I might be so blessed, may they live in me all the rest of my days.

May 2014 Be Sweet (13)

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Trailer_Lights_Moon

I came close to not writing a piece for my Christmas cards this year, to just sending them out with my love. But writing an annual greeting reminds me of the new year or birthdays, a chance to step back, to scan the year before, the hawk gliding on the thermals, the big picture spread below her. I want to not be too lazy to look. And I want very much to return to being a writer, to immerse myself in writing long enough for it to seep out my pores, thoughts rising through my days, steam drifting up from wet pavement after a summer rain.

On February 2nd I agreed to buy our new old trailer home. After I said the words on the phone, I fell over, banged my knee hard on the tile floor of our old apartment. I was gone already, I think. But a voice had whispered to me to walk by that day in the rain when I saw the for sale sign, and the trailer sat on that stretch of road I’d studied for years, easing myself closer and closer to making the leap to living in a tin can. Then the fence, the A/C fiascos left me gun shy at this home ownership stuff, rocked my faith in myself, disturbed my demons. Summer was brutal, and they began building across that stretch of road. The cottontails and roadrunners and I were displaced, desperate. I made false starts again and again. There were times I didn’t know if I’d ever make it all the way back.

But I did. Thanks to the kindness of the gods, I scrabbled all the way back to joy. My writing is the last to return. I want that richness, that extra layer woven through my days and nights. So today I make another effort in that direction. I sit in our courtyard, notebook propped against my knees. In the lull from the construction site, I hear birds. I count six house finch, two goldfinch and one hummingbird perched on the bare branches of my neighbor’s tree. Yesterday at dusk the moon was rising. The solar Christmas lights spread glowing reds and greens and blues along the fence. And birds have begun to sit in our palo verde. Today I bought a headband with aqua feathers to wear to the new year’s eve party here in the park. I plan to dance, to laugh, to sing. I look at the leafless branches of the neighbor’s tree again, and now there’s one lone mourning dove, his small form still against the late afternoon sky. I watch him for a long time. My cats are both napping nearby. I feel grateful and quiet and full.

I hope this finds you equally at home—in your skin, your life, your year. May 2014 be sweet and gentle and glad in its unfolding.

After Chavasana (12)

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Branches, sky and clouds

Today was cloudy. I began doing my qi gong in a long sleeved shirt and a heavy vest that I had to take off halfway through. By the time I start my yoga, I am wearing my light T-shirt with the hummingbirds on the front because the sun’s come out. I turn my back to it to do my sun salutations. After chavasana, I lie on my back on my yoga mat. Almost all the clouds are gone, and the sky is a deeper blue than I remember seeing in ages. The only clouds left are in the middle of my sky, backdrop for our palo verde. I lie in the courtyard longer than I mean to, watch the green branches against the white clouds, relish the blue of the sky. White crowned sparrows flit from pavement to tree to pavement again. Sable pounces toward a mourning dove on the ground who gets away. The breeze comes, and the goldfinch sway on the palo verde’s green tips. I hear the chimes. I know I need to get up, but I keep lying here. I hug my knees to my chest, wiggle my bare toes, marvel at December in Palm Springs.

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.

Dreaming Home (46)

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I’ve longed for ages for a home where I felt like I could spend the rest of my life. When I moved to Sonoma County, it was the first time I had that feeling about a place. I remember driving home from Santa Rosa on Guerneville Road past green farms, the oak-studded hills before me. Look where I live, I thought. When I moved into La Casa Azul in Todos Santos, it was the first time I had that feeling about an actual dwelling. Things went terribly awry with my landlord there, but I remember that giddy feeling, thinking I’d found the home of my dreams. I remember wondering if I’d be able to negotiate the wrought iron spiral staircase when I grew old.

Over the years I’ve built a habit of studying the yards, examining the homes whenever I walk down the street. “Oh, I could live there,” I’d say to myself, caught by the wrap around porch or the climbing wisteria, both pleasure and longing evoked by my ritual, a bittersweet practice. When I lived in Ajijic where buying a home might have been one day more within my reach, I photographed for sale signs. I remember one advertising an empty lot of neatly turned earth, a beautiful brick wall surrounding it, a blue metal gate. I went as far as to look at two homes for sale up in the hills. One was all white and one was green, and they were both two stories tall with miradores that made them seem like three-story homes. I don’t remember any details about the houses themselves, only those marvelous rooftop patios, the views of the village spread out below them, the lake in the distance. I would have lived on those roofs.

for sale sign, white veranda, yellow blossoms

for sale sign, metal gate

for sale sign, bougainvillea and rock wall

Now in my unexpected southern California life, thanks to two dear friends and the workings of a generous universe, I’m on the threshold of having my longing met in the old trailer home I’ve just bought. I don’t get to take possession of it, so to speak, until April, but it has possessed me from day one. It has grabbed me by my viscera, invoking big dreams of a magic home I can grow old in, tending my garden and writing my books, the stark place transformed little by little in the intervening years to lushness and color, where my birds will want to linger chatting together in the bougainvillea or the palos verdes. I can see myself sipping tea on my patio there years from now, watching the sun disappear behind my mountains, the sparrows and the mourning doves scritching among the leftover seeds in the late afternoon quiet. I don’t have words to say how grateful I am, how full this makes me, how much awe it awakens. But I seem determined to try anyway, to fall short but maybe brush the feathers of the thing in my attempt. Thank you, universe. Thank you, dwelling gods. Thank you, especially, my good friends. Thank you.

What a Wonderful World

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This is the note I wrote to go out with my Christmas cards this year. They have a colorful tree and the words “What a wonderful world” on the front of the card. I thought I’d like to share it here with all of the rest of you, too. Happy new era. Happy holidays.

image of ornaments on a tree

I first reached for this card because I liked the cool, artsy tree, the newsprint and paint. Texture and color pull me. The words on the cover conjure Louis Armstrong.
“I see friends shaking hands,” he sings in his rich, unmistakeable voice, “saying how do you do. They’re really saying, I love you.” The song was released the year before Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed. But you can hear the love in Armstrong’s voice. He was courageous enough, large enough, to believe in us, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. So when the phrase makes me pause, makes me wonder if it’s okay to choose this card given all the violence, all the hate, all the tragedy in our world, I can’t help but think there’s something wrong with that, something wrong that I should hesitate. These things don’t make the words untrue, do they? It is a world full of wonder—big sky, palo verde trees, grackles, people helping. It’s the world my father saw, the small wonders, a person’s profile in that gnarl of tide-washed wood, the magic bean sprouts he brought for my dog Sanji when she was dying, the label he made on his old manual typewriter still taped to the jar, crisp in memory, a cherished item when he died just weeks after she did. It makes me want to cry for him, for both of them gone now these 27 years. But it’s layered in me, the way they loved me, the way I’ll love them always. They are composted in me, rich, fertile soil, my carpet, my gifts, my wonder. And this is the time to look to those we love today, remember they are our diamonds, our emeralds, to run our fingers through them, these gemstones of ours, to spread them out in the morning sunlight or kiss the fire of their facets in the shining of the moon. Bring warm scarves, bundle them forward in the quiet almost-winter afternoon, count ourselves lucky. What a wonderful world.

Traveling (33)

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Traveling is an odd thing. I bring myself with me wherever I go, but I don’t always feel like myself. I am still tethered to my home, feel its tug. I am tied to who I’ve left behind there. My cats occupy my space, glaring in their absence, a small prickle or a larger ache. Even when I go where I am known, even loved, I carry their absence, feel the tug of my tether. I am missing bits of my self, the one I have grown comfortable with over time, quiet mornings on the patio, the solar Christmas lights a happy glow on the hedge when I walk home in the new dark after dusk.

The birds here are not my birds. But when I reach in, find my way to fullness on the deck of this other home, their unfamiliar calls comfort me, companions in the quiet autumn morning. They tie me to my world, tingle my self, charm me silly. I feel the sun on my forehead, my ankles, my cheek wet from dog kisses. The house is waking up around me, and my eyes fill with warm tears, my breath deep and grateful in my lungs.