Something To Look Forward To

It’s another stunning day in the Northland.

I’ve been quiet of late, not terribly inspired to write. I don’t know why. Work stuff is work stuff – no new news to report on that front. I’m trying to breathe deeply and trust that moving on is good and right and remember that almost anyone leaving any work situation after many years is likely riddled with mixed emotions about it – both good and bad. Especially the bad shouldn’t be given too much weight. Looking back I know I’ll remember this career fondly, be proud of what I’ve accomplished and know I stayed just a few years too long despite my better judgment. It will be my lesson to listen and act in a more timely manner to the dictates of my conscience and heart. Yes, I remain a little nervous about it all. But somehow I know that’s how it’s supposed to be.

Tonight we’re all about royal decadence. I have reservations at The French Laundry. In the realm of Things To Do Before I Die, The French Laundry has been one of the things on the list. I’m totally stoked. One possible down side is that my reservations are for five and the original additional three all backed out (that’s another story.) We’re bringing one of Ed’s coworkers and his coworker’s wife and brother.

Little Star

Burrrr… I’m freezing cold. Okay, it’s not freezing cold… it’s fifty-something.. that must seem like just plain and simple whining to you Mid-Westerners and Northlanders. I suppose the fact that the wild irises are blooming on the mountain, the shooting stars, milkmaids, hound’s ears, slink pods, Indian warriors and assorted other wildflower fare are blooming madly negates any sympathy I might otherwise accrue for my ‘plaints of chilly marrow. Yet here I am crying chilled to the bone!

If you’ve any sense of compassion you’d at least eek out a sympathetic poor sod, even if you’re tongue in cheek about the whole thing. Over these modest wires I won’t even notice the eye rolls and will feel imminently cared for, even if it’s all a grand illusion, a big ruse. Even if it is a ruse, if I’m none the wiser, what would it matter?

I’m not want to write about work here – it takes up a great deal of my life and I resist it infringing on these parts too. Once and awhile, surely, I digress, transgress, sully this sacred space with that messy stuff. It’s been a difficult year there, calendar year really – not awful, but certainly not easy – painful. Painful? You might query, How’s that… painful? At the root of it, you see, there are really good people struggling together, sometimes against one another, sometimes in the same steaming pot of stuff, and the lot of us concoct a pretty toxic brew together – despite ourselves, our best intentions and all efforts to concoct something other. It’s like we can fancy ourselves as fabulous cinnamon sticks – all sweet and spicy and a little hot – but somehow when we come together we begin to ferment and it doesn’t result in something pretty anymore. Maybe it once did – I’m sure at once it did, despite ourselves even then.

I don’t think our intentions have changed one iota. I think our ability to envision or believe in something (someone?) has. I’d like to believe that I’m just speaking for myself. I know the way this goes if I help to find a voice for like minds. I’m accused of leading a charge, manipulating others, putting thoughts and words in their mouths and heads. And the whole damn thing can (and will) likely backfire if anyone agrees that they’re not speaking their own mind, but rather mine. I don’t really lose anything if that happens – but rather, we all do. We all lose the possibility of something different happening (rather than this terminal sameness.) I don’t think it means as much to others that we break these cycles. To me it would be symbolic of our ability to grow (emphasis on symbolic.) But oddly, that would leave me with a sense of rightness and hope. All this is mission.

I know, I’m speaking cryptic gibberish. What else is there? You don’t really want the details unless I’m willing to form them around constructive examples – leaving them evaluable and/or instructive. That would take more of a tome then I’m sure anyone really wants. Maybe the bottom line comes down to two simple words “big sigh” or a gesture shrug. You know what they say about the violets in the mountains? I feel like a little violet.

I'll Never Be Back

When seeing a new place I often think: I am going to come back here later – when I am rich, or when I have more time, or when I have a purpose, or when I am alone with someone I love – and do this right. But it is self-deception. More often than not, my feet lead me somewhere new rather than somewhere I have already been. And as I sat at that window watching the train bore through the heart of China, I had a different, more probable thought: I’d better remember what this place looks like. I will never be back. – Brad Newsham

If we could hold each day with a little more reverence – both the good and the bad – and realize we’ll never be back, I think we’d all be better off. Even bad days would take on a more precious quality. It’s never going to be bad precisely like this again. Which even makes bad a little special I think.

I went to see Tati with the magic hands this evening. It’s more than her hands that is magic. Something always reveals itself in her presence. Tonight, for example, I realize that I have an incredibly difficult time simply letting go. I hold on. I resist. And yet when I relax enough to let go, the truths of the universe seem to greet me – my answers find my questions. Tati has taken to using hot stones in her practice and they open me up and the muscles relax under their heat and weight – hastening the process. But tonight I resisted and resisted and resisted moving to that place where my body is left behind being whim to her magic and my mind is freed into other spaces far away. (Maybe the stones kept me there?)

I was freed up enough, however, to remember that it’s time to let go.

The Mayans believe that when you are born you forget who you are and it’s the role of the villagers to sing you back into remembrance. They sing you your name. I read a short missive recently that a parent wrote about her son. He speaks of what he learned in his other life. How when he was eleven he fell off a ladder and was killed. When his parents or grandparents go to teach him things, he tells them that the other boys parents taught him that too – and goes on to fill in more details. He forgot to forget before he was remembered back into being. Sometimes I think I feel glimpses – not of another life, but of some time before and those teachers whisper things to me through my dreams.

I like the weight of this flesh. I like the way it feels curled up cuddling the dog near the fire place and the taste of smoky tea and lavender soda. I’d better remember what this place looks like.

Food, Glorious Food!

Max and I met for lunch in the dining room at the Palace Hotel. We split the arugula Salad and I had this wonderful organic chicken topped with fennel salad, oranges and a light orange sauce (with a few capers thrown in for measure.) We split desert too – something like a cream puff with Bavarian cream, candied cherries on the side. It was all really, really, really nummy. Afterwards I strolled the ferry building shops until it was closer to time to board (picked up some herbs du provence at LuLu and some lapsong souchong tea from the Imperial Tea Court to compare to the Silk Road’s version I recently ordered from Canada (which was on the doorstep when I arrived back from DC last night – around midnight – yahoo!)

Might I say that I’m totally digging on the lapsong souchong tea. Ed and I stayed up until about 2 am sampling the Silk Road’s stuff. It’s absolutely enchanting. (I’m still in search of the perfect glass tea kettle in order to try out the tea flowers that Cassie gave me last weekend.)

Okay… enough about food for awhile (though Crème Violette sounds divine, doesn’t it?)

Everybody Lives But Us.

I JUST FINISHED READING Son of a Witch. I highlighted a passage from the book that I felt partial to awhile back. To refresh:

A capacity for interiority in the growing adult is threatened by the temptation to squander that capacity ruthlessly, to revel in hollowness. The syndrome especially plagues anyone who lives behind a mask. An Elephant in her disguise as a human princess, a Scarecrow with painted features, a glittering tiara under which to glow and glide in anonymous glamour. A witch’s hat, a Wizard’s showbiz display, a cleric’s store, a scholar’s gown, a soldier’s dress sartorials. A hundred ways to duck the question: how will I live with myself now that I know what I know?

AND SO NOW at the end of the day, is there illumination. Of course. Of course.

I ADORED THE BOOK, more than Wicked. It’s something of a coming of age story that goes beyond coming of age. The backdrop for the first half is our hero, Liir, in a comatose and decrepit state, being played back to life by the lilting and beautiful music of the lovely Candle. The Sisters left him with her to heal and having no healing power and a soft (near invisible) voice, she picked up her instrument and played with her heart (and the feather of a pfenix) the boy back to life and health. This is the context for our stroll back through Liir’s life to the events which brought him there.

(The Sisters worship the Unnamed God- though while they believe the Unnamed God created humans in its likeness, The Superior Maunt believes that people of the great City of Oz has recreated the Unnamed God in their likeness instead. She’s also attributed with this reflection, Wisdom is not the understanding of mystery, she said to herself, not for the first time. Wisdom is accepting that mystery is beyond understanding. That’s what makes it mystery. And for some reason all that makes me think of Edward Abbey… I digress.)

IN THE BEGINNING, orphaned, lost and alone, his mother (Elphaba, the Wicked Witch) having been killed by the callous and cruel visitor (Dorothy), Liir goes in search of any family or semblance of kin he might have left. He’s uncertain of his parentage – he knows Elphaba raised him and is perhaps the closest thing to a mother that he knows, but given her lack of maternal characteristics, Liir felt more a charge in her care than a son to her. Be that as it may. He sets off to the City of Oz in search of the Tin Man, the Lion and the Scarecrow. The Scarecrow (who will later rule Oz for a spell) relays the following:

”The Tin Woodman has left to cultivate the art of caring. He has his work cut out for him, poor sod. The Lion is suffering severe depression; his cowardice was his sole identifying trait, and now he’s pitiably normal. Neither of them can help you much, I’m afraid. You should get yourself out of here while you can. Start over.”

“Start over? I never started the first time. Besides, it’s not getting out that I need to do. It’s getting in.”

SURELY LIIR goes to the darkest places in Oz in search of the allusive family, the allusive belonging. He explores the country, betrays, amends, fails and redeems. He learns to love and be faithful. He slays the dragons even though the blasted demons stole his broom (the only remnants of his connection to his mother) and nearly stole his life (the reason for is desperate and near death state which Candle plays him so vigorously out of.) It is after he is played back to life, however, that he goes battling his real demons. And yes, he slays the dragons so that the skies might once again be safe for the birds to fly and with this, of course, spring can come again – because so many know springtime by the coming of birds!

It is that one quote that I pulled out earlier, however, that is the heart of the matter, the what of the what, the is of the is. The novel is about unmasking the masked so that they may finally live fulfilled and complete – so that they might know themselves and live with themselves and as who they are.

Early on in the book there’s this foreboding line:

”Everyone dies. It’s a question of where and how, that’s all.”

THIS MIGHT SEEM SIMPLE, but Liir has met an Elephant, disguised as a princess, who only wishes to die as an Elephant and a major part of the drama is Liir making his way back to her, with Candle, to shepherd that transition back to herself, unmask her, so she might die as her true self – unmasked and revealed. Exposed. Where and how is quite important in this instance.

(I loved this part, not relevant.. or maybe completely relevant, I’ve yet to stumble on the connection: In four different hands, applied at four different opportunities, to judge by the aging of the text the wall read ELPHABA LIVES! OZMA LIVES! THE WIZARD LIVES! And then EVERYBODY LIVES BUT US.)

SO HERE IT IS in the culmination, the final moment, in the chapter titled No Place Like It (home, of course):

The colossal might of wickedness, he thought. How we love to locate it massively elsewhere. But so much of it comes down to what each one of us does between breakfast and bedtime.

Remembering Princess Nostoya [the Elephant disguised as a princess] he thought: Sever us from our disguises. Then he flinched, almost in disgust. Was that a prayer?

WHAT A LOVELY ENDING! (That’s not precisely the end, but maybe it should have been.)

I Linger on Her Thigh

I linger on her thigh a fatal moment. - L. Cohen

I watched the Leonard Cohen I’m Your Man documentary last night and was simply not impressed. But my love for the man wasn’t tarnished. I could be happy being lulled to sleep by his resonant deep voice each night. He doesn’t sing, he preaches. You have the likes of Bono saying things like, he walks up to the edge of the abyss, looks in and laughs. He’s trying to be clever and yet I wonder if he’s ever listened to the man. Cohen doesn’t walk up to the edge of the abyss and laugh. He worships at the edge of the abyss. He goes there and grovels. It’s why he’s so desperately beautiful.

I had such a stellar weekend; it seems like counting pennies to retell it – all these shiny things. Yes they are good. I reconnected with an old friend, Ella, who I haven’t seen in forever and somehow we lost touch and I simply love her. I cannot express how good it was to see her again after all these years. She is the same yet even more beautiful, she is the same yet very different – deeper, calmer, lovely. It was such a prize to see her. She is filled with so much light and it reminds me to be happy just to walk with her. It’s odd. I used to think she was filled with sadness, but now I realize I misunderstood. It was me, I think. Not her. We will see each other again now.

I briefly mentioned a visit up the Coast to a vacation rental community with some friends a few months back. Two of said friends, heretofore shall be named Emma and Nigel, were married in a clandestine ceremony (aka eloped) in November. They were both to come up with Cookie on Saturday night for dinner and a show, an a capella performance I think I referred to previously by a local group called Solstice. (Since I’ve learned this is a very popular name for all women vocal ensembles – include derivations like Soulstice, etc.) Nigel wasn’t able to make it in the end, but without him we had a wonderful time. I made so much food I haven’t had to cook again all week and there’s still more to go – baked ziti with herb roasted chicken, creamy pesto and capillini, rosemary sour dough bread with fresh garlic and rosemary olive oil dipping sauces, a massive salad…. You know, all the heart healthy stuff.

Cookie spent the night. He seems to stay up quite late and thus sleep in quite late. Ed and I were able to run a hoard of errands before he even knew we’d been gone and out to Terra Linda, San Rafael and back. Once he rose we took a promenade around town (he’d never seen it in the daylight before), picked up Honey Vanilla Lavender ice cream at the local parlor and ate while we strolled and then Gaye showed up for an afternoon hike. Ed whisked Cookie back to the City and stopped for a last round at the range (did I mention he loves the shotgun I bought him for the holidays? Come the revolution, those pigeons best watch their tails…)

Those are all the shiny things. It was a stellar weekend. Come Monday I was still content with the right amount of fullness and emptiness – the right balance of together and alone, new and old.

Lately, I’ve just felt like playing. It’s such a great little playground we have here… this planet, this life, this skin, these kisses. Like the man says, I linger on her thigh a fatal moment…

Untitlled

They joke about the status quo to break the ice. Once the ice is broken I hope they all fall through. (Let’s grow old and die together. Let’s do it now.) - Ani DiFranco

I’m still feeling happy and optimistic – we’re at the first ides, 1/24th of the way into the year and it’s still rock’n the free world. I was walking down Fillmore Street to Union today. It’s a crazy steep hill – they’ve had to turn the side walk into stair steps because the grade is so drastic – you’d probably just slip right down into the bay without the terracing. (It was so stellar, blue, clear way up there on top of the world. You could see Alcatraz clear as a bell and all the way to Canada if you squint.) I was thinking about something and it struck me, there’s a thought to record – a moment that moved me – and I was suddenly wondering about this need to record thought. To prove, maybe, that it happened? To document that I think and feel and sometimes do both at once?

I’m often frustrated because I don’t feel the stories in me, I don’t hear them, they don’t come out in some bounding explosive narrative that can’t be turned away from and erupt like a pipebomb, wiping out everything in such-and-such a radius. I guess what I’m saying is that I’d like to kill us all in one devastating sweep of profundity. I want to write but I don’t feel my story. I do write, but I don’t mean like that. I mean my fiction, my inner facts. But what’s true is that I do have these stories, but the ones that come all easy – they don’t count, you see. Unless it’s squeezing blood from a stone and all painful and oozy, it just doesn’t count. It’s not real unless it hurts. What bullshit is that? When really, I delight myself often with the stuff that comes light as the breeze.

There he was
Sleeping soundly
After killing giants all day
And there I was
Throwing stones that never hit the mark.

I love that and it doesn’t even hurt.