Morning Walks

Posted on January 25, 2012 by cynthia

I have enjoyed a couple of morning hikes with Carey lately, always a nice way to start the day. While I was walking up the canyon to meet her last week, a red pick-up truck came bumping along, driven by a guy in a plaid flannel shirt who stopped to say hello. Turns out he’s our neighbor Andy’s son, and he’s staying here for a little while, and he’d love to chat some more but he’s on his way to the dentist because he was eating roasted duck last night and broke his molar when he bit straight into some buck shot.

“You shot your own duck for dinner?” I asked.

“Goodness no,” he said. “My grandma gave it to me.”

Honestly, I couldn’t make this stuff up.

In the course of our wanderings that day, Carey and I encountered a series of prehistoric-looking red salamanders sitting in the middle of the road. Carey kept stopping, very gently picking up each one and moving it to safety. She has a kind heart and she’s not squeamish, that girl.

She is a fledgling birdwatcher too, and when we got to the beach, she excitedly pointed out some “long-billed dowagers” strutting along on the sand. I was quite charmed by the name and told a few people about it, but later she sent me an email telling me that the bird was a curlew, not a dowitcher, and when it comes to bird information, I must never believe her, because she is usually wrong. I admire her enthusiasm anyway. She notices things.

And apparently there are no birds called dowagers, which is a pity.

Speaking of noticing, we stopped to stare at a mysterious wooden staircase someone had built into a hillside, straight up, maybe a thousand little steps, and we couldn’t understand why. Just another strange change to the landscape, I guess…a little less conventional than a fence or a wall, but still a sort of  signature and claim. I told Jeanne about it afterwards as though it were big news and she said it had been there for years. Funny how you don’t see something and suddenly you do, and once you do you never don’t again.

On another morning, we went to a certain cave not far from here because it seemed the right place to welcome the start of the Chinese New Year and offer up our hopes for better days. We stood and looked out beyond the rocks and hills to the sea shining in the distance, and I silently said a wishful sort of prayer. There really have been some hard times lately…it was good to face forward and imagine better outcomes.

Then Carey gave me a present: a jar of  pear-vanilla jam that she’d made. And okay, it was actually more syrup than jam, but it’s perfect for spooning over ice cream or toast, and it gave the day more sweetness.

Afterwards I hurried home to wash the poison oak oils from my arms. I seem to have emerge unscathed.

 

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Saturday’s Poem: The Bicycle

Posted on January 22, 2012 by cynthia

The picture above of Monte and a friend (Joe Breeze, I think) was taken about thirty years ago by Dean Bradley, and I certainly could have found more recent bike shots, but this is the first one that came up in my files, and I like it.  Aside from the fact that Monte looked cute in his shorts and knee socks, I think it captures some of the simple exuberance of a bike ride. I experienced it myself a few days ago, when I did my Ballard Canyon loop again on a brisk, bright morning. I’ve been enjoying hiking lately, but the thing about a bike ride is there are those intermittent periods of bliss, when you’ve done the hard part and then you’re just coasting along or sailing downhill, feeling like a little kid again. And the bicycle itself is such a perfect example of good technology, an object both beautiful and functional, fueled by nice clean pedal power. So here’s a bicycle poem:

THE BICYCLE by Stan Rice

That which is, for example,
the bicycle
stands out
among other things, its wheels, fierce,
its substance.For example
the spokes are. Spinning
they are even more surely, by which
we recognize the life-light around the hub
and under the brain’s thin skin work
a thought for the rightness with which
its fenders join with the frame,
the handlebars, the accuracy, the pureness.
In the same radiance most things
stand, ugly, harmonic, stand
for us to mount
and ride out, clicking, handbrakes cool steel
handbrakes, alive more than ever
to what is, our vision fashioned to please
the legs, the way things
devicelessly wreck us with their perfect chains
in two oily wheels and wreck our
bodies, that we might somehow
rise out of this twofold spinning or leaning,
happy at last, furiously at rest,
a thing so rightly joined
the chain and frame
will never pull, for example, apart
from where we are going.

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Circus Girls

Posted on January 17, 2012 by cynthia


I do realize there are more important things happening in the world and at least six pressing tasks I should be tending to right now, but it was so much fun writing about that old photograph from 1957 the other day, I thought I’d fast forward to ten years later and revisit a moment in 1967. From left to right, that’s Joanne, Linda, me, and Louise, and we are standing at the Long Island Railroad stop in Central Islip. It was a still-chilly morning in April, and the four of us, defying our reputation as goody-good girls and honor students, have decided to play hooky and go to the circus at Madison Square Garden. (We apparently had the full blessing of Linda’s mom, who took that snapshot and waved good-bye to us as we boarded the train.)

Clearly in the spirit of things, I am proudly displaying my circus ticket, which I seem to have viewed as the entry pass to a grand and giddy adventure, especially delicious on a school day. Someone should have told me that a khaki, army-issue raincoat from the surplus store was not appropriate attire, but then again, I seem to have also forgotten my gloves, head band, white shoes, and pastel-colored handbag. Forty-five years after the fact, I wish I looked more fashionable, but this is the reality of me…even now, more thrown together than arranged.

And I remember far less about the actual circus than the train ride that preceded and followed it. The circus: ringmaster in a tall hat, trapeze artists, silly clowns and sad elephants…and vendors selling cotton candy and cheap toys and tiny red flashlights. From our seats way up high in the bleachers, we could see the audience on the other side making circles in the dark by rotating their red lights, and that appealed to me, but instead we all bought souvenir toy monkeys. I immediately dubbed mine Grape the Ape, and eventually he would find a home dangling from the mirror of my boyfriend’s VW beetle until one day he disappeared…Grape, that is, not the boyfriend…kidnapped, I always said, never to be seen again.

But maybe Grape’s disappearance was just karma anyway. Allow me to explain. First, picture us boarding the train at Penn Station after the circus, carrying our monkeys — and daffodils too — giggling and goofing around, four ridiculous high school girls who should have been in school. In the same car, a little girl sat next to her mother, crying.  Seasoned big sister that I was, I amused and distracted her with toy monkey antics, then grew bored and turned back to the chatter of my friends, which was probably only marginally more sophisticated. I could tell, however, that the poor sad little girl wanted a monkey of her own. Oh, she wanted one so much.  How magnanimous it would have been had I simply handed her Grape and told her to keep him. She would have gone home happy and never forgotten that people can be generous. Maybe it would have changed her life in some way; maybe she would be remembering it forty-five years later, just as I am now remembering that I was not so noble.

Anyway, Grape would eventually be kidnapped from the car, and all of us would graduate and move on and get old and one day even reconnect on Facebook. But the moral of this story, if it has one, is that you might forget the ordinary routines of life…but you always remember the time you played hooky.

Oh, and one more thing: err on the side of kindness. If you have a toy monkey, give it away.

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Lighter Sights

Posted on January 16, 2012 by cynthia

 

Today I saw buffaloes grazing in a yellow field as I pedaled my bike along on Ballard Canyon Road. I noticed a very nice, soft corduroy shirt for two dollars in a thrift shop and bought it. I met my best-est girlfriends for coffee, and left with two new books to read. As I was driving home a little later on the northbound 101, I caught a glimpse of the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile, and actually passed it, in fact, right here in Gaviota. (It’s an extravagantly ridiculous gimmick, but it does prompt smiles and waves.) Closer to the Ranch, a little boy and his father were walking along the road near Gaviota Pier after a day of fishing, as clouds turned to pink and the ocean plum.

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In 1957

Posted on January 15, 2012 by cynthia

I love this old snapshot; I have a framed enlargement of it on the wall and I look at it often. It was taken by my father at the Prospect Park zoo in Brooklyn, and as you can see from the date stamped on the top edge, it was May of 1957. That’s me proudly showing off my twirly dress, holding it out like a fan. It was the only dress in my life ever sewn for me by a real dressmaker,  made from a bolt of material in pale shades of aqua, an astonishing gift from my grandmother. I don’t know how I came to be the recipient of such extravagance…but I was six years old and thrilled, feeling like a princess despite the band-aid on each of my knees.

I note too that this is the brief era of my “pixie” haircut, another little fashion dream come true. My father had taken me to the barber to accommodate this wish, and I felt delightfully French and chic afterwards, but my mother, who was bizarrely committed to the idea of long hair, even if it was mine, went ballistic. (I endured a whole lot of unpleasantness for that damned haircut.) But anyway, there I am, looking quite pleased with myself. I don’t think I’ve been that confident since.

More interesting than Her Majesty the band-aid princess, though, are the other people in the picture, two of whom are siblings dearly loved. That’s my sister Marlene in the stroller, tiny at age two, her bonneted head down due to sleepiness or sunlight or something more interesting to look at. (Oh, how I miss her!) And there’s my brother Eddie in the quintessential 1950s outfit of striped tee shirt, baggy jeans, and converse sneakers. His hair is cut like a bowl, not much shorter than my own, and he is probably wondering why I think I am such a big shot, getting all that center stage attention for being a little ham. My big brother Eddie always had more interesting ideas. (Oh, how I miss him!)

As for those two men in the background, they are random strangers who, out of all possibilities of time and place, happened to be standing right there the moment this picture was taken. Nearly 55 years later I look at them and wonder who they were. (I assume they are both dead by now…unless they were much younger than they looked…and it occurs to me that of this group, I am the sole survivor.)  If I went back to the zoo now with this photo in hand, I could probably figure out exactly where this was. I wonder what animals were contained beyond that barrier…perhaps the seals or polar bears.

I loved going to Prospect Park. It was the borough’s backyard and my childhood experience of nature. (I read someplace that it still contains the last remaining portion of native woodland that exists in Brooklyn.) It’s exactly where we would have gone on a glorious May Sunday, and I’m guessing that this was a Sunday. The weather must have gotten warm in that suddenly-it’s-like-summer way, and the older gent has taken off his jacket and is holding it in his arms. I can imagine how the mild air feels, grassy-cool in the dappled shade of oak and maple and tulip trees. I can almost hear the calliope music of the carousel nearby, and the scuff of my patent leather shoes on the pavement. Maybe we will get an egg cream at the boat house later, or a box of Cracker Jacks with a prize inside.

 

 

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Saturday’s Poem: For A Sleepless Child

Posted on January 14, 2012 by cynthia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FOR A SLEEPLESS CHILD by Peter Schmitt

If your room is ever too dark,
small one, look out through your window
up at the moon, that little bulb
left on for you in the sky’s black wall.
It will still be there come morning,
burning in a bright room of blue.

And if your room, restless one,
is much too still, listen to the clatter
of the freight, rattling past trestles
on the cool night breeze. Then follow
the moon to the side of the tracks,
where the train is a long, slow dream
you can jump on. An open car
is waiting for you — one step up –
you’re on! Now watch the dark towns, the lights
deep in the porches, and lie down
in the soft straw, and sleep till morning,
when the train chugs into the station,

noisy with birds and wires overhead.

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What We Get

Posted on January 13, 2012 by cynthia

On Wednesday I hiked with the ladies in the backcountry near Figueroa Mountain. We made our way down a narrow trail, then climbed a steep  uphill stretch to Ranger Peak.  There we sat on the yellow grass, looking out onto the back side of the Santa Ynez Mountains, the shine of Cachuma Lake, the hazy sea beyond. It was a beautiful place to eat lunch, far from the cares of the world. I thought to myself, “I must stop trying to make sense of things.”

Earlier in the week I spent four hours in a hospital room hoping to find some flicker of cognition in the young man I have alluded to in previous posts, the one who was in a car crash in October. I sang him simple songs and squeezed his hand and held a mirror to his face. He touched his finger to his nose repeatedly, and I thought maybe it would mean something if he could see himself doing that, so I held the mirror closer and verbalized encouragingly whenever he did it on his own, guiding his finger when he didn’t. At one point he touched the mirror, seemingly with interest or intent, and then curled his fingers around its edge, and he seemed to want to take it, so I helped him hold it. What does it mean?

Or the better question: does it mean?

But I thought I saw a light in him. I even imagined his mouth curving slightly upward as though beginning a smile, but the operative word here is imagined, because I know very well how wishing can alter perception.

Then the physical therapist came in and showed me how his body is all folded up and stuck, and she drew him into a sitting position at the edge of the bed and we supported his back. I could see then how his spine and neck have become misshapen, and how much his muscles have atrophied. Afterwards, a kind-hearted nursing assistant came in to wash him. She told me she was from Peru and has no family here except her patients, and she loves them as though they were her children. “I see God in their faces,” she said.  She was gentle and careful with him, and I was grateful that he has such loving people tending to him. ”He’s doing much better,” she said when she was finished. “You’ll see. He’ll go to rehab, and when he’s done with that, he will come back to say hello to me.”  The possibility felt so remote it hurt to hear her say it. Too-big hope is a special kind of cruelty.

Back in the world where ladies gab and giggle and hike to hilltops, I told someone a little bit about this situation. It’s an awful lot of awful, and I probably shouldn’t be so quick to share, but sometimes I just have to say it out loud. (Like now.) This woman, one of the older and wiser among us, listened sympathetically as I went on with my lamentations about how young this kid is, and how many wonders and possibilities he would never know.

“We  get what we get,” she said. And she’s right. It isn’t cold or uncaring, but rather a simple statement about fate and acceptance. There are no guarantees. Lives go long, short, or in-between. It’s the way it is.

Where do hope and acceptance intersect?  How do we partition the pain of others from our own lives? Yellow grass, shining lake, lunch on a hilltop…this day is a good one, and that’s real too. I must stop trying to make sense of things.

 

Posted in Memoir | 2 Comments

Saturday’s Poem: Bad Day

Posted on January 7, 2012 by cynthia


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BAD DAY by Kay Ryan

Not every day
is a good day
for the elfin tailor.
Some days
the stolen cloth
reveals what it
was made for:
a handsome weskit
or the jerkin
of an elfin sailor.
Other days
the tailor
sees a jacket
in his mind
and sets about
to find the fabric.
But some days
neither the idea
nor the material
presents itself;
and these are
the hard days
for the tailor elf.

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Fragments, Figments, Figuring Something Out

Posted on January 1, 2012 by cynthia

It was an impromptu New Year’s Eve…just a casual convergence…Monte’s cousin KC, our old bike-friend Skip, and our dear neighbor Jeanne, who has appeared in this blog often. We had an early dinner of whatever we happened to have on hand, and we stayed up until New York’s midnight, which is about as late-night as we get around here. In fact, we set up my iPad on the table and watched  a few live-streaming minutes of the revelry: the ubiquitous backdrop of brand name advertising, inane chit-chat from minor celebrities with very white teeth, Imagine badly sung, then the dropping of the ball right here on our Gaviota table. What a world.

Jeanne had brought over two bottles of champagne and her legendary homemade caramels with bits of jalapeño peppers in them, and we indulged. She and Skip were talking about kayaking– at one point in her colorful life, Jeanne did a lot of that — and they were describing a maneuver called an eskimo roll, which is the strategy for getting yourself back upright and breathing air, glorious air, when you find yourself up-side-down underwater. The very idea of it is so scary I can’t fully imagine it, but you’re supposed to rotate the paddle in a certain way, keeping your head down on the shoulder of your outer arm, and executing a sweeping motion and an underwater hip-snap technique, even though what you desperately want is to get your face out of the water, asap. You’re completely turned around here, so nothing makes the usual sense; you just have to over-ride your first instincts and follow the expert’s advice.

And I’m not likely to go kayaking anytime soon, but it turns out that the eskimo roll has applicability in my life too. Skip suggested it was a good metaphor to help me cope with a difficult situation I’ve been dealing with lately. “In this crisis you have to be able to do exactly the opposite of what your first instinct tells you,” he said. “Your impulse to rush in and try to help might be as natural to you as breathing, but the objective here is to get your own boat upright and survive.” I’m going to keep that in mind.

I guess KC added the glamor quotient to our guest list. She is a classical musician based in New York for many years and although she now lives up in Berkeley, she still flies East  to play her viola in some pretty high-falutin’ orchestras. Her approach to music, though, particularly in the teaching of it, is to retain a spirit of  playfulness in playing. (By the way, she’s not a name-dropper but it came up in passing that Garrison Keillor’s wife is a friend of hers…oh my goodness…Garrison Keillor! Down to three degrees of separation!)  Anyway, I brazenly used KC as my human sound-hound to see if she could identify, from my humming of it, the mysterious tune I hear in my head whenever I wake up in the night. It’s been driving me crazy (or maybe it’s just evidence that I am already crazy). KC thought it sounded familiar and might be a Bach cantata, which narrowed it down slightly, and even while the name eluded us, I was absurdly happy  to be told by an expert that I am not tone deaf and my humming of a tune is a tune. But later, with new confidence and motivation, and using Bach cantata as my clue, I found the song that plays in my head when I cannot sleep: it is Bach Cantata BWV 140, Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme…otherwise known as Sleepers, Wake.

_____

Finally another digression, but this is something I’ve been meaning to share somewhere along the line. It is a link to a beautifully written essay, “Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist” by Paul Kingsnorth, which raises thoughts about the natural world, the ongoing assaults upon it by our overpopulous species, the insidious message implicit in making “sustainability” the new environmental goal, what we have forgotten, and what we must remember. It’s not an article that will make you feel good, and it admittedly sounds an alarm without offering solutions, but it is nonetheless food for thought. To me, it is a call for us to respect and cherish what we have almost destroyed,  and this final paragraph is a poem in its own right:

I am leaving on a pilgrimage to find what I left behind in the jungles and by the cold campfires and in the parts of my head and my heart that I have been skirting around because I have been busy fragmenting the world in order to save it; busy believing it is mine to save. I am going to listen to the wind and see what it tells me, or whether it tells me anything at all. You see, it turns out that I have more time than I thought. I will follow the songlines and see what they sing to me and maybe, one day, I might even come back. And if I am very lucky I might bring with me a harvest of fresh tales, which I can scatter like apple seeds across this tired and angry land.

____

So…Sleepers awake.  Could that be what the universe has been telling me in the night? I think I just found my theme for the year ahead.

Posted in Friends, Memoir | 3 Comments

Saturday’s Poem: Fragments for the End of the Year

Posted on December 31, 2011 by cynthia

And what a year it has been, filled with sorrows and joys, hard-won insights, elusive daily-ness, even little bits of bliss. The other day I wrote a journal entry that might turn into a blog post; it’s a random collection of images and impressions, things I lately learned, and random scraps…a kind of end-of-year inventory. Maybe I’ll keep working on it.

But in the meantime, I came upon the following poem which does all that and more. I find a couple of lines a little mysterious–the last two, for example, which reflect on a story not told, but I think enough is given. Life is not always linear, logical, or fully illuminated. What we have at year’s end are fragments.

FRAGMENTS FOR THE END OF THE YEAR by Jennifer K. Sweeney

On average, odd years have been the best for me.

I’m at a point where everyone I meet looks like a version
of someone I already know.

Without fail, fall makes me nostalgic for things I’ve never experienced.

The sky is molting. I don’t know
if this is global warming or if the atmosphere is reconfiguring
itself to accommodate all the new bright suffering.

I am struck by an overwhelming need to go to Iceland.

Despite all awful variables, we are still full of ideas
as possible as unsexed fruit.

I was terribly sorry to be the one to explain to the first graders
the connection between the sunset and pollution.

On Venus you and I are not even a year old.

Then there were two skies.
The one we fly through and the one
we bury ourselves in.

I appreciate my wide beveled spatula which fulfills
the moment I realized I would grow up and own such things.

I am glad I do not yet want sexy bathroom accessories.
Such things.

In the story we were together every time.

On his wedding day, the stone in his chest
not fully melted but enough.

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