Category Archives: Life

Another Summer’s Dream (29)

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I dream I am dreaming. I know when I wake up in the dream whatever is there–whatever I see first–will be what’s important. I open my eyes and the first thing I see are the stars, a whole deep sky of them, the kind you don’t see in the city. And below is a wooden roof that is my mother’s roof in the dream, and there is some sort of art sitting on it like a fancy painted nesting box made of wood. I don’t understand it, but it makes me feel good looking at it in the quiet night.

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.

Write About Home? (27)

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Write about home. That was the writing prompt on April 17th, 2012. Ten minutes. Go.

I think home for me may be anywhere I feel safe and centered and at rest. If I can feel all of these things, I can feel at home in a motel beside of a busy highway. If I’m on edge, off kilter, then I can’t rest in myself, am itchy in my skin, can’t settle. I seem to go for long stretches now where I’m at rest with myself, and then the patio cement wobbles, the windowpanes rattle, and I am on my knees, angry at myself for falling down, for trying to stand up and not being able to. I eat too much, resist the work waiting for me. Essays go ungraded, dishes make a small city in the kitchen sink. When I was much younger, I had a rule about eating for comfort. I would assemble the food beside the television. And then I’d lie on the couch and had to feel whatever it was I was needing to feel. After a good cry, the Cheetos became my reward. I miss Cheetos. Last night I ate savory rice crackers out of the bag and then a small bowl of peanut butter and brown rice syrup and lost myself in a book about Mexico. This morning I lingered in bed and the tears came. They brought me home again.

My Boo, My Barometer (26)

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My black cat lying on the bed

My cat Sable has a habit of yelling at me whenever I’m wound too tight. On days when my stress is high, he makes me even crazier. He paces, never settles, emits loud ceaseless meows while he stares at me. “Don’t you dare,” I tell him when it threatens to send me over the edge I’m already skirting. “Not today, Boo.” I shake my head. “I can’t handle it today.” When he doesn’t give up, I often end up screaming at him. “Enough,” I yell. “Enough.” It isn’t something I’m proud of. Last Friday when he started his endless howling, I told him he was just going to have to deal with my anxiety. “I am already too tense,” I say in a hard, brittle voice. “The last thing I need today is you yelling at me.” Of course, he keeps it up. He’s a cat. He stalks from kitchen to front stoop and back again, his cat roars punctuating the winter air, poking me in the eyeballs, the back of my head. It is worse than nails on chalkboard, worse than the old scratchy LP stuck on the turntable, the endless jarring repetitive noise. I want to scream at him, but I sit down instead. “You want kisses?” I ask him. I pat the bed beside me. He leaps up, still howling away, but quiets when I pet him. I’ve always known he’s my barometer, but I finally get how he can guide me. I let everything else fall away for a few moments while I stroke him, his whole soft little self vibrating with his big purrs. Is it really that simple? I wonder. Is it really just a choice for each moment, to drop back down to calm, to stop the frenzied pace and the racing mind and just be, warm black fur beneath my fingers?

The Pressure Mounts (25)

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The Friday before last I grumped my way through my morning chores. I felt like I had to rush now that things had amped up again during the first week of the semester. I had to hurry up and get the basics out of the way so I could work on school stuff. I was cranky about not being able to take my time, whether I was pouring hot water over herbs for the cats or sweeping the patio. I hate rushing, don’t know how to do it without getting tense. I could feel myself resisting having to hurry. “So much for sneaking up on high gear and keeping my peace,” I muttered while I washed the dishes with quick strokes. Three nights ago I had bad dreams. In one I came home and found the door standing open, my dog missing. I went out in the rain to find her, stood in the dark and saw someone else’s pet lying dead on the wet street. I remember waking in the night, lying there worrying about whether or not the toilet might fall through the floor, then trying to figure out the best way to approach some temporary online data entry and editing work I’d just begun. My fingers were making little noises as they moved back and forth against the down blanket covering my ear, inadvertent motions, the scratchy sounds of my stress.

Where I Live (24)

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mountains, clouds, sky

I ride along the bike path on my way home from the farmers market, the San Jacinto mountains ranged before me. “Look where I live,” I whisper. I remember driving home from Santa Rosa on Guerneville Road, fields spread out beside me, the green rolling hills ahead. “Look where I live,” I’d say. I’d wiggle my butt on the seat, both hands on the wheel, dancing a little jig inside. I can go all the way back to Oakland, to that freeway junction I loved, from 580 to 24, I think. It ran in a wide climbing arc, the glory of the East Bay spread out below me. In Hopland I would sit on our wide stone porch and watch the rock outcropping change colors with the day, and I’d feel like I was living in a vacation rental. Then walking on the beach in Todos Santos, alone amidst scoops of brown pelicans, no one else in sight. Or riding the bus to San Juan Cosolá, ranchera music pouring out the open windows, my cheeks wet with grateful tears. I have been so lucky. But there is something about the San Jacintos that stirs me. And they are such a contrast to the lush farmland and oak woodland green of Sonoma County that evoked that first deep sense of wonder over where I lived. Now it is this stark, enormous nearby presence that makes my heart beat, breathes my lungs, these craggy rock mountains so alive I wonder if I can ever choose to live without them.

Buried Alive (23)

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I’ve always been a little claustrophobic. I want a window cracked when I drive. I remember fighting with Kay when I drove her to work. She wanted the window closed. I never had a good enough reason for insisting it stay open, only the vague sense of not being able to breathe. During the mountain fire last summer, I was driven inside for a week, windows closed against the choking smoke. My claustrophobia mounted as the week progressed, ash like thick gray snow coating the trailer, the courtyard, my sense of not being able to breathe pulsing through my days and nights. Then it came to me, the source of my claustrophobia. When I began sitting zazen in the early 1990s, I dreamed a past life. It’s the only time it was ever more than snatches, this one whole cloth. I was a priestess, or maybe royalty. I was expected to sacrifice myself for the good of my people. They were preparing to bury me alive. I had long brown hair, maybe seven feet of it or more. I lay down in the open grave, the dark, moist earth warm breath beside me. There were helpers who handled my hair. They gathered and folded it with care, laid it with gentle hands in a long narrow box above my head. Then they began to cover me with dirt. I remember being afraid, not of dying but of shaming myself by resisting, of struggling against them at the last moment. The earth got heavier and heavier, and somehow I was able to hold still. I remember my relief when I realized I was going to just lose consciousness from my lack of air, just drift off, not humiliate myself or my family. In my stifling hot tin can this summer when I felt like I was suffocating, I remembered my dream. “Of course I’m claustrophobic,” I mutter. No wonder. I laugh at myself for not putting it together earlier. “Duh,” I say. I roll my eyes. Being buried alive just might do that to you.