Delights of the Day: 11.4.17

Tiny lizards darting around in the peeling bark of eucalyptus trees and scurrying in the sandy paths and low brush on top of the cliffs above the ocean

A pod of brown pelicans, swooping heavy and low, as they follow the lines of the long, long waves

A lone pelican far out at sea, diving straight down with all its might into the ocean, water splashing high from the impact, as it bobs back up to the surface

A young couple with children, the father bending down to show his blond, toddler daughter, something on the edge of the shore, the mother standing back a few feet, looking far out to the horizon, with a tiny little one snuggled in a pouch on her chest, with its face turned to the side and  one tender, sweet cheek peeking out

Four surfers riding the waves in tandem, in parallel twos, wave after wave

A group of friends pulling curiously at the gelatinous strands of giant sea kelp in a large knotted ball on the beach

Flocks of sandpipers and plovers poking their beaks in the sand looking for insects and moving in rhythm with the waves, just ahead of the water as it comes to shore

The sun bright in the cloudless blue sky

And among these delights, the random incongruities of Southern California, a whole other form of entertainment...

A man who's telling a friend he's healing from having his tooth pulled--"I've been healing all week."

Another man wearing a t-shirt that has the words "Spanish Inquisition" on it.  He smiles brightly and says "hi."

A deeply tanned, tautly muscled woman in her 40s or 50s runs past wearing a black bikini, her shoulders armored up around her ears, her jaw clenched tight.

Joggers, walkers, runners, surfers, singly or in clumps, wander out into the sun, along the cliffs, down the beach. 

Live from Southern California, it's Saturday morning!

Sightings at the Edge of the Universe: Light Wheels

One of the wonderful gifts of walking on the beach early in the morning is that I see things I have never seen before--life a hawk soaring with a big fish in its talons and the fish waving its tail in the air (see the previous entry)--and like light rays wheeling across the sky above the cliffs.

The other morning, about an hour after sunrise, I'm walking along a broad expanse of beach between high red clay cliffs and long, rolling ocean waves.  The sky is blue and bright, but the beach is still in shadow all the way up the cliffs.  The sand is cool and velvety under my feet.  The water is cold. The air, though, is dry, dry, dry.  The temperature had been in the 90s for days, creating an oppressive air. 

As I'm walking along in the surf, something catches my eye up over the cliffs.  Something big is moving up there.  I pause and look up.  Rays of light are arcing across the sky, forming a big color wheel.  Except it has no color, really, just a sparkling, shimmering light that's all colors and no color, and all light.  Somehow each ray is distinct, with straight lines formed by a darkening at the edges marking its boundaries.  And they are moving! 

The rays are narrow at the base and broaden out to the sky, and they circumscribe a semi-circle.  Even the top of the arc is discernible.  There's a beginning and end to it, but the rays never stop moving.  They rotate left to right, then right to left, on and on, back and forth continuously. 

I see my mind trying to understand, grasping at the familiar--maybe someone has set up a light on the cliffs or is swinging a lantern or it's an emergency vehicle light flashing--but no, none of that makes sense.  I stand and watch for quite some time, taking it in, and it just keeps going and going. 

I wonder how far I can walk and still see it, so I start walking and watching for the second it might stop.  About 20 feet down the beach, there's a slight break in the cliffs, a little dip, and that's where it stops.  The sun nestles right into the dip of the cliffs, a bright golden ball, and the sky is still, no rays of light.  I back up, and there's the wheel of light again sweeping across the sky.  I walk forward, and it's gone, and there's the sun.  Back and forth a few times, just to see, and every time it starts and stops at the point where the sun becomes visible in the dip in the cliffs.

Like a new kind of rainbow--still an arc--but the rays shine up from ground to sky and move continuously left to right and right to left and have no color--this light wheel cuts through the oppressive heat and shows me that new wonders are indeed possible.  It's all a matter of perspective and being in the right place at the right time and looking up.

Sightings at the Edge of the Universe: Hawk and Fish

Yesterday morning walking on the cliffs above the Pacific, I saw a large bird flying towards me, but it didn't look right somehow.  Was it a drone, some kind of mechanical toy?  I see pelicans and seagulls all the time, but this didn't look like them.  It was bigger.  And it came in parts--an above and below--like a 2-story bird.  Almost like it was carrying something.

It came closer, flying right overhead.

It was a hawk, a really, really big hawk.

And it had a fish in its talons.

A really, really big fish.  And the fish was flapping its tail.

Soaring there high above my head, they looked so peaceful, like friends out on a joy ride.

A few minutes later, I met a couple I know on the path, and they said, "Did you see that!?"

"Yes!"  I was relieved that they had seen it too.  That meant it was real.

The man was very excited.  "We saw it catch the fish!  But it dropped another one first.  It had one, but the fish got away when he was flying around the light pole.  He literally shrugged, like "agh!" He shrugged it off!  And then he was flying over the water, looking, and dove in, and came up with this one."

The woman added, "He was a very big hawk.  We saw his wing span.  At least 6 feet.  Huge!"

The man told his story again, emphasizing, "He just shrugged it off and went back and caught another one."

"You go back, Jack, and do it again," I said, and we all smiled, yep, all of us old enough to recognize a Steely Dan line.  "It's going to be a good day."

And it was.   A day full of unexpected delights and good company.  Except maybe for the fish.

Last Night on the Pacific Coast in Del Mar, California

Last night the sky was thick with blue.
Air, ocean, cliffs, palms, flowers, people, dogs, benches, everything blue, blue, blue--sky blue--all glowing, vibrating blue.

Then the sun dipped low over the ocean and under the long, thick line of clouds.
A blood orange crescent cut through, turning the ocean's surface orange-gray, and
Gradually revealing its whole big cherry red self.

Pink then gold shimmered across the ocean's surface,
Making the whole sky, the whole ocean, the whole world an opal,
With the sun its center glowing fire
Casting light in shifting aspect all around,
All perspectives glowing and alive with light.

Surfers caught waves, each ride like the sun breaking through the clouds.
Celebrants gathered all around on shore and cliffs, our eyes like personal suns registering the light until we shone like opals too.

A Hummingbird Lands on a Twig

This morning walking my cat Nobiya, a hummingbird buzzed about 3 feet in front of us and landed delicately, lightly, perfectly on a tiny bare twig, barely an eighth of an inch in diameter, sticking out from a small tree. 

I often snap those twigs off as we walk, tidying up the place.  A clean, easy snap, so satisfying.

It never occurred to me they served a purpose just as they were.

Nobiya, crouching and looking straight out at the ground, doesn’t even appear to notice the bird.  I stand in awe, watching.  The bird’s throat is green, then a flash of scarlet, then green, back and forth, in sync with tiny movements of its head.  A ruby-throated hummingbird, I think, as the words come slowly back to me from the hours I spent as a child looking at pictures of birds and memorizing their names.  Minutes pass.  I make a micro-move, and the bird buzzes to the next tree and sits down on another tiny twig.

I will never thoughtlessly snap off those twigs again.  They make fine perches.

A Hummingbird Sips Nectar from a Eucalyptus Tree

Video cameras are banned from the White House Press Room.  Really, really bad guys are running the US government and hell-bent on destroying civil society so they can plunder at will.  They are zombies.  “Must have more for me, more for me, more for me.  Kill the others. Kill the others,” their constant refrain.

Meanwhile I stand rooted to the earth, as my cat rests under the shade of a giant overgrown eucalyptus tree on a neglected, chaotic corner of a crumbling, over-priced apartment complex on the edge of the continent, a block away from the eroding cliffs above the Pacific.

We are all holding on as best we can to this earth, this place, our humanity and spirit and compassion, in the face of relentless, soulless assaults on all we hold dear.  Every moment of joy and peace and love, of anger and truth-telling and standing up for what we believe is creating a new world.

Remain calm and practice tai chi and yoga and meditation.  Sing, pray, move, stand, sit, whole body, whole heart, whole being.  Protest, march, write, share.

I stand in the sun.  My cat lies in the shade by the root of the tree.  My roots spread down from my waist through my legs and feet like a web throughout the whole planet, yielding to earth’s gravity, as my spine lightens and lifts, and my crown opens to the gravitational pull of all the other heavenly bodies. Filaments of light permeating all, a web that cannot be destroyed because it cannot be grasped, yet responds to every touch.

A hummingbird sips nectar from the tree.

It is so sweet.

The eucalyptus, an aromatic blue gum tree, is an invasive species in California that kills off natives, especially understory plants.  On this hillside, its shallow roots and strips of bark cover the dirt.  Invasive weeds that are the only plants to grow in its shade take hold.

The tree has been allowed to grow huge and hairy.  I long to trim it, even more to cut it down, uproot it, and remove the other one too and the two root stumps, and the dead palm tree, and make a garden here.  The landlord, though, has other ideas—a dog run, supposedly—but in truth, just neglect.  It disturbs my soul.

And yet, a hummingbird sips nectar from the tree, my cat rests in its shade, and I stand in the midst of it all.  I don’t know what to do yet, but bear witness, and say that when I saw the hummingbird sip the nectar, I felt five years old again and my heart softened with delight. 

In the midst of all this chaos and confusion, may each of us in our own ways experience such soft, tender, heart delight.  May all of our efforts to create a peaceful, happy home on this earth come from this place and make it so.

Bonding with Nature, Part 8: The Fine Art of Watching

Two huge eucalyptus trees rise high outside my living room window.

The hillside around them is my cat Nobiya’s favorite place to explore.

I take him out for walks every morning, and he teaches me the fine art of watching.

He runs down the stairwell, stops, sniffs the air, looks around, pauses.

Then usually he makes his way up a short concrete stairway to the hillside shaded by the trees and covered with strips of bark they shed like cat’s fur—bits of it everywhere.

Their roots are shallow and extensive, curving up and around, protruding out of the earth at odd angles.

This morning

Nobiya lies in the curve of the exposed shallow root of the eucalyptus tree.

He stretches out and sharpens his claws--

His body a perfect curve 

Aligned to the root.

He jumps up, looks about,

Finds another root and stretches out upon it like a ledge--

The root’s been roughly cut and rises up out of the ground a jagged edge--

His body fits it perfectly. He sharpens his claws.

Tail swishing, he seeks out grass to nibble

Bird trills

Lizard still, frozen on another root of another tree 

Nobiya makes his way there

Sniffs the air

Settles down on the earth in the crook of a root,

Alert, looking, watching, waiting for something to move, to shift,

Everything charged and worthy of attention every moment,

From the shade of the eucalyptus tree, Nobiya watches.

Two lizards appear on cement blocks in the sun.

They are still. 

Watching without looking.

Nobiya doesn't move, except for the twitching of his tail, which never stops. 

Watching without looking.

One lizard starts doing pushups—a lizard cobra pose--then darts away to another block, does more push-ups, darts away--

Nobiya's tail is still.

His head turns one way, then another.

The yogi lizard reappears on blocks a few feet away, does pushups, disappears.

Meditating lizard doesn't move.

Bluebonnets of East Texas, 1961

My sister Kim and I in a field of bluebonnets, the Texas state flower, Easter 1961, road between Rockdale and Cameron, Texas. She was 1; I was 2 3/4 years old, according to my Dad's note on the back of the photo. I remember the occasion very well. It was hot and sticky, and the sun was bearing down on us, and there were bugs everywhere, and there were grass burs and stickers, and we were afraid of snakes and didn’t want to get our dresses and shoes dirty, and it was itchy in our Easter dresses, and we were crying and complaining. But our parents insisted, and they always loved this photo.  My mother had it framed in her home when she died, and I have it now--a small frame made of ivory-colored bone with an oval opening for the photo, which has faded on the outside, but not on the inside.  Happy birthday, Kim, February 18, 1960, and every year.  Forever, may your light shine.

Haikus for these times: Breath

My breath is a kiss

From inside to outside and

Back and forth with God

Haikus for these times

I have been watching
The unreality show
I wish it would stop.

Antarctic ice shelf cracks

Seventeen miles, two months

Nothing to see here...

Crack in Antarctic Ice Shelf

Do you really want

To destroy all life on earth?

What are you doing?

Today a young man

Told me others are using

Pseudonyms in case

Night falls under clouds

Covering earth and water

And I am the sky.

Imagine

Imagine if someone had run as a Republican who had Donald Trump's exact same policy positions and exact same wealth and experiences, exact same personality, exact same reputation in business, exact same kind of spouse and marital history, exact same performance in the debates, exact same refusal to release taxes, exact same potential conflicts of interest, exact same videotaped remarks about how he treats women, and exact same number of women accusing him of sexual assault, and gave the exact same types of speeches, and so on--everything was exactly the same--but he was a black man. 

And almost every one of his followers was black. And his main advisor was a black nationalist known for his extensive propagation of propaganda. 

Or he was any color other than white. 

Or he was a woman.

Walls

If you think building a wall is a good idea, please come see what one actually looks like and talk to people on both sides of the wall. 

Visit Jacumba Springs, CA, for instance, with its lovely natural spring and the remnants of a spa town, renowned for its healing waters. See how in the midst of this wide open beautiful desert landscape, there is a barrier, an ugly scar destroying the continuity of the land, blocking the free movement of beings. It feels like a violation, See how it strangles and distorts communities on both sides of the wall, creating poverty and addiction and suspicion and fear and isolating people, limiting their options. Imagine what it was like when there was an open border and people crossed freely back and forth, sharing cultures and enlivening one another and creating a robust economy. 

Visit an actual wall. Talk to actual people. Feel what such a wall does to the land, the people, the beings who live on the land, and to the heart of this country.