Water Log

The satellite picture is a zoom shot of Nassau, as close as the quarter mile view of Buena Vista Park from Twin Peak. I can see a swimming pool, spidery palms, beaches piped with waves. Then the ocean, like a jostled tray of printer’s ink, green, black, indigo. That’s how close this amazing celestial camera gets. I see a boat, but not the one I care about.

My seafaring man is sixty-nine years old, sailing with two slightly younger ones. They are in the midst of a 1200 mile voyage, from Ft. Lauderdale to the Virgin Islands. Our only connection is this satellite map, an orange line tracing where the boat has been and teardrop call-outs showing transmission locations. Up close, at the biggest magnification, I can see streaks of clouds and the fifth marker where they are now. The water looks like aspic and the ocean floor under it is pitted and channeled like the moon.

The Nassau dock is the last point before the longest leg of the trip. He’s sent me an email, the only written contact we’ll have. I open it and almost gasp—it’s nearly 2000 words. He is not prone to lengthy expository writing, so just seeing all the words is like a satellite zoom shot—I’m looking at a detail I’ve never seen up close.

I say I want the big adventure, the one that will bust me wide open, maybe throw me on a sand bar. I’ll feel the water under me drain into the sand. Flattened, my naval will draw against my backbone and I’ll stop breathing for a while. Then I’ll know every inch of my self and—here’s the hoped for miracle—know what to do next.

“The first leg was hell for me personally,” he wrote, describing the onerous watches and terrible power of the seas and the wind, having no control over time or even destination. “Bottom line, having to be somewhere at some particular time… is TOTALLY OUT OF MY CONTROL. I cannot make things go any faster than they are going to go. I cannot get off the boat and get on a plane.”

Today the marker showed them well out of Nassau harbor, the shoreline gone and no islands around. All I’ll know from the map is where he’s been, not where he’s going or when he’ll get there, and there’s no date stamped airline ticket saying he’ll be back.

Here Chick...

A few days ago one of our chickens started to die. She was the one who'd been granted many lifetime transformations. Very, very beautiful starting out, she figured she could get away with being a poor layer. And she could—she stopped cold after her first year and never put down another egg. Then, this June, she began to crow* and she kept it up all summer.

But last week, the hen stopped crowing. Overnight, her utterly rosy, fat comb and wattle shrank and blackened as if blighted. She lost her balance and her eyes got squinty and flat-looking. She could hop/flop to the bottom of our yard, but couldn’t make the climb back to the coop. She stank.

This whole time, she never stopped looking around—up, down, sideways—to see what was interesting or dangerous. She picked the dirt for bugs and seeds, tried to catch flies on the wing, combed her feathers, stumbled patiently after her sisters.

I’m guessing that not once in that time did she think, Jeez, I was feeling pretty good last week—what happened? She played the pieces that were in front of her, then settled on the ground and put her head under her wing. Like a fine glove, her death was a perfect fit.

*see "there' is somethng about a chicken" below--read some other ones, too.

Smooth Brain
Wrinkled Face

Here’s how it works. First we get this really smooth velvety skin, ever so slightly suffused with the subtle glow of blood passing beneath. Further up we have the brain, which better be deeply, deeply ridged and rippling with the impulses that enable us to sing, dance, stand on our heads and pick our noses clean.

That’s how we begin. But eventually things turn inside-out. Synapses still fire but spark-out sometimes in mid arc, spilling ash into the brain canyons which fill up like the grooves in a worn-out LP.

Meanwhile the face starts to look more like a young brain. In a prehistoric turn, ridges and valleys start up from the shimmering veldt. The once deep pools of our eyes begin to dry up from the edges, their shores now ringed with multiple water marks. Underground streams have carried all our dewy moisture down, down, where it rests in a heavy swaying puddle right under the chin.

More than all the facial wrinkles and grooves (which can suggest an athleticism of character) I despise this catch-all condition of the chin. I am considering a procedure. Yep—I’m really almost ready to do a chin lift.

Maybe we can’t recognize our own mortality, but I do worry about it all the time. A woman might think a good facelift, ever-dazzling hair and body reshaping make her look nineteen, but she recognizes and mocks that same deceit in someone else. Sixty never looks like nineteen. So I’d like to accept this and not kid around about what’s really down the road. We change, grind down and die. I need a strong chin to deal with this.

I go to Tower, choose a leg of lamb and ask the ever-sullen butcher to bone it.

He does, and I say, “Thanks.” Turning away, he says, “No problem.”

What does this mean? And what was the problem he’d escaped? It’s true, there is a knife involved in boning and that does suggest risk; however, for an alleged professional this should be far less perilous than walking across any intersection.

Should I share his relief that nothing bad happened, perhaps congratulate him and inquire about his family? Or should I feel guilty, which is what I almost always feel when I hear, “no problem.”

You’re welcome—it’s the demise of that small grace note that bothers me. No problem, feels like a slap for some mysterious offence, and it makes me walk away unhappy.

Is this strange and alienating remark ever called for? Well, if I caught a baby as it fell from an open window, wheeled around at the moment the terrified parent crashes from the door, then tenderly lay the intact child into his trembling arms, then I could say it,—"Hey bro, no prob!"

Paint

Here’s what happened when we decided to paint our bedroom and living room.

First, we realized we’d never thought much about designing a home together. For the past 35 years, all the places we’ve lived have been furnished with the same old stuff, mostly hand-me-downs, and these pieces now float incoherently between the cream colored walls of this house.

Once we really looked at this haphazard creation, just tidying up surfaces seemed like a cover up. We had to do a garage sale. This revealed the true condition of the basement--it was a dank rabbit hole reeking of deep disorder and sucking neglect. We’d have to sheet rock over that.

Meantime, we'd also been collecting paint swatches and samples. In six months we'd accumlated dozens of 3”x 4” swatches and forty little jars of color from Benjamin Moore. Every choice had been wrong. I thought--if we can’t even choose paint, we can’t stay married. We could decide to do nothing, simply recognize that we'd tried to get off the couch and couldn't, then flopped back for another download of Roku. At that point, weak confused and frightened, I saw the mess we were sitting on and felt helpless to take action.

Fortunately, at just that moment,a lucky breeze sallied by freshening our reason—we decided to re-sod the backyard! And all it took was a phone call. The lawn was rolled out in just five hours and looks like a miniature golf course. We’ve sat outside and admired it, most often when the splintering universe sets to howling inside the house

This Paint Project has come with some big roots and it feels like doing therapy—risky and at some point inevitable because, as my great-grandmother used to say, the deeper you dig, the worse it smells. But we’re doing it. And we’re old. I think we’re courageous because neither of us knows what this will be when all the pieces settle.

Take Me To Your Meter

I read in last Sunday’s New York Times that some new robots can anticipate their own fading power, sense the end is near and stagger to the nearest electrical outlet for a recharge.

The accompanying photo shows a machine that looks like a big upright vacuum cleaner. It has arms and hands and can open doors. We see it deftly inserting its own plug into an electrical faceplate. So, something I thought uniquely human—knowing we’re going to die and having a sense that time is running out—has been installed in a mechanical servant, and unlike us, it can do something about it.

No doubt, the robot’s signal to recharge is pre-set, but once we had a biologically-set signal that told us to eat just enough to survive. Not anymore. What if an electric car feels a little run down one evening, maybe just wants a taste of feeling like a Mazarati—off it goes silently sniffing out power ports, greedily sucking up juice until the PG& E meter blasts off its post.

The Times’ story was more thoughtful than this little ramble—it suggests that if we make artificial intelligence mimic human thought and action too well, we will relinquish those traits and abilities in ourselves. But the part of the story that still startles me are those pincher-fingers sticking that plug into the socket—a machine deciding to tap into the source of its own life to get some more.

Atoms are the big idea,
but molecules explain

Lets start with ideas—fruit flies and house flies. The big idea about each is that they are a nuisance. My Venus flytrap, Vagigi, sits under a light near the kitchen sink. The idea about her is that she is useful because she catches flies and eats them.

The other day I left a half lemon facedown on the counter near Vagigi. In just minutes, fruit flies began to assemble. Checking back several hours later, I saw they had made little doorways in the lemon which had turned into a Quonset hut.

In the evening the insects lay scattered around the hut. I first thought they were dead, but soon detected movement. Some of them were pairing up and walking off together while others ambled around the building or just approached each other and bumped heads in what was surely a greeting. Twenty or so lay on their bellies atop the hut, legs and wings spread to the lamp heat. The entire thing looked like an aerial shot of a Mash unit on an easy afternoon.

In this same day, I watched a house fly land on a table, another lit on top of it, and they began to have intercourse. I had expected a quick union, but after 30 seconds they were still glued to the task. Five minutes went by, then ten; apparently Bolero was not on their headsets. Is it possible those minutes of enjoyment inside bodies this small translate into eons of sexual pleasure in fly time?

I want to know more about atoms and molecules, so next time we’ll take on the topics of trees and forests.

Weed

The Hi Lo Café in Weed, California, has an immense menu and they make their own Bear Claws. Like the town itself though, the food has wandered far from its original source and purpose, leaving a flat taste in the mouth. Many of Weed’s 19th century buildings are empty, and the few occupied include crystal shops, thrift stores and a surprising number of animal rescue groups.

The entire area of Siskiyou County, including the city of Shasta, seems especially dedicated to rescuing or capturing, rehabilitating and neutering abandoned and neglected animals. The placement rate for these saved pups is proportionately high. In fact, some dogs are transported from San Francisco to Siskiyou because their chances of adoption are much better here. A friend told me that these orphans are even more popular in Portland where potential adopters sign up to take the overflow shipped from Shasta.

So a pretty high consciousness about responsible pet stewardship flavors the area, but towns like Weed have their share of underemployed, drug-stunned and nearly homeless people who keep some of these dogs. And most of them are pit bulls, many bred hard and for money.

I was watching a man with three pit bulls walk past the picture window in the café. Whether I ignored him or looked hard at him—either way—would signify the expected contempt. But I wanted to see this man, see his dogs.

Walking wearily, he let the dogs amble along at their own pace. They all looked a little confused—the dogs only a little more disoriented. Later, at the corner, we met up. We said hi and he looked at us, wary at first. His expression relaxed as we stayed and talked—How old were his dogs? Were they related? Though middle-aged, his face seemed young and bland. What seemed truer, though, as I looked, was that his expression seemed more abraded, smoothed into acceptance. It made him look wistful.

“They’re friendly,” he told us as the big, soft muscled pits sniffed us. Two looked up and they each had a blue and brown eye.

“Thems his last two sons,” he said, pointing to the older, lumpier fellow, as they wove through their leashes with ordinary doggie eagerness, glad for a scratch and used to kindness.

“I got eighty-eight pups out of him before he quit. I kept these last two.” He looked proud and sad. As if he, too, was finally finished after all the work.

Things to Embrace—Things to Avoid

I like to think there’s a good side to every bad thing and vice versa. Here are a few of my favorites.

Good—A successful in vitro fertilization resulting in one nice blond child.

Bad—A successful in vitro resulting in five identical blond beings who just might then mate with five other such unnatural fusions and produce—You tell me!

Also, how do you get around a bank of strollers, lashed together like theater seats, which take up the entire sidewalk?

Even worse, the perps pushing these broodcarts walk with an arrogance they dare, only because they think God Himself is clapping, singing, and tap dancing to this new rhythm method.

Well…I had meant to go on for some time … but I’ve just fallen over and am lying on my side. I clap my hands…and the lights go out.

(More later)

Untempered

So glass, too, finally melts.
Imagine.
Stained glass windows lying in puddles,
Main Street drooling along under the gaze
of suddenly sighted buildings.

Garden Parties

Garden Parties

Our yard is rustic, untamed, watched by us with much worry and too little action. There’s a falling-down Connecticut wall, twisted branches of dead rosemary wound with ivy, plenty of places where missing bricks have left holes for animals to burrow. We have seven fruit trees which, with the exception of the Meyer lemon, produce little.

One morning this Spring I noticed a fallen lemon; it had been neatly and perfectly peeled, the fruit flawless and unbroken. The oddness of it barely registered then, but a few days later there were three more peeled lemons in a neat row under the tree. Looking up, I saw at least a dozen others hanging pale and naked in the branches. Under the tree were hundreds of bright strips of peel with the pith completely gnawed out. Each ribbon was perfect; thin, golden and transparent —a chef’s delight, really.

I’m afraid the bottom line here was rats--big Norwegian ones. But I can’t see them in too bad a light. What they were doing was wholesome and industrious. They were only eating riboflavin. If Ratatouille got restaurant work, these rodents could be stripping peel for martinis in bars all over town.

There Is Something About A Chicken

The Department of Agriculture once issued a booklet on how to keep chickens--just six pages long, its instructions are as simple as those for assembling a cardboard box. Chickens are easy to keep, easy to feed, easy to kill and easy to eat. But in my experience (spanning over twenty years) they pose some questions I can no longer ignore.

First, let’s look at the Garden of Eden and the Big Snake. We know that birds of all kinds have their origins in the reptile. The proof? Well, they both lay eggs! It’s true, chickens don’t reveal much about the actual contents locked in the fruit and fiber of the Tree of Knowledge—but neither does God— and does that mean they don’t know?

Here’s another thing; hens will lay eggs without a rooster. Hen’s eggs are issued on a daily basis and are good and edible. How many people, especially women, don’t understand this simple fact—most human eggs go completely to waste.

In flocks composed exclusively of hens, an occasional one will wake up one morning and start to Crow. These butch girls are called dominant hens because they now have the confidence to control and instruct the flock and otherwise set a good example of hard work and Self-Sufficiency. Since they also continue to lay eggs, they must be credited with taking on responsibilities usually divided between the genders and which we, since Time Immemorial, have insisted are imbedded in the Ten Commandments.

I don’t mean to get ahead of myself here, so while I am still on safe ground, I’m going to stop. Consider this a soft boiled, five minute intro, but understand—there’s a soufflé on the way.

(Painting: "Chicken King", by Sandra Smith-Dugan)

So Green
Somewhere—probably not in a hair salon—I picked up a magazine featuring people with pierced bodies. These folks, studded, strung, lanced and bejeweled through every conceivable body fold, were cheerfully flaunting parts ordinarily kept tidy and tucked away. Seeing folks, naked as peeled eggs and raw as oysters was surprisingly stimulating, which seemed more appropriate for me in the 60s than me in my 60s.

During this heated page flipping I actually thought about a visit to a piercing parlor. However, like so many flash enthusiasms, the urgency faded. I cooled down, then plummeted to sub-zero regarding any redecoration below the neck. Now, it seemed like a better idea to pierce the cartilage at the top edge of my ear and stick an emerald in that. Does all desire eventually evaporate upwards?

The only jewel I’ve ever wanted is the emerald. More than all the gems in Solomon’s mine, it has the luster of true treasure to me. No jewel could be more surprising, suddenly struck upon in the split of a black rock; tempered by licks of lava and cool passages of water, it finishes as pellucid and transparent as air. I don’t know what piece of time it takes for this to happen, but it’s a big one.

However, I’m not an experienced judge of emeralds and wouldn’t know a good one from a bad one. Also, not being the kind of woman who is given gems, and having only dead female relatives who were similarly ignored, I knew I’d have to shop one for myself.

There are synthetic emeralds--hot-house gems grown in laboratories. Minerally speaking, they’re supposed to be identical to mined stones, but the only instant rocks I ever cared for were the ones you could order from the back of comic books, which could grow to chalky maturity in special, gooey water. My emerald turned up at a gem show. After peering at trays of beautiful and impossibly costly stones, it became clear to the sexy and subtly flirtatious Brazilian seller that I didn’t have any real money to spend. But he finally produced a single ear stud set with a pretty, bluegrass green stone. It was simply faceted, triangular, flat on top, and tapering down through the mounting to a point. I bought it—it was very small and I was satisfied more than delighted, as though I’d stolen something owed to me.

Be Brave the Modern Way


These are hard times and sometimes I fantasize about behaving really badly in public.

I am a warrior capable of altering the world through one subversive action. This single act would instantly cause The Big Mess to reconfigure properly. Everything would brilliantly self correct in a second and I would feel like a trillion bucks. I recommend any of the following remedies. Remember, you only have to do one of them.

Tell your boss exactly what you think of him, the lousy corporation you work for, the stupid meetings and endless busy work that constitute teamwork. Frequently express what no one else seems to get--there is no product or service being generated, and the whole place is only a claustrophobic hive filled with frenzied bees bumping into each other.

Don’t pay the mortgage—find out just how serious they really are about foreclosure.

Cancel life insurance. Quit using seat belts-- let your kids climb all over the place while you drive and talk on the cell phone. If some red-faced guy is on your tail, cursing and honking, slam on the brakes, jump out of your car and bash the side of his in with a cement filled lead pipe or bladder filled with pig blood.

Cancel skilled-care insurance. Instead, join the Hemlock Society. Stock pile plastic bags and stout rubber bands. Learn to drink vast quantities of quality vodka so you can easily wash down all those pills.

Cancel medical insurance. Locate one of the rebel physicians who, fed up with the paper work has shut down the office. Now he or she works out of the house and has converted the family room into a mini surgery.

Get over paranoia about insecticides and bacteria-ridden produce. Quit washing fruits and vegetable—just pop ‘em in your mouth (even better, do it right in the store). Remember, exposure to disease and toxins can actually help build strong immune systems.

Finally--don’t let fear take the fun out risk. Stand on the edge, flap your wings, leave the bungee cord in the trunk.



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