Category Archives: Thoughts

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.

First Bloom (22)

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tip of palo verde with yellow blossoms dangling

I glance up and see a new yellow blossom on our palo verde, Serena. It reminds me of April 29th, the first full day in our new home. I was sitting outside in the morning, and a little yellow bird came to perch in the tip of our tree. She was smaller then. I remember talking to the bird, thinking her visit was a good omen. Today I am surprised by this first bloom. But glad, too. It feels like she’s telling me she’s okay. I’ve worried about her all along, my first tree planted in the ground. Maybe this new burst of fragile yellow really is a message for me. Maybe she’s saying, “Don’t worry.” Maybe she’s saying, “I’m happy. You be happy, too.”

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.

Sitting in the Dark (20)

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light spilling out from kitchen window

This is something that needs saying. I’ve thought so again and again during the intervening months. It happened to me over and over through the long, grueling months of summer. Even though I was kind of a mess from our move. Even though my first foray into home ownership was riddled with distress. Even though in the bigger picture during that time I couldn’t have told you how glad I was we’d moved, couldn’t have said in any unequivocal way how much I loved our new home. Even though I’d crumbled in it all, I would still sit outside at night, and it would come to me in these small moments. I’d glance up at the kitchen window of our new old trailer home and see the light spilling out from it, and it spoke to me of welcome and all things good, all things inviting. “Look,” I’d say in the warm dark. “Just look at what we have.”

October 24, 2013 (18)

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What was different about today? It was the first in weeks, maybe, where I didn’t have school work waiting. And the day seemed to open up. I did my yoga. I did my qi gong. Not because I made myself do them. I had set no goals. But there was enough time and enough shade, so I unrolled my mats and lay down in our courtyard. Later, I moved my chair from under the umbrella so I could do my qi gong standing in the last bit of shade. And while I breathed, while I moved my arms, my legs, back and forth, again and again, through it all I heard a voice whispering in my ear. “I am here. I am here. I am here.”

[Editor’s note: Below this in my notebook it says, “It is, I think, a return to my peace. But I’m not sure how I got back here.” ;-) ]

Kicking into High Gear (17)

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For this last week I’ve been struggling with wanting to get more done. Coming off of vacation is never easy for me, and now I have a week to get ready for the next semester. I tell myself, too, after this past summer when I fell so spectacularly apart, it’s been a long time since I worked steadily at my peak. Last semester I did what I needed to do and little else, letting myself retreat to Netflix or a book when those must-dos were done, glad to just be functioning at all, I think, and precarious in it. I tell myself now it isn’t fair to expect to be able to flip a switch, to begin doing not only all sorts of extra things, but to be doing them all quickly. And besides, I point out with a wry grin, it just ain’t happenin’. But I’m not giving up hope. And maybe this is a good experiment. Because I’ve never figured out how to get into high gear without engendering more stress than I want in my life. So, maybe if I keep making this transition like molasses, I’ll get where I want to be without bricks for shoulders. When I begin cataloging what I need to accomplish my body clenches, even though I know I’ll get it all done. Still, my mean voice mutters about all the other things besides schoolwork I’ve been neglecting, nags me about the weeds in the driveway, the dirt from the construction site that’s piled up on the little shelf in the shower where the spray doesn’t reach. My mean voice has a long list, but I don’t want to listen, don’t want to even let the voice live in me. I pause with my pen above the page, take in a deep breath, let it out again. I see the hunter green umbrella poking out above the back fence, a happy reminder my neighbors are back from Canada. I hear a house finch singing in their tree, but I can’t see him. I scratch my head, yawn, grin. I’m going to focus a bit more on my writing today, then move on to some school prep. I’m going to sneak up on this full throttle stuff, I tell myself, and find a way to keep my peace.