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Good Candlemas (27)

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nasturtiums, bougainvillea

I light five candles for the pagan holiday today, pick flowers from our courtyard garden. They are still out on the patio table. I peeked at them a bit ago, watching them through the kitchen window, something reassuring and ancient about the look of those five flames lighting the dark. It’s been like early summer in the middle of our Palm Springs winter, that delicious evening air that feels like velvet against your skin. Or maybe you are the velvet—it is hard to know. It reminds me of one evening years ago sitting in the warm pool at Tassajara, the water and the air and my skin all one temperature so you couldn’t tell where one began or ended, the closest I have ever felt to being literally one with air and sky and water. The days have grown warmer than I’d choose, wanting as I am to push summer off as long as I can, but how can I complain about this evening air? It is like January in Ajijic, bare feet braced against the railing of my third floor roost, my northern Californian self almost gloating. I was barefoot in January. Now seven winters later I am spoiled in this. But still, I want to linger, wallow in the sweet, soft ease of it. Happy Candlemas, everyone.

five tealight candles, flowers, orange metal bird

February 1st, Candlemas Eve (26)

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The sky is beautiful this evening, that brief blaze of orange clouds in the last light of the sun, long gone from our valley but only now disappearing below that unseen horizon. I walk outside the gate to see more sky and spin, head thrown back. The waxing moon, almost full, surprises me. I spot the evening star setting in the west, Venus, I think. It’s as though a line connects her to the rising moon. Are they talking to each other? Later I write with the sliding glass door wide open, and I can see the star poised above the dark shape of the mountain, a sleeping beast, Venus wide awake and calling. It is Candlemas eve, Imbolc eve, the midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, the turning of the earth, the waxing of the light. Already we can feel the days growing longer. What sweeter way to mark the return of the light than with this bright circle of moon and her star companion, buddies in the early night?

Learning Laughter (25)

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I’m learning to laugh more. I’ve wanted more laughter in my life for a long time. But it’s so much easier to laugh with other people. I’ve been blessed with that, with people in my life who I can laugh with until I cry, until we exhaust ourselves, hands against our aching bellies, sated with hilarity. I had fun laughing in the audience at the Camelot theater and vowed to make a point of that more often, that shared public laughter an unexpected sweetness. But more and more I seem to find it by myself, that sudden burst of it while I’m alone, going about my day, or the quieter impulse to giggle. I’ve always been able to amuse myself, have been lucky that way, too. It doesn’t seem to matter to me that often I’m the only one who thinks I’m funny. But except for the occasional guffaw over a well-delivered line in a movie or a funny moment in a book, I’ve tended to be quiet about it. Or maybe I used to laugh more when I was alone, and I can’t remember. But now I find myself doing it more and more, alone in my trailer or out in the courtyard, some stray thought that catches me, that quick, loud bark of laughter, the bray and the snort of it. It makes me grin to be writing about it. I curl my toes, impish and shy, and eager for more.

Only this Morning? (22)

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Weird how some days are light—busy, maybe, but easy to move through. Nothing jars you. Nothing weights you. Nothing rattles, jangles, presses too hard against your skin. And some days weigh more. Things you can take in stride on any other day push at you, jiggering your insides, everything crimped, all sharp angles. Sometimes I think the universe is toying with me. How many things can she bear in one day before she explodes? Small things, I mean—nothing serious. The cat tracks poop across the down comforter, sprays it against the white wall. The qi gong class you rushed to get to is not the one you were hoping it would be. The wind comes in the late afternoon and chases you inside. You fight with the curtains. They have sprung free from the weights set to hold them, and they are billowing against you as you work, pushing into your space. Your annoyance has no rational tie to the smallness of this invasion. But some days it is the steady press of small things that pisses me off, makes my body feel too small to hold my anger, unjustified though it may be. Was it only this morning I saw the hawk leap from our fence to the sky? Only this morning I followed his flight with my eyes and found the waning moon nestled against the mountain ridge? Was it only this morning I stopped, then, looking at the pale curve of moon and remembered how lucky I am?

Thyroid Fun, or Keeping the Faith (18)

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I started back to work on Saturday, but because it was the weekend I could pretend I wasn’t really working yet. I did my work in spurts then retreated to the novel I am reading in between, setting my laptop aside and burrowing under the down comforters, cozy during the end of our cold spell here, echoing my blissful holiday habits. I even made popcorn Sunday night, filling the big green ceramic bowl. But Monday arrived, and I could pretend no longer. Work was in full swing. Still, in the midst of being sucked up by the intensity of keeping up with the work I remembered to be happy. I stood beside the kitchen sink at noon chopping garlic for my belated breakfast and sang a little song. “I’m back at work, but it’s okay,” I sang. I bobbed up and down along with the movement of my chef’s knife. “I’m not going to let my neck and shoulders get too tight,” I sang, tilting my head from side to side. I learned a tight neck and shoulders can cut off blood flow to the thyroid I am trying to protect, but I was grinning as I sang, glad to be having goofy fun. In the afternoon I told myself I could have two hours, and I did my yoga in the courtyard while the sun sank behind our mountains. My neck and shoulders were tight, but the yoga helped. Then I sat outside to write, my notebook perched against my thighs. I reminded myself to breathe. “You can do this,” I whispered. “I have faith in you.”

Keeping the Peace (17)

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Sunday, December 14th
When I wonder what to write for my Christmas letter, nothing comes but a vague sense of knowing, like a remembered dream, or as if viewed from underwater, blurred and indistinct. What was my year? How might I lay it down on the page? What will I choose, pluck whole from the blurred images, the trout tickled from the icy stream? It was a second hard year for me, but I turned a corner with Indian summer. Do I try to explain? Or do I try to capture the odd ethereal quality of the light on my arm as I sit in our courtyard garden on this winter afternoon, the cats both napping beside me on their pillows? I savor this ease, this togetherness. Sundays have always been sacred to me, a holdover, I think, from my childhood when the world would stop for the day. I wrap the lazy quiet around me like a cloak. I feel the sun on my throat, my collarbone, speaking to my thyroid. I am inclined to be tender with myself today, a warm regard that is new to me. For the moment things fall away, the hectic work week behind me, all the preparations that lie now between me and Christmas. I want to keep this with me, so I make a vow. I will remember to relish the cold air on my nose in the early mornings between now and then and to listen for the new songbird in our Palo Verde. I will remember to revel in the glistening magic of the colored lights on the fig tree outside the window when I turn over in the middle of the night. I will stop in the late afternoon to feel the sudden coolness on my skin the second the sun sinks behind the mountains like it’s doing right now. I’ll touch this peace again. I’ll look for the white-crowned sparrows visiting for the winter, so small but somehow sturdy. I’ll watch them flit about on the ground beneath the feeders, like I am watching them now, with a glad and grateful heart. And I’ll wish you your own delicious moments now and always.

Myself Again (16)

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Saturday morning I dream three dreams. I had read we might expect vivid dreams. The moon was moving into Pisces, and there was something about Saturn, too. So I don’t know if my dreaming was due to the power of suggestion or the influence of the cosmos. But I dream deep and true–swing wide the Gates of Horn, indeed. I fall asleep early the night before over my book and sleep later than I can’t remember when, twelve hours all told, unheard of in years. It is day three of my four-day holiday, so I know something is at work here. I dream of hiking in the hills beside an aqueduct, sunlight bright on the water. I see the head of a mountain lion, but it becomes a deer. There are three of them in the tall grass. There is a big blonde boy-dog swimming. I dream of flying over a city that climbs a hill and edges water, the reflections in the water dazzling and dizzying in my flight. I am in a foreign country and fly above a market street that climbs the hillside. It is filled with people walking, but there are no cars. I think later it may be in Africa. I dream of a new home in another town by other water, a harbor or a bay. There is a huge rooftop patio. I decide I will sleep there. I wake up and write down my dreams for the first time since April. I am happy and relaxed and excited, too. I apologize to my cats who are patient this morning. They watch me and wonder, I think, what has gotten into me. “I feel like myself again,” I tell them. And I do, for the first time in ages.