Category Archives: Nature

Rubbing the Wrong Way (48)

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This morning the yoga class before our meditation runs a little long. I sit on the bench outside the door and pay attention to how annoyed it makes me. I wanted time to find my spot, get settled. I’d rushed the whole way, walking fast in the hot morning. I was sweating. It was the principle of the thing. The whole time part of me is incredulous. Was I really going to get all bent out because I had to wait a few minutes? The principle of the thing? Really?

A woman walks out of the studio smiling. My answering smile feels stiff on my face. A man comes out and sits beside me on the bench. He’s all blissed out from a good class, his movements slow and deliberate, taking it all in. I soften, feel the dumb irritation slide away.

My neighbor from Canada, one of our snowbirds though she hates that designation, keeps asking me if I’ve been away. “Are you okay?” she said one evening when I passed her sitting on the porch after picking up my mail.

“Yeah,” I said. But I bristled inside. Why would I not be okay? Today she asks me again if I’ve been gone. I’ve already explained why she might wonder. I haven’t been sitting in the courtyard. I no longer talk to my cats. I am a quieter neighbor these days. My work is quiet, too. “I haven’t been outside much,” I say again.

“Oh, well,” she says. “You need to get out. Get some fresh air.” I laugh and tell her how much it bugs me when she says things like that. I hate being told what to do. But the laugh is genuine, and I let it go. Later, I see two white-crowned sparrows sitting on the wall across the road. I talk to them through the open window for a moment before they fly away. I want them to winter here now every year, our true snowbirds. Maybe when they come back I’ll be sitting in the courtyard again.

In the late dusk the moon is a sickle in the southern sky. I realize I’m too tired. Everything chafes.

On My Behalf (45)

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One-day retreat at the meditation center. First two surprises: a silent retreat and “custody of the eyes.” I keep my eyes down except for three accidental glances, feel like a mouse scurrying by in the long grass. It amuses me. In the parking lot, looking at the southern mountains and eating my soup, it comes to me that I could break into wild winged dancing and waving of clothing, unseen (like the mouse). Our teacher breaks the silence now and then. She is calm, open, funny. Once she speaks of our soft animal bodies, and I think of the poem. She is like that to me, a soft animal, a big, peaceful bird, maybe, a brown pelican, part big cat, too, sleeping in the sun. While we sit I feel again the hard weight in my chest. I am reading Andre Norton now, and I think of quan iron, blue-green, touched by magic. A blade of quan iron inside my ribcage. I am fascinated by it, cultivating curiosity. I want to know it, sidestep the urge to be rid of it. I am certain it has worked long and hard on my behalf. I want to honor it. The fourth time we sit I feel so strong it surprises me, and when I check on the quan iron it’s as though my chest is in a different place than it was in the morning. When I come home I can tell there is much more room inside me. The next day, it is gone, but I remember how I felt larger. And I remember how strong I felt in that one sitting, like I was a big oak, or that tree whose name I don’t yet know with the gnarled bark who makes those big blossoms in the fall that litter the ground like starfish.

January 2nd (44)

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I hear dove wings through the window, afternoon feeding. Earlier today they scattered, and the Cooper’s Hawk sat on the top of the front gate. I watched him through the branches of the guayaba tree from my cozy perch inside. Today is my last day off, the last in a long, luxurious chain of days. I treated most of them the way I used to treat my Sundays, only doing what I felt like doing, letting the day unfold. I wrote twice, did yoga four times, once yesterday before the sun sank behind our mountains, rare sun salutes, my eyes closed, rich deep orange behind my lids. I baked cookies, ate cheddar cheese, made soup on New Year’s Day. One day I even did the crossword puzzle. Mostly I have read, tucked up in the down blankets, first my worn copy of Tigana and then two books from the library. In between, I let the book close and gaze at the mountains. I relish the quiet and the gift of being able to let my mind wander, to drift in happy, lazy spirals wherever it will. I idly wonder how many students have enrolled in my classes, how many login help requests we’ll have tomorrow. I dream seven ways I might have money come to make up for the upcoming loss of one of my jobs. I remember Sable purring and rubbing his face against the corner of the open carrier in the vet’s office on the day he died. Sometimes I cry. But mostly I am just present, sitting in this glorious sun-filled room, the mountains spread before me. I listen to the cheaps of the house finch at their sunflower seed feeders, and I am so glad for their company and for the sleek dove sitting on the wooden fence right now, and I give thanks for this beauty and this peace and the rich fullness of my heart.

Earthquake (43)

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new snow on the mountains with shadows and clouds

I wake up this morning to an earthquake. It is a long, gentle trembling of our world, the first one in my trailer home. It feels familiar, like I dreamed it or slept through another unknowing during the night. I wait in bed, poised to spring up, grab my clothes and sprint for the door if it becomes violent. After, I sit up to see fresh snow on the mountain, wisps of clouds, all tinted pink by the rising sun. My heart thuds, my own aftershock, but it calms soon, looking out the window. Later, the birds come and the sunlight touches the courtyard, slants through the clerestory windows, gift of the winter sun. I hear the heater, smell my walnuts toasting in the oven, appreciate warmth, electricity, running water, all still here after the earth shakes. I remember the quick leap of terror and am soothed again by the memory of that quiet pink mountain, the exquisite clear air and the truth that all is well.

Christmas Card Letter 2015 (42)

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red Christmas ornament in snow

Yesterday, the tenth day after my cat Sable died, I woke up happy for the first time in a long while. Today I wake up in the almost dark, Venus still vibrant in the southern sky and the solar Christmas lights glowing on the guayaba tree outside my window. It’s the first morning I don’t cry. The shock has lessened, though in moments I still reel. Sofia died in September. It’s hard to believe it’s only me here now, our little family of three gone. I glimpse things I’ll be able to do now without them, visits to friends, to Wilbur, to Mami, even just here in town, gone long hours, nothing tugging me home. Small snatches of excitement spark in me, mixed with a kind of guilt it’s easy to brush aside. I know I would gladly have stayed put to care for them forever. I miss those gentle tethers. Now it’s just me and the birds and the field mouse I met the other day in the shed. The house finch are loud and cheerful through the open kitchen window as I write. It makes a difference. My best truth today is knowing how much I cherished them, knowing I didn’t take them for granted. Sitting under the umbrella in the courtyard, the two of them napping on their pillows nearby, their furry forms relaxed in boneless cat abandon, and me knowing life didn’t get better than this. The sound of Sable clomping down the hallway, a galloping horse, the only way to run on this laminate flooring, and my heart lifting for his mad cat glee. And waking on a cold night warm beneath the down blankets, their small weights pressed against me making me feel like the luckiest woman in the world. I feel it still. And I know sweet things lie ahead. I cradle my big loss low in my arms, soft against my belly, grateful and alive. May the year ahead lie easy and dear to each of us.

[written on December 19th]

Clear and Present (31)

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In the early morning I am in and out of sleep, my restless, uncomfortable cat up and down and in my face, yowling, wanting me to fix him. I wake up angry with my helplessness, but I don’t realize it yet. Later in the day I will sit on the living room floor and cry, chin propped on my knees, until it all seeps out of me. But in the morning I am grouchy and don’t know why. I ride my bike to the farmer’s market. The air is not yet hot, the mountains clear and present. I think how idyllic it is, but it doesn’t touch me. I hear a clicking sound, something stuck in my front wheel. I stop, pick a thorn out of the tire. It hasn’t punctured it. I stand there straddling my bike, and a mockingbird begins to sing in a nearby fan palm. It is the first one I have heard in months. I take in my favorite pointy mountain to the south, the clean air, clouds to the west. I feel grateful to the universe for stopping me like this, for breaking me out of my grumpy out of sorts-ness, for letting me stand there on the bike path listening to this first mockingbird’s song and becoming a part of the day.

July 31st (21)

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book, notebook, binoculars, candles, altar things on patio table

It’s July 31st. I hear Carole King singing in my head and dream of waking up beside the man I love on the first day of August. Hers is a love song to summer. It’s not yet noon, over 100 degrees, muggy. Clouds piled against the mountains move toward us. One good thing: this weather gives us cleaner air. Second good thing: cicadas loud in the two trees. They change pitch, volume, breath, weave sound in and out, insect orchestra. I have just read the chapter of Natalie’s book where she talks about teachers, about Wendy. She is right. Wendy’s rich prose makes me envious. But right before, she tells us to copy Hemingway, to write a piece in one or two syllable words. I think: I do that. I don’t need to practice that. It’s organic, what comes to me. Today is the eve of the halfway point between midsummer and the fall equinox, the veil between the worlds thin. I make a small altar on the courtyard table: two tomatoes grown in the big terra cotta pot, bougainvillea, tecoma and Mexican birds of paradise from our garden, orange calcite, yellow citrine. I light one candle for this harvest time, for this turning of our world, and a second candle for all the beings I know who’ve died in recent months, feline, human, canine: Sunny, Auntie Christel’s brother in Germany, Bob, Colleen’s father, Annie. I ask for blessings on their spirits, on the ones left behind, still in bodies. May we honor both sides of this thinning veil. I take a deep breath, hear small chirpings in our tree. A verdin, I think. One lone dove sits on the wooden fence, Boo sprawled beneath the apricot mallow. Sofia comes outside, drinks water. Everything goes still. And then the cicadas begin to buzz again, and I draw another breath, keep my pen moving across the page. Sweat rolls down my right temple. My stomach growls. I twitch a fly off my forearm. I am in love with the last day of July.