Little Things

When an accidental smile jostles you, a light is thrown and shadows cast, as if in a play; poetry ensues.

I was in a distracted frame of mind, doing errands, oblivious to breathing, walking and daylight.  I pushed through the door of Grove Market and stood aside for an elderly woman approaching the entrance.  She looked at the sign below the handle of the door I'd just come through and read it:  No backpacks or dogs allowed inside.  She looked up at me and said, "No backpacks, dogs, or..." and pointed at me and bathed me in a smile.  I looked at her beaming there, her white hair and hunched body.  The smile trumped everything, and then turned into a quick little giggle.  Charmed, I was sent somewhere else, and I stayed there all day.

I had seen the twinkling little girl smiling from her dried-apple face.  Her dark eyes twinkled and danced; she wore a red jacket, some strands of her white hair fluttered like little flags.  Her smile teased its sister out of me, over and over.

Another day, I was sitting at my table where sat a vase holding a chrysanthemum from a friend's garden. I was writing checks, paying bills, crossing items off my list.  All of a sudden, every single petal on the flower landed with a soft plop on the tabletop, heaping up in a small pink pile.  Just like that.  It's the only thing I remember from the day, the sudden odd event, the abrupt demise of something that seconds before had been a picture of delicate perfection.

Odder, weirder things have happened spontaneously, fatefully, and without warning.  You wonder all sorts of things -- probably the best result of unpredictable small events.  A shift in reality, a spark, maybe just the spark you'd been missing in the day nudges you out of boredom, dullness or complacency to a new realm where your imagination plays.  Surprise springs from nowhere, shakes us back to alertness and out of the descent to a bleak, dull existence.  Long may we play.

Characters on Strike

Hey, what's going on here!?

I had just developed a character, a small woman with large hands who sings loudly in the shower every morning.  She was just about to talk to the neighbor walking down the sidewalk when she took a look at me and ran off my keyboard and scuttled away.  Lost her.

Another character emerged who had just had a tooth pulled at the dentist and was on her way to the drug store for her medicine, but she locked her keys in her car at the grocery store first and started crying uncontrollably.  She's sitting on the top of the computer screen and still won't stop crying.  I'm afraid her tears will short out the computer.  I need a towel.

The dentist, an old-fashioned man with a strong sense of duty to his patients and a wife who sleepwalks to the fridge every night to binge on Snackwell cookies and chocolate milk, has closed his door for the day at his practice, said good-bye to his assistant and now refuses to talk.  He's actually skulking over in a corner but won't say why.

The clock is ticking, the coffee is all gone, I am tired and no one is cooperating.

This is like having a teenager in the house who refuses to help with the dishes and won't clean up their room.  I'm beginning to believe my characters are on strike for higher pay, members of a fiction characters union.  I've told them I will have to go ahead and invent some other times, places and people, but they just wave contracts at me insolently.  They are sittin' tight, and I am gettin' nowhere.

Is it possible to negotiate?  Find common ground?  Or do I have to just order them back on the page?  It feels like they have the edge on me for the moment.

The old saw says, "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach."  Maybe these people are hungry and need feeding.  I'll have to read back through my draft and see about providing food, a little snack, a cookie.  Could be they need a drink, of course.  That is a device that loosens tongues, noir and otherwise.

The dentist perked up there when I thought about giving him a drink.  His sleepwalking wife must be taking quite a toll on him.  The sobbing woman sitting up there on the monitor, wetting my keyboard with her tears, looks tired and in need of some soothing broth or soup.  But, the lady who sings loudly in the shower is just gone.  I don't think I'll be seeing her again.

Two out of three seem open to labor negotiations and are looking hopeful.  I wish I'd known about this Union thing before I started writing or I'd have gone down to the corner, hired a day laborer from Mexico or El Salvador and learned some Spanish.

The Phantom Monte Carlo

The moon has floated up into the night sky like a big silver bubble and cast its sequined black cape down on the bay.  Almost always the little town of Pacific Grove is pretty quiet after dark, quiet as The Grave that school kids call it. 

A couple of years ago, we would go walking every morning before dawn.  The town was still sleeping, mostly.  No traffic, no noise; dark, with a hint of dawn coming up.  The sidewalks are flat, city blocks are long and straight, and most streets are parallel to one another.  You can see a long way down them while you walk along.  We'd take a different route every morning and have a look around, peering through the darkness, with only the odd sulfurous orange light from street lamps to prevent us stumbling in the gutters.

Raccoons living in the city's storm drains sometimes shuffled across the street.  I'd see them turning to flip us off or drink from a bottle carried in a old brown bag.  Like the cops didn't know.  Not much else was out moving around, but we liked it like that.  

We set out one morning, walking along Junipero Street, keeping a steady pace, heading west, feeling a chill in the air.  It was summer, when it's coldest here, and damp fog had drifted in low like a shroud.  In the distance, a late-model car crossed the street, going south, and disappeared.  We walked on for another few minutes, talking and keeping a good pace, trying to warm up.  There it was again.  The old sedan crossed the street again in the distance, going north, same speed, and disappeared.  Crossing Cedar Street, still on Junipero, we looked south and saw the dark silhouette of  the '73 Monte Carlo, over on Granite, parallel to our path. It was low slung, swooping along, a metal haunt, dark and quiet. It disappeared again.  The fog was damp on our jackets, like cold sweat.  

We turned right after a few blocks and began to head north.  The Monte Carlo appeared again, heading south on the street we were walking.  It powered directly on for two blocks and then swept quickly past us, then around a corner, careening into its turn with an eerie rush of rubber on asphalt and heavy chassis slung low.  The driver's silhouette was barely visible; he wasn't moving - if he was there at all.  The car slipped out of sight and then from street to street, taking no predictable turns or course that we could tell, now here, now there, veering, turning, disappearing, reappearing at random intervals on who knows what mission.  Then silence.

Seconds after we'd just seen it, the phantom Monte Carlo was far away, crossing the street again the opposite direction, quietly sweeping from left to right, gleaming dully in the sulphur lamplight.  Then it was gone.  

Something like that wakes you up in the morning quite a bit more than a cup of coffee does.  Unsolved mystery in a benign and sedate town like this is far too full of intrigue and import.  Here I am still wondering about it to this day.  If you see it out there in the dawn, check to see if there really is a driver.  I wasn't that sure.  

No Logic for the Neurotic in PG

I'm convinced Pacific Grove's weather was invented by a Swiss man whose world was precise, logical and finely regulated.  Every day at 1 PM, the sun gets hazy and a breeze springs into action.  Leaves and dust that have been diligently swept into the gutters by our citizenry is immediately airborne and sent back from where it came as well as through every open window in town.

The immediate question springs to mind:  Why bother sweeping and raking at all?

In PG, that's a rhetorical question, almost a philosophical one, for which I have no certain answer.  It does defy logic, to an alarming degree.

I want to go up to people and explain the weather certainties, tell them about the Little Swiss Watchmaker God of Pacific Grove Wind who has set the breeze to lift at 1 PM.  I want to soothe their anxiety about neatly raked lawns left unkempt.  I believe if they would just simply leave (pardon the pun) for a few days, escape the confines of this peninsula of the Peninsula, they would be less neurotic about their compulsion to rake and neaten every morning, when the air is still, before the wind comes up.  They say that pacing bears in zoos need mental outlet, diversion, entertainment.  Raking citizens of The Groove would surely benefit from similar diversion and activity.

Don't even get me started on leaf blowers.

Comment Help

Hi Reader!  I've let a few days go by since I posted information about how to comment on my blog.  


Younger readers are doing fine for the most part, but the gray foxes in my readership are still struggling and some are even giving up!  No, do not give up!  Breathe deeply and read on.  Here's help:


First of all, you need some definitions of terms, so...
1.  A "post" is the individual day's writing.  The title of today's post is called Comment Help.
2.  The "blog" is the whole kaboodle, all posts I've written.  My entire blog is called Specific Groove.  
3.  When you subscribe to my blog, you are receiving posts in your inbox for email.  You are probably not receiving the entire blog site.  


To comment:  Look at your email and click on the BLUE underlined words at the top that say Specific Groove.  That will open up my whole blog, so you can then read the current post and other posts that are older.  


At the bottom of the post, you'll see a different kind of writing (font) that will say something like this:  


1 comment


Click on that and a small box will open up, probably to the left.  Write in the comment box, probably outlined in blue.  When you have finished, click on Submit.  There will also be a box below some wavy wiggly letters.  Copy them in the box (for security purposes).  You will also see a list of choices of how you want to identify yourself to others who read my posts and read comments.  You can be anonymous if you wish.  


Now is the anxiety-inducing part for the gray foxes (baby boomers and older):  Your comment won't appear immediately!  This is because you are most likely only reading the post for the day, not the entire blog site.  To see your comment, you can go to specificgroove.blogspot.com and scroll down to the bottom of the post that you commented on, click on the teeny tiny word comments  and you'll open up your comment and any others that have been left.  


I think this should be helpful.  Just remember:  Open the entire blog by clicking on Specific Groove at the top of the email that you receive or go to specificgroove.blogspot.com   


Whew!  Good luck.  Post a comment now for practice.  Patience is a virtue!  You can do it!  I'll keep checking for your comments and keep writing, too, of course.  It's been interesting so far.  

Mad Dash Home

Years ago, a scrum of engineers burst forth from a committee meeting with plans in hand and a gleam in their eye.  Time to build a new and updated Highway 101, they announced.  That spelled disaster for Santa Rosa, a once pretty city filled with pleasant and sedate streets, fine citizens and bucolic views of fertile farmland on all four sides.  The result of the engineers' crazed stares was a freeway slammed down on the midsection of the town like a cleaver on a beautiful cake. The town was effectively cut in two and any sense of cohesion and centralized organization was ruined.

When you drive around the city now, you feel you are moving through the equivalent of a Picasso painting:  A cubist representation of a pretty lady that seems to have left a lot of what was feminine off the canvas.  Santa Rosa, you'll discover, is found in sections here and there; remnants of its formerly lovely self divided up and separated, one from another, but still alive and kicking.

I stayed overnight at the North Bay Inn, a motel on what was once the main north-south thoroughfare of Santa Rosa before the new freeway was built.  The hotel has recently been fluffed and polished, looks and acts like a Best Western Hotel, but the price for the night's stay was only $69.  Right in the middle of town, right in the middle of wine country.

I left for home and drove on the very freeway that had bifurcated the town, heading south, back home.

It was a pretty drive south, but it was also kind of like looking at Ireland on steroids.  That is, there was much faster driving, much uglier buildings along the way, higher hills, but every hill was just as green.  I actually saw a few sheep, but even they were bigger than what I saw in Ireland.  Everyone everywhere seemed to exude a sense of urgency, energy and single-minded haste to get away from whatever they were leaving behind, roaring down the road like madness itself.

San Francisco, a city with few visual equals, looked like a glittering platter piled up with jewels and treasure.  It beckoned in the distance, distracting me from "The Bridge" (The Golden Gate), one of the top ten scenes most likely to promote an outburst of singing in the United States.  You could write and exclaim for your whole life long about the city, its qualities and facets, and then you'd have to start all over again because the city is always a new kind of gorgeous no matter when you see it or from what angle.  Today, it shone like a promise, dazzling in the midday sun.

I'd have liked to have eddied out of the snorting, roaring river of automobiles, straight into the arms of San Francisco, but I had no spare time.  She deserves a long admiring gaze, which I will be happy to give her on another day, at a much slower pace.

From the Groove to Graton

I've jumped the groove and hit the road for a quick hello to loved ones in Santa Rosa.  Mighty fine day in the land of wine and roses.  Lots of wine.  Floods of wine, countless vineyards, but not so many roses yet.  For now, it's mock pear trees exploding with white balls of flowers as if a wacky band of nature's elves got the same idea:  It's Spring - Do Something! And they flew around gluing popcorn, massive amounts of popcorn in large balls, all over every available fruit tree in the area.

I had lunch in Graton (a few miles west of Santa Rosa, north of Sebastopol) at the Willow Wood Cafe on the tiny main street (Graton Road) in this tiny town of 700 people.  It's not your average burger-and-fries cafe but worth every penny - the service is warm, generous and very attentive.  Artists bursting with talent display their work on the walls.  One painting's subject was a tyrannosaurus rex hiding in some treetops looking down on four Victorian women who looked up with frozen screams, all set in a lush green forest.  Kind of like Jurassic Park Meets Pacific Grove.  Somehow, it worked.

Lunch was a pile of sauteed-to-a-turn eggplant and bell peppers hugged by crisped foccacia bread.  I didn't lick the plate, but I really, really wanted to.

An artists' co-op gallery just up the sidewalk served as further creative inspiration.  I bought a vase - handmade and exquisite - to hold budding flowers from my garden when I get home again.

Home tomorrow and back to the Groove.  Every time I get to poke around in this area, especially in Spring and Fall, I find so much to feast my eyes on.  Even if I hadn't filled up on a delicious lunch, I still would have been all topped off with the panoramas of vineyard prettiness and screwball creativity to a degree that seems unfair to compare to the rest of the world.

Spin Cycle

There's a long sloping sand hill at Carmel Beach.  Go to the bottom of Ocean Avenue, take off your shoes when you get to the end of the street, walk across the fine sugar sand due west, facing the ocean, and look down the steep slope.  Now what?  Isn't it obvious?  Forgotten how to play?

Start running really fast, downhill.  Your legs try to make you fly and then can't keep up with you.  So, just go with it:  Tumble and roll until you are all sandy, on spin cycle.

You jounce, bounce and tumble until the slope flattens out.  Foomp! You are laid out flat and laughing, looking up at the raucous gulls with the beach looking like its just gone drunk and wobbly.  You're out of air because you're laughing.  Then, you can scream and yell if you want because it's the beach where the waves swallow your human noises like a hiccup.

The wild tumble will zap your molecules and make you little again.  Lie there on your back in the warm fine sand,  and fill up your nose with the heady perfume of sand and shells and summertime.

You could get up and rumble up the hill like a steam engine and breathe hard and make your legs burn going back to the top.  You could do that, take the option on another crashing, rocking and rolling trip down the hill.

Launch your crazy legs wild again and get up to liftoff velocity.  Then dive into your judo roll and be a captive of gravity.  Be the andromeda, with stars shooting off your body, spinning out into space, sparking and crackling.  Pile up in a heap when the beach wins out over gravity and look across the mile of white undulations of the beach, watch the distant playing dogs at bug's-eye level, breathe like a new human because you are exactly that.  

Jump over the edge of the big sand dune and dump a load of foolishness off your shoulders.  Newton discovered gravity so you can play on the beach on a warm day.  That's what science is really for you know.

Flying a Kite

Ruffling breeze, kite-flying weather, springtime on the coast.

As grade-school kids in Carmel Valley Village, we were free to play on the Tularcitos Elementary School field after we'd gone home, changed into "play clothes," and gathered up our kites and reels.  We walked the quarter mile to get back to the field, chattering about our kites, their tails, the string we had, past kite-flying exploits and legendary disastrous crash landings.

The field itself was a long mowed-weed expanse bounded on the east end by chain-link fence, the south by a nursery and a swampy meadow, the west by school structures and blacktop playground and to the north by a shallowly sloped section of the field.  The prevailing wind blew from west to east steadily, and in spring it was especially dependable.

Our kites were homemade rigs made of balsa wood, string, glue and any kind of sturdy paper we could use.  My brother's kite was made of two colors of transparent cellophane, which gave it a more admirable appearance than the usual shiny thin paper kites were usually made of.  Most of the time, we had bought kits and put them together with glue and dreams.

The finishing touch was the tail of the kite, a thing of beauty and mystery.  Everything about the kite's  ability to handle the wind and varying air depended on the perfection of the tail.  For us, this meant tying a rag onto the kite with knots in it and experimenting with the number of knots and the length of the rag that would trail in the breeze.

Once we had made a decision about the balance and weight of the tail and the kite together, we got a ball of cotton string, put a stick through the ball to use as a handle and sent the kites aloft.  With one hand gripping the kite's leading triangle of string and holding it up and behind us, we ran into the wind and felt the kite lift off.  You'd play the line, tugging on the line to gain more and more lift while you played out the string steadily.  If your kite was noodling around up there and veering side to side drunkenly, you knew either the tail was not doing its job or the string was too slack.  Tensioning the string and then playing it out, eventually you'd get your kite up to a height where it seemed to take the wind in its teeth and run.

Then, you'd play out your line slowly but surely and hope you could get it to stay up and eventually nearly disappear in the distance.  That was the coolest of all.  You'd have to have several big balls of string knotted together, end to end, to begin with, or you'd never have any hope of disappearing your kite.  If the wind was right and you had a zillion miles of string, and if you played the line with skill, the kite would fly steadily away to be a speck in the distance.  Then, the only way to tell you still even had a kite flying was the steady tug in your hands as you held the stick handles.

Kids would stand holding their reels of string, facing east, tug on them once in a while and scan the horizon and sky for birds and signs of slower air or -- worst of all -- the wind to stop blowing.

My brother would say, "I think my kite is about five miles away by now. I can't even see it. It's a goner."  He, being the oldest kid, would have appropriated as much string as possible, developed the best tail for his kite and built the sturdiest one.  I tried to make a kite as good as his, but mostly I just admired his superiority in secret while I tried like mad to beat his kite-flying skills.

One day, his kite was so far gone I wasn't even sure he had it anymore, but I didn't say so.  We saw the line played far out east, kind of sagging in the middle, pulled gently down by gravity.  After I'd had my kite up a reasonably long time, I began winding the string back onto the roll again and bringing it back to me.  My brother started rolling, too, but nothing came back.  The string had broken, the kite flown to Mars or crashed down onto someone's tree or rooftop.

Looking dismal and glum, he had to admit his kite-flying days were ended until he could build another.  It would be awhile before he could amass that much string again.  He was a good scrounger; his string reel had been admirably fat.  The kite had been a beauty, strong and true, a legend already, not so easy to replace.

Feeling an esprit de corps, I gave him my kite to carry home, entrusting him with that honor.  He walked quietly, but I had a feeling he was scheming and planning to build the ultimate kite.  My place as best kite handler was perhaps to be short lived, but the title was rightfully mine since my kite had gone the farthest without crashing.  It was a bittersweet thing, winning a title over my big brother by beating him at his game, knowing he had no intention of letting me keep the honor and admiring him all at the same time.

He looked intently at the tail of my kite, "I think if you add an extra knot to your tail, it could fly even farther."

"Okay, but it flew a long way anyway."

"Yeah, just sayin'."

"'kay."

"Race you home!"

He won the race home and I never flew my kite farther than his ever again.

Writer's Inspiration

Debatable Statement:  Writers should write about what they know best.

I disagree, but I understand the premise.  If we wrote only what we know, where would Oz be now?  Frank L Baum might surprise us with his answer if he were alive today.  I'm guessing he and other fantasy writers would say that Oz really was what he knew the best.  I listened to a writer who said she prefers to spend as much time with her characters as possible because their lives were rich, interesting and intriguing. Mr. Baum might have spent quite a bit of time with Dorothy and Toto and other more bizarre characters in Oz than he did in his "real" world.  Aren't we the lucky ones now, too?

Young Alex Welton, a high school senior here in Pebble Beach was featured on the front page of our local paper today.  He wrote his first novel, yet to be published, over the course of five months.  He wrote every single day, five hours a day.  He is the rare young person who feels the same about time as old people do.  That is, there is not much of it in a day, so don't waste it sitting around complaining and being bored.  Get busy with something; before you know it, you'll have spent a thousand hours at it and you'll be an expert.

Note to self:  Write about whatever the heck you want, but write about it and write a lot, every day.

Commenting

Hi Brave Readers,

In response to a request or two sent to my personal email (not necessary after you read the following), I have searched for and found the settings for moderating comments here on Blogger.  I changed settings so that your comments should now be posted instantly instead of being moderated by me on my email address first.  You will see a word verification aspect that's supposed to reduce spammers from mucking up the fun, but the comment - according to what I've read - should be posted immediately.

A few of you commented to me - again, on my personal email - what your favorite road songs are, as I posted yesterday.

The initial list consists of these gems:

Give It To You - G Love and Jack Johnson
Runnin' Down A Dream - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Speedway at Nazareth - Mark Knopfler
Suite Judy Blue Eyes - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
On the Road Again - Willie Nelson

Keep 'em coming!  I'll list all submitted suggestions; always looking for new ideas in music.

Road Songs

In the interest of brevity (I have no more than a few minutes today to write, which is awful), I ask you:

What are your top five favorite road songs of all time?

I have a mental list going of my Gittin' Down The Road songs, but I want to make a CD for my next trip, and I'd like some suggestions, new ideas; I'm open to that.  I love certain songs for this reason:  They remind me of other road trips that I've been on.  Pretty simple, but the fact is the trips were unusually good, important or crazy.  You know the kind of song I mean, too.

I'll start with this one:  Graceland - Paul Simon

It has punctuated so many good trips that it's almost a requirement to listen to - a good luck talisman - and without it, I do not feeling truly in my groove.

Okay, your turn.

The Merced River Trail

The knees of the old hills were spread with green chenille quilts. Far above them stretched a pale blue and gauzy sky.

Here I was, tromping along a trail built by gold miners in 1849, giddy with the sight of wildflowers and a rushing river below me.  However, back in 1849 the energy and industry of a few thousand gold seekers was phenomenal, unparalleled.  But, it was short lived; I saw their water flume lying in heaps and tatters as I hiked, and all but the flat road they engineered in ruins.

The miners built things in rugged mountains that were home to magnificent rampaging rivers, landslides, blizzards, summer drought and stinging insects.  They constructed difficult things like railroad tracks and beds, bridges, flumes, pumping stations, diversion canals and trestles.  They tore all through the mountains and hills, digging, blasting and dredging like madmen, all driven crazy by the lure of gold.  Those men were tough, determined, and persisted with ridiculously primitive tools and equipment.

I saw a different kind of gold today -- nature's gold -- millions of flowers that sometimes looked like a delicate organza film on the towering hillsides but up close became clouds of petite petals on waving stems.  Probably the thousands of forty-niners back then noticed flowers in lush spring blooms similar to today's, but I would bet they didn't pay them much attention unless they were homesick for a sweetheart or wife they'd left back in New England.

The Merced River Trail is a popular trail easily accessible by the public.  It follows the railroad bed that was built in gold rush days where a fat little single-gauge train ran.  Across the rushing stream, on the opposite bank, traces of the old flume built by the men back in the day are still visible but lie in ruins; nature has torn it all apart with rockslides, wind and snow storms.

Cloaked on both flanks by wildflowers and dramatic rock outcroppings, it was a challenge to keep eyes on the trail at times.  The trail is mostly flat and ranges from single-lane road to narrow hiking trail, with no drinking water or toilet facilities available along its length.  Access to the trail is reached after driving or mountain biking along a dirt road that connects with the Briceburg Visitors Center on Hwy 140, 15 miles east of Mariposa.  We walked from the beginning of the trail to the confluence of the main stream with its tributary, The North Fork, a round-trip walk of about five miles.

The gold rush exploded along the Merced in 1849 and for a few years afterward, but it died just as quickly.  Hobby miners try their luck at panning still, but when faced with wildflowers in such abundance as I saw today, I felt far luckier than the men back in the gold rush and didn't do nearly the work to enjoy my riches.

Yosemite for a Day

From Mariposa, the road climbs to just below 3,000 ft at Midpine Grade and then descends immediately down and around many curves and bends to the deep and narrow confines of the Merced River and its tributary, the South Fork of the Merced.  It's rugged terrain, steeply pitched, prone to giant burns in dry years; the worst on record just two years ago burned for two or three weeks and scorched thousands of acres.

We had an opportunity to tour a spectacular private home overlooking the South Fork.  It sits far above the stream like an eagle in its aerie, affording a view of the backcountry that was just amazing.  The slopes leading down to the river were strewn with vivid orange poppies, mustard, composites and the oddly named blue dick.  Redbud trees, dressed in a deep lavender, accented the road edge and digger pines that look ghostly and pale amid scrub and blue oak-covered embankments above the river dominated views in every direction in lower altitudes.  The home is very unusual in design for the area, with almost no 90-degree angles, a seamless use of indoor and outdoor space, but is off limits to public view.  There is a very beautiful hiking trail that begins at Savage Trading Post and heads up along a steep flank above the South Fork for five miles.  Beginning now and lasting for the next two months, this trail is one of the top ten in the country for spectacular beauty and wildflower viewing.  Highly recommended by our hosts, but not possible this trip.  Maybe next time.

After a warm good-bye, we piled into the car and drove up to Yosemite National Park where we spent the rest of the day admiring Bridalveil Falls, Yosemite Falls, the Ahwahnee Lodge  (a wonderful treat for the eyes and tongue), The Ansel Adams Gallery and points along the way.  At this point, the Merced River is not at full spring run-off, but the major falls are all bounding white, and easy to see.  The meadows and trees ares till brown and dry; no buds or green in evidence just yet.

This was the first somewhat busy day in the park for the year - the beginning of Spring Break - so the favorite tourist photo-op sites were thronged with visitors but nothing compared to summer weekends.  I noticed hundreds of jagged broken branches on oaks and pines, downed wood lying all around in jumbled heaps; it's all damage sustained after a heavy wet snowfall in January that was just too much for overloaded branches.

After a full day of walking, we were footsore and tired.  With our "dogs" barking and appetites starting to speak up again, we said good-bye to the jewel of the Sierra and drove quietly back to Mariposa for dinner and a good night's rest.

Trip to Mariposa and the Merced

Driving from Monterey to Mariposa across the Central Valley is simple:  Go east.

First, you traverse the coastal agribusiness fields including rolling strawberry and artichoke fields, saying farewell to the coast.  You must travel along the perpetually congested Hwy 101 then, one of the busiest corridors of trucking in the entire northern part of the Golden State.  Take another connector road past San Juan Batista and Hollister before traveling over the formerly infamous Pacheco Pass (until it was re-engineered fatalities were common) which today boasts some of the most iconic California coastal valley land visible from any roadway.  Today, it offered a tableau of green on green with the earliest spring blooms spread across fields and shallow slopes.

Once you've crested that pass, you see the San Luis Reservoir and beyond that the immense Central Valley that is the bountiful lap of the state.  It's a long flat drive through Los Banos and then Merced, both farming towns where large communities of farm workers live and commute to various fields and jobs throughout the valley.  As you head further east out of Merced the lumpy terrain of the foothills begin to show up with crags of schist and granite poking up like headstones in an insane graveyard.  Today, the boulders and crags were splashed with brilliantly colored lichens and mosses, an artist's palette run amok.

A steady winding climb through oak-studded hills brings you at last to Mariposa County and its seat Mariposa.  Total county population is 17,000.  

We ate at the burger joint with the bright yellow gigantic sign that screams Happy Burger Diner and then headed further east to see a wild and scenic river, the Merced River.  The air was warm and clear.  Black-Eyed Susans, poppies, clouds of tiny white flowers that dusted steep green slopes like powdered sugar evidenced the onrush of spring.

We stopped for a rest at Indian Flats Day Area and simply sat on a big granite boulder at the river's edge.  I listened to the river and its millions of little voices that blended to one rushing note while I lay on my belly on the rock.  Beautiful, simple, pleasant and refreshing.

Mariposa Stopover

Back in the saddle again, on my way to Yosemite National Park to celebrate my birthday.  Stopping off in Mariposa in the Sierra Foothills on Hwy 140, it's a soft day showered with wildflowers.  Spring is just over the horizon, swelling up from the warming soil and flowing to the tips of the now-gray and dormant trees.  I've gotten a glimpse of the high Sierra in the hazy distance, cloaked in white snow and towering above everything else, regal, abiding.

Mariposa is a bustling but small community, conservative in attitude and political orientation.  It's one of the gateway towns that supplies the national park with workers and supplies.  This will be a brief trip to the park, but any visit is memorable no matter what time of the year.  The pleasant mix of showers and sun all this late winter is urging the buds in the oaks and chaparral in the hills.   I'll have to go up over the next grade and down another to get to the Merced River, which should be in full flow at this time, and I'm getting excited to see it.  

Key as Icon

Keys are icons of possibility and mystery.  The keys I have are mostly orphans and duplicates, functional at one time, utilitarian and ordinary from the time they were made, less so now that they just sit purposeless in my bowl on the countertop.

There is one key in particular that is very old; it was my grandmother's key - to what door I am not sure.  It is a key from another age, a simpler time.  It's brass, long, classic in design, but it seems to be something special; it's a whisper, a hint.  A key like that seems to have developed a mystique simply by having outlived my grandmother and the lock it was intended for.  It stirs the imagination even as it lies quietly in my hand.

It's the kind of key that Mary found that opened the secret garden, the kind of key that rattles nervously in the keyhole when a terrified and solitary woman is seeking refuge on a dark and stormy night and violins screech shrilly in the background.  While it is not really grand enough to be a key to a kingdom, it is does have an allure about it.  If nothing else, it unlocks my imagination, setting it free to run, perhaps through the halls of a walnut-paneled mansion set high on a hilltop, with love and intrigue hiding in the shadows.

The simple act of picking up the key and fingering it renews its ability to unlock a door, but now the door could be anywhere, in any time or country and by any one of a thousand vivid characters.  An ordinary but now-old key has transcended its original pedestrian use, beckoning forth stories, creating images and songs with a simple blink of the mind's eye.  

It's No Place To Count

All tired out from errands and appointments, I drove in silence, thinking about the minutiae of the day.  I let my car find its own way.  With very little guidance, she rolled placidly to the sea and parked neatly parallel to the shoreline fence, facing south.  I turned the key off, set the brake, sat back.

I sighed, unbuckled my seatbelt, sagged in the seat, turned to have a look around.  I didn't pay attention to anything much.  I sat like that for many minutes.

A man ran by, preoccupied with the burdensome task of monitoring his running effort.  He appeared to my right and disappeared to my left as I looked west beyond the split-rail fence.  Immediately, he was gone and I instantly forgot him.

I witnessed hundreds of dozens more waves and the remnants of waves hitting waves, but it was as if they were seen by someone else.  I didn't have enough energy or the inclination to notice much at first; I'd seen it before hundreds of times.  Waves, ocean, more waves, and more waves.

A couple walked past, appearing on the right and then gone on the left, not talking, walking in lockstep, their feet crunching in synchrony, like a metronome.  

I shifted my gaze to the roadway, away from the shifting currents and waves.  My car's readings told me that it was 6 PM, the air 60 degrees.  Each runner going by was monitoring their pace or the number of miles they had run, tenths of miles to go.  Cyclists checked their odometers and knew their gear inches, their cadence, the force of the headwind, the watts they were producing as they pedaled.  Engineers driving by in their work trucks looked at the road ahead, the density of the asphalt, the composition of the cement, the grade percentage of the hills.  It was a 2 to 4 percent slope; the road had 5 degree cambered corners and 8 to 10 inches of falloff to the unpaved shoulder.  The sun was going to set at 7:17 PM and the high tide had just peaked at 5:59 PM.  The moon was due to rise at 7:47 PM, an hour and 47 minutes later, precisely.

I looked back to the sea, and I thought about the immeasurable waves, watched them roll to shore in regiments, one after another.  They were lined up for miles out to sea, without end.  It would be madness to count them and evaluate their worth by the tonnage of water, number of droplets in each spraying crest, or decibels of sound produced by each square meter of water hitting each ton of rock.

I smiled.  There it was, as always:  Nature in its boldest and most immeasurable and uncontrollable form:  The sea.

My mind had made a transition from the restless confinement and servitude of daily life to boundless wonder and fascination.  The movement and play of light on the endlessly varying surface of the enormous ocean acted like a powerful medicine and taken away my stress and fatigue.  I was refreshed and invigorated again.

At the edge of the ocean, for all time, there is a symphony of light, movement and sound made by waves, intersections of waves, ripples, wavelets, splashes, bubbles, rivulets, currents, countercurrents, rip tides, foam and spray.

Thank God, the ocean is boundless and embodies complexity, size and dimensions that root us to the ground to stand gape-mouthed and awed.  What is there to measure there?  Your happiness?  Your respect and admiration?  Its beauty?

So, after playing slave to my calendar, my watch and my pocketbook, there I was sitting in my car -- thanking her for having the good sense to ferry me there -- and let the roar and thunder of the ocean drown out the impulse of my mind to quantify what I saw:  Infinity.

Mystery, Life, Chocolate

I want chocolate but I don't want it.  I want to eat a big huge piece of chocolate cake.  I want to eat a big piece of chocolate cake, moist, sweet, rich, with some density and meaty crumb, but not too dense.  I want to have a piece of chocolate cake with thick icing, not too fluffy and not too thick.  It has to be creamy and thick, heavy with butter.  I want to have dark chocolate cake with thick frosting and some chocolate chips in one of the layers of cream in between layers.  I want to have chocolate cake on my tongue with thick creamy dark chocolate icing that makes my mouth water.  I want to have chocolate cake and I want to be able to smell the fresh chocolate cake and feel its cool crumb and resilient texture.  I want to eat chocolate cake, five layers high.  Or six hundred.  I want a big piece of chocolate cake on a big strong plate and I want to eat it with a heavy silver fork that sits in my hand like a pointed scepter.  I want a big piece of chocolate cake that lies on my plate like a prize given by a king in exchange for a kingdom.  I want to eat it like its the cake of destiny, and I want my mouth to water when I smell its dark rich fragrance.  I want my mouth to water when I inhale the dark mystery of cocoa.  Cocoa made from beans grown in a foreign land where people who speak a language I don't understand have reached into the treetops and gathered the beans in their hands and dropped them into woven sacks and carried the sacks to drying sheds where the beans dry in the tropical sun and birds scream in the treetops and fly with big bright freathered wings.  I want to eat chocolate cake made of butter from a cow that walked all over rolling green hills for all time and ate sweet fresh grass.  I want a cake made of butter from a cow that ate well and walked steadily to her barn at the end of the day and was milked by a farmer who has been milking cows for a hundred years and sat on a yellow stool.  I want to eat cake that is made from flour that was milled from grain that was grown in the hot sun and ripened while the blue sky soared overhead in a blazing arc.  I want to eat chocolate cake that was made in my house while a hundred people danced and sang and lights hung from electric cords strung from tree to tree.  I want to eat chocolate cake with all those hundreds of people and sing with them out loud so the cocoa bean pickers in the foreign land and the cows resting in the shade of the giant trees on the hillsides and the wheat kernels hardening in the hot summer sun can all hear us.  I want to eat chocolate cake and pick it up with my hands and smell its rich fragrance and press it up against my face and kiss it.  I want to eat chocolate cake whose salt comes from the tears of women lost in the valley until they found the sacred stream.  I want to eat chocolate cake and find the women and bring them to my house and give them a white shining plate with a silver fork as big as a shovel.  They and I will eat chocolate cake together with all the living things that are bound up in it, each morsel alive and fragrant.  I want to eat chocolate cake, dark as the skin of the people who live in places I have never been.  I want to eat chocolate cake like a dying woman remembers the stars at the last hour before her eyes close for the last time and she lies like a wisp of memory on a white sheet in a white room with no one there and she is forgotten except for me as I see her die, and now I see whiteness in her long hair, her skin, her bed, and her life is gone silently.  She is gone, gone, quietly, very quietly and silence surrounds her.  She breathes no more and I am still breathing.  I look at her and pray her soul to heaven and I believe she goes there and learns to breathe again.  I breathe again and I move.  I still move and breathe.  I am alive.  I want to eat chocolate cake and breathe and move and inhale the fragrance of chocolate, dark and rich with life and know the unknowable because I think the unthinkable.  I want to gather the little woman now in heaven and bring her to my table and wrap her in bright cloth and show her the dancing people who are twirling their skirts in the starlight and fire and give her a resounding good-bye with a cake fit for a queen, send her on a long voyage of remembrance where she is hailed by all who knew her.  She will eat cake with me and it will be chocolate with a tender crumb and delicate rich dark life inside.

Amber Memory

I had some honey today, right out of the jar, and I thought of summer in Carmel Valley where I was a child.  The honey was the same color as the dried grass and foxtails that I would pick my way through with bare feet. Silty brown dry dirt, hot but soft on my skin.

There is an intoxicating herbal-floral aroma, a heady fragrance that California shrublands exude.  Sage, bay laurel, coyote brush, grasses, oak, redwood, and the dirt itself are oily and the oils evaporate in hot air, perfuming it and penetrating into the deepest core of the people and animals who live in it, residing in their hearts and souls.  It is a fragrance that asks allegiance and devotion, acknowledgment of its ancient and abiding qualities.  I remember it lingering like the fading sounds of laughter past dark and then finally subsiding entirely in full darkness.  It was the very breath of the summer day, pleasant and sweet.

Brittle amber-colored wild grass crackled and stood like small tipis of dry stalks by August, with a litter of crushed and desiccated leaves and seeds lying about the bases on dry cocoa-brown silt.  Mica flecks twinkled like starry sparks in the dust kicked up with our bare toes.  We'd pick our way across lots and exposed small meadows and fields, using tufts of dry grass to rest on when the skin of our feet felt scorched by the dark earth.  We were explorers, wild Indians, children of imagination looking for and finding small mysteries and clues to worlds unknown to adults and their civilization.  All of nature in the region of our home was textured, fragrant, a beckoning world we needed and wanted to be part of.

A child who has lived in a California coastal valley knows the time of day by the amount of moisture in the air and the strength of the breeze.  Morning air is fresh, dewey and cool, wetted by the lifting fog.  Deer out grazing after dawn pick their way back to thickets and shaded glens to sleep until evening.  Then, midday is still and hot; nothing breathes or sings or chirps; only the bees hum in the sagebrush.  Then, at one o'clock the air lifts and stirs, the wind shifts to the distant reaches of more inland valleys and hills, drawn there by the heat.  The grasses and oaks, hot in the flat light of early afternoon, toss and sway in the push of the wind until just before dusk when everything pauses again.  Then, light seems to settle down into the ground, fading very slowly and fragrantly to its resting place.

Day after day, all summer long, some days cloaked in fog at the coast and some more intensely hot than others, the ocean inhales and exhales its wind over the coastal valleys.  Its gusting, rushing sound is a constant presence in the trees and across hillsides, a hushing sound of respiration that rises and falls, swelling and then dying away, only to rise and fall again.

After being outdoors in the morning before the day was hot, the afternoon wind in the treetops was lulling, soothing us to an enervating torpor.  Lost to daydreaming and reading, we dozed and rested.  Then, as we felt cooler and sensed the dampness of the chill evening coming on, and the fog in the distance, we'd begin a game of hide-and-seek, playing on and on to the dimmest light at dusk and beyond.

Playing, running and calling in the twilight on summer days, inhaling the intoxicating promise of amber light and honey gathered from the sage on the hills and willows by the river, we lived and breathed in the same rhythm set by the wind itself.

At the end of the day, our eyes grew accustomed to the gradual dimness of the evening until after dusk we'd run indoors, pushing and laughing, feeling like wild animals coming home again.  Then we peered goggle-eyed back at the dark from the doors and windows, and then listen for the wakening deer and rustle of their movements in the dry oak leaves.  

The Tall and the Tasty in Moss Landing

To find Moss Landing, you have to know a few key landmarks.

The geography of the bay is such that its north and south peninsulas consist of hilly and rocky prominences, while its inner coastline is flanked by low dunes for much of its length.  The long Salinas Valley's mouth opens wide on the bay and from it pours the Salinas River south of Moss Landing.  There and at Moss Landing, the dunes are particularly low and Elkhorn Slough, a large low-lying estuary, is open and flat.  So, the smokestacks of the PG&E plant really stand out, ugly as sin.

"Moss Landing," which, curiously, is known far more as a landmark than a place that exists except to those who work there, is roughly the midway point if you're traveling between Santa Cruz and Monterey.  By a mile, it serves as the most prominent visual feature of the bay.  The name itself refers to both the little town situated there as well as the power plant and its smokestacks, which are a zillion feet high and made of gray cement.  "Wow, you can really see Moss Landing today," locals say on a clear day.  It's a benchmark for air clarity and visibility.  From Pacific Grove, it's about a 20-mile distance as the car drives, so to speak.

In counterpoint, Moss Landing -- the community of restaurants, cafes, antique shops and a teeny post office -- sits right across the highway from the big cement smokestacks of the power plant,  just before you get to "the bridge," another key landmark.

Also in the shadow of the immense towers are other, more lowly things of interest including a natural estuary or slough ("slew"), artichoke and strawberry fields, a gun-and-ammo fortress frequented by hunters and wanna-be Stallones, and The Whole Enchilada.  That last is also a landmark but should not be a stopping place unless you really yearn for indigestion and heartburn.

So, directions will be given this way: "Turn at Moss Landing, go past the Whole Enchilada, and before the bridge, take a left."  If you've gone past the bridge, you could be headed to Phil's Fish Market, and that would be a good thing.  Another day.

The Haute Enchilada is a converted two-story wooden building in Moss Landing proper that looks to have been built in the late 1800's or early 1900's.  There is a vivid watermelon-red wooden fence surrounding its front patio and all kinds of evidence that the owner has a lively and colorful imagination.  No shrinking violet, this owner, by the looks of it.  An old friend and I, meeting for lunch, took a look at the garden and decor.  Smelled fragrant, looked bright and interesting.  Time for a new groove.

The place is actually pretty large, has plenty of tables indoors and a good number set about in the front patio amidst shading umbrellas.  Today we chose an outdoor table.  Just like yesterday, it was two shakes ahead of the lunch rush.  The specials menu was pretty interesting -- about seven items to choose from, lots of variety, nothing at all ordinary, moderately priced between $7 and $17 or so.

I ordered spot prawns with dungeness crab ravioli in creamy garlic sauce, and my friend ordered seafood enchilada with black beans and rice.  We shared a salad.  I think I licked the bowl and slurped a lot.  Crab bits flew around and I became delirious.  She sighed with contentment and happiness, and her meal disappeared as if it had evaporated.  We also talked as if there were no tomorrow, never once about politics, at least not in any meaningful or useful way, which is not to say that our talk was anything remotely dull or useless.  We solved all problems, contemplated all ideas deeply and found all sorts of satisfaction in it all.

A curiosity:  Most Hispanic restaurants these days seem to feature a painting of Frieda Kahlo prominently.  I think she's the new patron saint of Mexican food.  Unfortunately, most of the paintings I've seen range from vaguely ugly to truly hideous.  Zocalo here in PG has a painting of what amounts to Prince in drag.  The Haute Enchilada has Seniora Kahlo, replete with unibrow, frown and stern appearance on its sign out front.

After lunch, which we stretched out to two hours, we walked around looking in at antique shops, a gallery, walked over the bridge, looked at the marina and its velvety sunning sea lions, passed by Phil's and MBARI (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute).  But then, oops, we'd forgotten dessert.

Back to Haute Enchilada, where we were welcomed with big smiles.  We went indoors and sat for another hour and a half with coffee and cake disappearing as if by magic from our plates.  More problems discussed and solved, crises averted and philosophies contemplated.

At last, it was time to part ways.  We stood in the road and looked at the street on either side of us, the now-closed antique shops and rickety wooden buildings where they are housed, and then up at the enormous imposing structure of the power plant looming in the background, omnipresent.  We'll meet somewhere else next time we want to do some catching up, but it had been a great discovery today.  Haute Enchilada!

Walk Like a Butterfly

Enticed by bright morning sun blazing in the eastern sky, we sprang into action and drank several cups of hot coffee.  That done, further springing into action got us out the front door where we were slapped bracing cold morning air.  Vigorous exclamations of doubt and surprise; whose idea was this anyway?  I was glad for the hot coffee.  Oh my, the frigid air that was penetrating my jacket.  But, it was just so pretty out... Ugh, why don't I live in Hawaii?

Off we tottered on a walk of uncertain destiny, but walk we did.  It would seem that our feet were determined to head due west.  We had the vague idea of finding the old railroad bed that wends its way through the forested reaches of The Grove.  After about a half mile, our stiff bodies gradually warmed and loosened up; and we hit a steady stride.  Walking a meandering route through the middle of town afforded us a tour of scores of well-kept homes, fine examples of fashionable home design in days gone by, ranging from very tiny one-story structures to enormous Victorian and Queen Anne mansions.  

Before we knew it, we were slowing down and looking skyward, not to see jets, but to search for  Monarch butterflies.  We'd reached the Monarch Sanctuary, a place of refuge for very small royal members of the insect world.

Pacific Grove calls itself "Butterfly Town, USA" because monarchs congregate in the tall trees at the west end of town, resting for a time before they flutter north or south on the migratory route.  There is a roped-off woods where you can spend any amount of time you wish rubbernecking and stumbling around, looking for them in the canopy overhead.  At peak migration, you'll see many thousands.  Then, the treetops seem to vibrate and shimmer with their jittering movements.

I looked at the hiccuping, doodley flight of a butterfly going by.  It looked about as purposeful as our walk had been; zig-zagging, undirected, meandering, rather drunken in its course.  Surely, it was as cold as we'd been.  I'll tell you, if a butterfly can migrate from mid-Mexico to Canada or Alaska, all other things are possible.

It was past 11 AM, nearly noon.  Finding food started to seem like an irrefutably important idea.  After approximately ten seconds of uncertainty, we set about getting over to the Red House Cafe post haste.  So much for doodling and meandering.  Off we strode.  You say "barn" to a cow in the evening, and away she goes.  You say "Red House Cafe" to us, and wild horses cannot keep us away.

By all accounts, it is nearly impossible to have a bad meal there.  It's a first-come-first-served cafe; getting a table at prime meal time requires a wait at times, especially on weekends. We arrived at the door just as they were opening up for the noon meal and got a table for two on the veranda, just before the rush.  We ordered and then watched the world go by, mostly small dogs leading their owners along the different sidewalks. Big, fat sandwiches, stuffed with as much as it is possible to stuff between two pieces of crusty slices of bread, disappeared as steadily as our appetites.  No complaints, by a mile.

Stuffed and content, we looked around for an oxcart to haul our carcasses back home, but, summoning some self-respect, we chugged under our own steam up to the Ketcham Barn -- on Laurel Street behind City Hall.  It houses the Pacific Grove Heritage Society's collection of photographs and memorabilia.  There's an impressive display of The Groove of yesteryear and a docent on hand every Saturday afternoon to answer questions.  We had a million, were satisfied with all the answers, and bought a slim book about the town.  

The cold wind, coming straight from the ice floes of the arctic north today carried songs of polar bears and seals.  We headed to the warm confines of home finally, but it had been a fine morning.  We'd seen more town residents out walking than we'd seen butterflies flying, but that will change later in the year.  Our walk had been serendipitous and very tasty, indeed.

Grandmothers' Cooking

I'm being held indoors against my will.  A wet storm is bumbling around, looking for an exit and having found none, now sits on us heavily.  I think it's going to be a while before I'll be seeing the sun again.

I'm remembering comforting meals I've had, rustic peasant foods, made of unsophisticated ingredients by hardworking people in simpler times.  Tables in many kitchens over many decades, centuries, were like magnets to the families that sat down together.  At the end of a long day, they were soothed with savory meats, vegetables, flavors and fragrances.  Their words and expressions, gestures and laughter come to me if I cook the same foods they did, taste the flavors and savor the aromas they did.

I was fortunate to have grandmothers who lived nearby and that I could spend time with and learn from, make a connection to what their lives were like, taste their foods.  It's a relief to know I can recall them whenever I cook a food they taught me to make, and it's very easy to see them across the table from me.  We sometimes sit in silence as we eat, but we are content.  It's a strong comfort and a true pleasure.

I like to give myself a challenge:  If my refrigerator looks bleak and empty, I take what little is there and come up with something - not only edible but grand.  Something from nothing.  I believe a memory is like that, too, and has the undeniable power to recreate other, former lives out of what might be said to be nothing.  Life from remembered love and a shared common experience.

Because of my grandmothers and almost in tribute to them, I've learned to keep these things on hand, no matter what:  Salt, pepper, onions, garlic and olive oil.  You could take an old dried stick (practically) and make it delicious with those things.  I haven't actually done that, but nearly so.  When I am fortunate enough to have a fresh tomato, a bit of protein of some sort, I can conjure heaven and set it out on the table to enjoy.

The grandmothers taught me this:  You must coax the soul of the food you are preparing out into the open by handling it with respect and attention.  Cook it slowly if it's to be cooked.  Use sharp knives if it's to be cut.  Cook it, don't kill it.  You mustn't rush it.

When you've had food that's been prepared by someone who understands the nature of the food they have cooked, who appreciated having it to cook, then its flavors are fantastic.  At those times you are elevated to a place of collective memory, and your ancestors gather around with you and sit at your table again.

So, on a funky day like today, I feel the call of the kitchen and hear the whispers of many centuries of ancestral women who took time in their kitchens coaxing forth the soul of food they had available to prepare and eat, even if it was a weed in the garden or a scrap of fish.  They had listened to their mothers and their grandmothers, learned, watched, and became teachers themselves.  Sustenance, the role of food, feeds my spirit today.

To Fear or Not to Fear

At this very moment, I am so amazed with the perfection of the weather outside that I really think it needs to be set to music.  There is not a cloud in the pale blue sky, every leaf on every tree is positively sparkling, and life is pretty much totally in the groove today.  However, let's talk about ugliness for a change.

What I have to say about anger, hatred, scorn, and other fright-engendering human emotions is not news to the world at all.  Philosophers, writers, people of all kinds throughout known history have spent time observing how humans behave and think, just like I do.  The only thing that's different for me about this subject is what I do with it in my own personal life, the fact that anger and aggression stem from fear.

There was a momentarily bizarre incident.  Today when I was doing errands, I came to a stop sign at the same time another driver coming the opposite direction came to his.  I saw his signal to turn left and waved him ahead.  He shook his head, paused and then "gestured" at me.  You know, the familiar flying-fickle-finger-of-fate gesture that we all know is emblematic of rude aggression.  Broad daylight.  Beautiful, gorgeous, angels-are-singing day and a stranger on a quiet street flips me off.

I was shocked and found myself reliving the moment over and over, and each time I did an ugly feeling came up inside, just like poison.  The gesture and incident lasted no more than a few seconds, but there I was giving it lots of my time by recapturing the anger, the bitter unhappiness and fear repeatedly.  I'd say about 10 minutes later I had a little conversation with myself and thought, "I am giving this far too much of my time and attention; I am hugging that ugly moment like a long-lost love.  It's time for that to stop right here, right now."

Obviously, knowing when real danger confronts you and protecting yourself from it is a survival skill, but mulling over and mentally chewing on something like the gesture, giving it more than its due of time and attention, only harms me.  To choose to drop it, leave it behind, and continue on enjoying the spectacular beauty of the midday late-winter sunshine had to be my choice.  To know that it is absolutely my choice is what at one point in my life was news to me, a lesson I will never forget.  

You know you've had the thought:  "He made me do it!"  So have I -- so many times I cannot possibly recall.  The deal is, you choose to live in fear or you choose to live in love.

There is a famous scene in the movie Moonstruck where Cher's character slaps Nicholas Cage's character across the face after he tells her he's in love with her.  She yells at him, "Snap out of it!"

That's the decisiveness it takes to snap yourself out of anger, fear, hatred, scorn, prejudice, boredom, and other self-defeating thoughts that you find yourself clinging to.  If you don't stop clinging to them, you build up an addiction to the adrenaline that you get from fearfulness, and you get very sick inside.  You become vulnerable to disease and you attract more ugliness to yourself.  Eventually your toes fall off.  (Just kidding about that last bit, but you get the picture.)

Choose courage, strength, humor, and notice all the other things going on around you that are happening all at the very same time.  It's always that way:  You get to make a choice, employ your free will.

I didn't choose for an angry man to be at the intersection exactly when I got there, but once I interrupted the reaction to his behavior, I rejoined the beauty of the day and am still all smiles as I see it all around me, everywhere.

Smiles and Peeps

The Groove was noticed Peninsula-wide today.  Not so surprising when you remind yourself that spring is coming.  Grooving is what a sunny day requires.

There are back-lit tender leaves in alleyways, along crooked avenues and at the shore -- tiny flags waving at the vanguard of change.  Time is dancing to funny little rhythm.  Winter is shuffling away like an old dog.

I drove a different route to get to the usual destination at midday today.  Residents have been working diligently in their winter gardens these past few months, and now the hard work is paying off:  Everywhere is vigor, growth and burgeoning color.

I happened by El Estero Lake and saw a curious sight.  A young woman and a duck were out for a walk together.  She was blonde and the duck was brunette.  That is, it was decked out in its spring plumage of brindled brown feathers with pert tail waggling now and again.  It was in the lead, on a leash, and was looking neither right nor left, simply forward along the lake's edge.  Well, I thought, why not take a duck for a walk?  They were moving comfortably and had no sense of struggle or idiocy about them.  Rather, they were rather contemplative and placid, certain of where they needed to go and uncommonly familiar with each other even though the sight was certainly uncommon in the world.  True groovers.

I mentioned the lady and her duck to the clerk at Grove Market today when I picked up something for lunch.  "She's been around for a long time.  She carries the duck in a dog carrier on her bicycle and rides all over the place."  We all smiled and considered the idea of walking a duck, instead of a dog, for a change.  It became the iconic pet to represent that je ne sais quoi, anything is likely and definitely possible feeling that comes 'round again as the days grow longer.

The clerk went on to say that one day a woman had come into the market with her small horse, a "Helping Horse," miniature in stature, but, still, a horse.  "She needed it to lean on."  The clerk demonstrated the leaning posture of the horsewoman.  "She brought it all the way into the produce section and it started munching away.  We had to throw a lot away.  But, she paid for it."

The innocuous silliness that Spring brings -- in smiles and renewed belief in whimsy -- caught me up as I was approaching the checkout stand at the market.  I bought some Peeps.  There they were, peeping out at me from their cellophane and cardboard package, looking no sillier than a horse in a market or a duck on a leash.  What reason more than that do you need?

Step Into the Room

"It does not matter how many breaths you take in your lifetime.  What matters is what takes your breath away."  


Getting caught up in minutiae and small worries every day can steal away our precious time and deprive us of opportunities to be awed, to stand in wonder.  Big things happen every little moment of the day, but are we prepared for them?  


Unfortunately, no.  


A young person may not know this so well -- although I know some who do -- but a lifetime is only so long; we never know really, exactly know how long, but the clock is ticking.   


Here we sit in front of the TV, spending our precious time, using our lives up.  Here we sit in our cars, stuck in traffic, not taking any opportunity to stand in awe.  Here we are thinking we are useless or inferior or unworthy when, in truth, we are none of those things.  Here we go believing ugly things about ourselves and sit, shriveling up and sad, blinking fearfully over in the corner of a bored-out-of-our-minds existence.  


Sitting there waiting for something good to show up in the day, or our whole life long, is a really big gamble, and the odds are stacked against us.  The chances are pretty slim that a magical fairy godmother is going to tap you on the shoulder with a golden wand and grant your wishes and whisk you into a different existence.  


Haven't you heard that when a person is told they only have six months to live, they cut loose and do what they've really always wanted to do?  They realize that the time is now, the gift is there before them, and they finally decide to open it up and take a good look at what's inside.  


But you -- what about you?  What are you waiting for?  


Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. - Seneca


If you stood in the doorway of a very large room filled with gifts and never opened them, were timid, afraid to go over and pick one up and hold it, wouldn't that be the same thing as never doing the things you say you've always wanted to?  


If you wait and wonder, sit and mull it over, do not go forward with what you imagine, it is as if the play is over, the audience is leaving and the cleaning crew is beginning to sweep the floor.  


Be bold, try on that new hat, go out into the day and take notice of what's really before you.  Your gifts are more plentiful than you can possibly imagine.  The room of unwrapped surprises is limitless, infinite, and has nothing to do with fear.  Fear keeps you standing in the doorway, unprepared to take the opportunities within you.  Step into that room, reach for the boundaries of your imagination.  You'll never succeed in finding them.  And that is just plain good luck.