Dancing the Dance of Genius

I imagine that people who write, and other people who are called artists, wrestle with the idea of genius, creativity and linking themselves somehow to both.  Often creative people are called geniuses, but what does that mean, really? 

In an effort to praise, we call someone a genius. Quickly we judge their efforts, especially in relation to what other artists of a similar bent have produced.  We judge and criticize, develop expectations, often wait expectantly for more art to come.  We voice our disappointment and dismay when efforts are not magnificent, and we deem a person who has spoken to us through their art a creative genius. 

We also hesitantly admire an artist's nearness to the limit of sanity, their potential for insanity, but we, by contrast, feel relieved not to be quite that artistic and possibly insane.  So, we seem to both fear and admire creativity. 

I listened to a recorded talk by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, on the TED website last night and was intrigued with her approach to the subject of genius and creativity (weblink posted below).  Since she has written in obscurity and now has been lauded worldwide for her wildly popular top-selling book, she is uniquely qualified to comment on what constitutes a creative effort and the possibility of genius.  

Creative people often are burdened with the expectation that they are a genius.   She contends that we all "have a genius with us," not that we are actually The Genius.  The shift in thinking relieves her - and me as I think about it - of an unhealthy self-expectation that creative people are god-like.  Instead, we can be human beings who work hard at developing skills.  Perhaps once in a we while feel the power of transformative energy in our work, giving form to it and revealing truths and meaning.  We recognize in those moments that we were not really the genius but were the tool through which genius flowed. 

There is a funny little saying, "If you want to see God laugh, tell him/her you have a plan."  Artists would tell you, each one of them, that you never can plan to write the next World's Greatest Novel or compose the Most Wonderful Song, but that it just happens.  Developing the skills and having the shoes to dance the dance of the genius when it decides to flow is our work.  Being open, prepared, ready for the moment is what being "creative" means. 

Watch the recorded talk.  It takes about 18 minutes.  See what you think. 

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html

Clambake Coming

Magically, it appears to be Spring today.  With the former Crosby Clambake Golf Tournament (now the AT&T Pro-Am Golf Tournament) mere days away, the organizers must be feeling like there's a joke in here somewhere.  They are much more used to horrible weather than good.  The greens keepers are masters at the art of squeegeeing  great sheets of rainwater off the greens, lashing the grandstands and tents to the ground with massive cables and ropes as well as corralling flying articles of golfers' attire that have been caught in gusting winds. 

Bing Crosby used to love to host his golf event here every winter.  (By the way, I have no idea of what exactly a "clambake" is in the real world; here it meant that the celebrities went to parties where booze flowed like water.)  The format of pairing actual touring golf professionals with amateurs including celebrities from Hollywood and making them play on spectacular courses lining a filthy-rich exclusive enclave sporting a melange of mansions, some the size of New Hampshire, was a formula initiated by Crosby and continues still. Giving profits to many local charities and nonprofits has encouraged acceptance by we non-elite residents and attendees of the event who feel a little overwhelmed by the gilded environment of Del Monte Forest. 

The downside of the whole idea was, and is, that it's held in, well, you know, winter.  So, a golfer could tee off on the 16th hole aiming at the distant fluttering flag and wind up watching his ball sail over to Carmel Beach, kind of in the opposite direction of what he thought he was aiming at. So, there's the inherent challenge of golf itself:  Tiny hard ball hit with long thin metal shaft at tiny hole beyond lakes, trees and sand pits.  At this particular event, those elements were mixed liberally with The Elements.  In other words, blustering wind at least, and possibly gales.  Also, drizzling fog - which only obscures the long view of the courses, not a problem for a happy-go-lucky celebrity - or slashing rain have been problems. Golf fans have been overheard at times:  "I saw a bird flying upside down and backwards today. "  Happens, you know. 

If today's weather holds up for the remainder of the week, the organizers of the Pro-Am will be ecstatic.  Flocks of golfing fans as well as celebrity watchers will alight in hotels all around the Peninsula and the turnstiles of Del Monte Forest will be whirring.  It's not a bad thing.  We're used to it here in The Groove.  But, rumor has it the sea otters are going to the next Chamber mixer and will be asking for higher wages for being so cute and distracting to the golfers and fans alike. 

Blank

This is the part where I intend to write something clever and cannot think of one single relevant thing to say. 

It happens every so often.  It is said that if you just write something, anything, you will be better off than writing nothing at all.  You can be the judge of that. 

It is Friday and I am fresh out of whatever is needed.  Thanks for reading anyway. 

New attempt to be made tomorrow.  Please stay tuned. 

Sketching an Idea

An idea for a longer project has been brewing in the back of my mind, gradually taking shape.  I alluded to it yesterday:  The Life and Times of David Jacks.  I've done a fair amount of research on him, prompted originally by a simple question.  How did Jack cheese get its name?  Prompted, by the way, by eating a sinfully juicy chicken-and-jack-cheese sandwich at Archie's Diner near the Monterey Bay Aquarium.  I was tucking into this big beast of a sandwich, juice running down my chin and fingers, savory aroma wafting all around me....

Naturally, beginning a research project tends to lead you into all sorts of directions, and you can become swamped in it, but some intriguingly vivid images captured me and held me fast: 

1.  He arrived in Monterey on a dark and stormy night, literally. 
2.  He owned the entire Montery Peninsula and some of the Salinas Valley at the height of his career
3.  He was cursed - literally damned with bitter vitriol -  and the curse proved to come true. 
4.  He began to amass his fortune by selling guns.

The fact that he did eventually own Monterey and lands surrounding links him to Pacific Grove.  He was a devout and pious man (really!) who taught Sunday school to local whippersnappers (I've always loved that word) at the Pacific House (pictured at left) in Monterey near his home.  He saw an opportunity to make inroads into the unruly lives of local riff raff by establishing a religious enclave where equally studious and devoted churchgoers could congregate peacefully.  He arranged to bequeath a large number of acres (my notes are not at hand right now or I'd tell you exactly how many) to the Methodists and thereby firmly establish them as a bastion of goodness and christian fellowship.  With a stroke of a pen, it was done and Pacific Grove began to be formed and then grow into a righteous and peaceful city. 

The dark and stormy night part comes much earlier as does the curse and why it was aimed at him.  Other colorful characters came and went during the several-hundred-year history of the area generally known as Monterey.  Our boy John Steinbeck mostly focused on the down and dirty drunks along what came to be known as Cannery Row.  The Oakies, Arkies and other brands of itinerant workers and poor who accumulated along the banks of our few rivers and shores were also subjects of his works, as you know.  There was a stretch time before that era that was actually a kind of perfect storm of historical events, and that's what I'm interested in.  So, that's a teaser, but I'll keep you posted. 

Looking at Victorians

I wrote about the Victorian-era houses that line narrow streets in Pacific Grove, so I thought I'd take a few photos today to illustrate.  Clouds are poofin' around out there, it's cool and the California version of January, a good day for a walk.  Off I went with my camera.

There is a several-block cluster of tidy-looking wooden homes with their telltale wrinkled panes of glass that tell you the glass is old and made with a much different technique than those of modern day.  The houses are sometimes painted in vivid colors that accentuate the decorative features.  Others sport softer hues and a much more conservative trim appearance. 

One of them "Paul Stevinson 1883" is nicely situated on a corner lot that provides viewing of the property from almost every side.  It has been restored and maintained in such pristine condition that it prompts many questions about the appearance and wherewithal of the original Mr. Stevinson. The PG Heritage Society is a veritable font of information, but they are not available except on Saturdays.

Most of the equally cute and varied neighboring structures in the vicinity of Stevinson 1883 were built in about a 10-year bracket of time.  Most of them were built from 1884 to about 1905, so there was apparently a bit of a housing boom back then.  With just a squint of your eyes and some tidbits of information, imagining the people of the day stepping out onto their front verandas isn't much of a stretch at all.  Streets and lanes were dirt and mud, horse-drawn carriages were used as well as wagons for transporting goods.  Attending church and socializing with the other well-to-do folk was the primary occupation of the good people back then.

Because this town was originally a Methodist retreat in which men and women encamped for months on end in tent cabins, you could say it was a bit of a holy ghetto, willingly segregated.  Nonbelievers lived elsewhere (Monterey for instance).  Self-selected by religious belief and a moderate lifestyle lived to the fullest (is that an oxymoron?), residents were able to buy land after a fellow stern and pious believer made his vast holdings available to them.  He was the remarkable David Jacks, after whom, it is believed, Jack cheese was named. 

To be continued.....

Winter Sound

I was thinking about a demonstration of sound editing in films I saw once.  A man wearing a trench coat, a fedora and wingtip shoes was walking along a wet sidewalk.  Leaves lay in loose piles in the gutters, and the colors were of muted tones. The man was looking straight ahead as he walked, and he was moving steadily without deviating to right or left.  His hands were in his pockets.  There was a total absence of sound.

Then, the scene was shown again, but a lilting, sweet song was playing. The mood changed. Here, you thought, was a happy man, perhaps in love, certainly content with life.  It seemed delightful, light and inviting.

The scene played one more time, but this time the sound track was a low, minor-key chord played on cellos and basses with a rising anxious intensity.  Perhaps the man was being followed by a killer or he was angry and violent.  He seemed in imminent danger and dreadfully vulnerable to unseen forces.


I thought about sound today because the day was so gray and color so subdued.  The absence of visual interest shifted my attention to my ears and what they were telling me.  I decided to be "blind" while I walked and thought of the famous ability of people like Ray Charles, Andrea Bocelli and Stevie Wonder to mitigate the loss of vision with wonderfully increased auditory acuity. 

I walked only for a few hundred feet (glancing up to keep my bearings and laughing at my clumsiness) in a rain-soaked environment. Water noises were everywhere.  I thought about the way our minds monitor what we hear, "filing," in a way, the ordinariness of most of them, but still alert for subtle clues that might signal an important change that could be dangerous or interesting to us.  The variety of sounds that indicated the movement of water in the world around me was infinite and virtually indescribable except by a few adjectives we always turn to:  Swish, splash, gurgle, drip, plink, and roar.  Most of the sounds today were tiny and subtle, notable in their infinite variety and exquisite detail, all very surely the sounds made by large and small portions of liquid, moving or being moved. 

I thought about what babies hear in the womb and how the voices and sounds outside, in the room, give them a preliminary introduction to the world to come.  It has been shown that the sound of a beating heart played to a fussy infant will quiet them very quickly.

I listened to the sounds around the pool as I swam later, and knew that visual clues were serving to edit the sounds in my mind.  My arms moving through the water made a very similar sound to that of oar blades pulling through a still lake surface.  If I had been able to focus on listening only to the sound - played in a darkened room for instance - I would probably have been unable to tell what thing was making the gurgling sound.

I remembered the sound of the storm-swept ocean last week and the way the waves sounded as they steamed across the bay:  A variable swishing crescendo that culminated in a booming rumble and then the clatter and crash of rocks rolling up and down the slumped cliff rubble.  The swish was the same as you hear when very fast swimmers race in a pool.  Slower swimmers and slower waves create a different quality of sound, so by just listening to the quality of the noise, you can tell the quality of the swimmer.

I've thought about what perfect pitch might be like for those gifted with it.  I think the cacophony of sounds that are off key must be annoying.  Some musicians have been known to be so intolerant of a poorly tuned piano, or guitar, that they were simply unable to use it.  I don't have perfect pitch, but I have enjoyed good hearing and being able to listen to beautiful sounds; being able to do so has been one of the greatest gifts of my life. 

Today is a visually unlovely one, but the brilliant shadings of noise, even in their tiniest dimension, are everywhere to be heard and appreciated.  At this time of year when the light is low and air cold, tune up your hearing a bit and notice what you're surrounded by.  It's a refreshing alternative that can be very uplifting when sunshine has gone missing for so long.

Yoga Memories

Slept like a log last night.

Walking and talking so far, but not gracefully.  "Rode hard and put up wet."  Feeling more than half a century old and far from limber. 

I took a yoga class a couple of years ago at the community college. I was curious. There were a few of my friends who had been attending and exclaiming about the improvement in their sense of well-being. 

Fellow classmates were nice, cheerful, encouraging; they greeted each other pleasantly and waited expectantly.  I just followed suit and smiled, too. We sat on our mats and did a long, deep vibrating ooooooohhhhhmmmmmmmm as mystical Indian music played on the stereo. We said "Namaste."  We held our hands in the classic pose of palms pressed together, arms sticking out sideways parallel to the ground.  My sense of satisfaction began to diminish after that as I noticed my hips screaming out in pain after sitting cross-legged for about a minute. 

The ability to sit with legs crossed serenely or do "an inversion pose" separated the accomplished practitioners from the terrifyingly stiff wanna-be-a-yoga-noodle initiates such as yours truly.  The teacher was limber and noodle-like, alarmingly so.  She was able to touch the ground with her elbows - shoulders almost - with her legs straight and feet flat.  And talk about all kinds of things.  With her head tucked into corners of her body I had never considered tucking mine. 

To her enormous credit, she was polite and encouraging to me as I grunted, puffed and winced.  I felt like an old baked chicken with all my tissues and gristle snapping and crackling. I did my best to maintain a zen-like composure, and avoided looking at my face in the full-length-of-the-room mirror.  Purple and red were the prevalent hues on my face, eyeballs bulging, profanity gathering like a storm within me.  My mind was totally focused on maintaining some faint sense of decorum and serenity, but it was an intense challenge.  Mind over body was my mantra.

Poses are given memorable names like Warrior, Downward-Facing Dog and Twitching Grimacing Carcass.  The instructor would say, "Stand in Tadasin, feet parallel, hands facing each other, arms up, shoulders down, chin level.  Eyes uncrossed please (looking at me).  Bend at the waist while keeping back straight, arms up, shoulders down, legs straight. Bend at the hips.  This is shannamahassinmawaganginanda (Hindu word for Not Possible). Reach forward, planting hands shoulder width apart on floor, keeping legs straight, feet flat on floor. Lift hips to ceiling. Hold, hold, hold." (Arms shaking, sweating hands slipping on yoga mat, feet sliding backward. Feeling gaseous. Needing to clench and hold, avoid loud embarassment).

The truth of the matter is that Downward Facing Dog is considered to be a relaxation pose, one that a practitioner warms up with in order to prepare for more strenuous contortions and positions.  One who practices yoga becomes sleek, balanced, strong and confident.  It is a practice that engages the mind and body in a synergistic oneness.  That's what the brochures and magazines say.  In reality, to prepare for a beginner class, don't eat beans the night before, wear dark comfortable clothing so as to appear slim and capable, and remember to breathe.  That last part will alert the teacher to the fact that even though you just crash landed from an inversion (headstand) pose into a heap in the corner, your intention is to go serenely forward into the day.  Right after you get carried off to the emergency room.

Coyotes, Keepers of the Keys

Yesterday I walked down to the Pacific Grove Natural History Museum; I was going to listen to an expert talk about coyotes. 

The lecture was to be free (donations welcomed of course), it was at 2 PM, the middle of a glorious sunny day, a Saturday.  The room filled fast, but all the attendees were middle-aged folk, some even elderly; none were younger than, say, 40 or so.  Granted, Pacific Grove is a town of citizens who are mostly enjoying their Golden Years, but I still wondered why they were the only attendees in evidence.  I had heard about it by reading the local daily.  Nonreaders would have missed the notice if they were foregoing the morning paper and simply relying on Tweeting or Facebook.  I began to think of hikes, walks, camping trips, rides and river trips - occasions when I was in the middle of natural wilderness areas for extended periods of time.  It looked like the audience had, in their day, been held willing captive in the same sorts of areas as I had - wildnerness - and looked deep into the eyes of creatures there.  Creatures like coyotes. 

It was abundantly clear that the room was filled with animal-adoring, passionate, heart-warmed people who were committed to heroic rescue of any and all species.  I overheard conversations about Animal Friends Rescue Project, SPCA, Marine Sanctuary rescue programs and more.  They looked wizened and unconcerned with the likes of Brittney Spears or any other tragicomic starlet fed upon by consumers of "media."  Mostly, they appeared to be there to recapture memories of wilderness encounters with wild things. 

My mind wandered off to a trail I'd been walking along when I was in my 20s.  It was early morning, and there was still dew on the meadow grasses.  Red-winged blackbirds were waking up as the sun began its arch overhead from the distant horizon; they made a dry "shhhhharrrr-ick" back and forth.  It was summer and I was at Garland Regional Park in Carmel Valley, a few miles west of the village.  The Carmel River that runs along its northeastern boundary was at a trickle, but the willows and riparian brush smelled very fragrant and sweet, soaked in sage and sycamore. 

My eye caught a little movement off to my right in the distance, but when making a determined scan of the scene, I missed the thing that had moved.  So, I stood still and waited for awhile.  Then, seeing what had been there all along in the trail ahead of me, I felt a smile creep across my face, and what I always experience as a shock of recognition of something familiar but distant and exotic.  A coyote was standing at a three-quarter angle to the trail, looking at me intently, its large ears cocked like twin peaked cups.  The eyes of the animal were tan and clear, intelligent, and its fur was brushy, tinged with black, free flowing, thick with finely shaded tans and browns. 

The coyote trotted away, slipping into the thicket of brush that darkened the river bank with a graceful lift of its tail.  But before it turned and disappeared, away from me and my human-ness, it gave me a steady look, sizing me up and judging me unsafe, cause for alarm.  What I saw in its eyes and then felt in my being as I watched it watching me was its nearness to its origin, its mysterious wild life.  It conveyed a lightness of being to me in its gaze, its carriage, its assumption of power in the moment.  Truly unfettered by the constructs of regulated society, this small dog-like animal seemed both to beckon to me and dismiss me as unworthy of its presence.  "Wait!" was all I could think. 

I felt separated from the coyote world and dulled by the disconnection from it, frustrated to be so.  The coyote, in all its rufous furryness, its trotting solitude, ear-perked keen alertness, was looking at me from the distant edge of a wide chasm, across which we have stepped and not returned.  Choosing frozen dinners and plastic wrap, we reek of them.  We have, to our detriment, given up the keys to the kingdom that the coyote still holds, and now - except for the devoted few who strive to reclaim those keys - we plod clumsily and with near blindness across the landscape.  Occasionally we blunder into an encounter with a song-dog coyote and a glimmer of recognition of what we used to be - alive on the earth.  Now we are agnostic; we have no knowledge anymore as people; we are not wild; we are not free. 

Look for coyotes, bobcats, deer, and watch them watching us, but keep them wild because they are far more important when they are wild, not human, untamed and free.  We once were as they are still; if they are ensnared and brought to ruin, we will be more so than ever before. 

No Rain - Go Shopping!

There was a grand finale downpour in the middle of the night, and then the sun ventured a look around today.  We had quite a different day compared to what preceded it.  So, I thought, I must do something different, too. 

I drove across town to the local mall, home of our cinematic megaplex and many trendy stores, in search of something different, new, trendy, chic (well, I can dream) to wear to a function tonight.  In the middle of the day - today being Saturday - there was a mild amount of traffic, and citizens seemed to be behaving themselves pretty well, driving in straight lines and obeying most traffic lights.  The first sunny day after a long stretch of wet slogging storms has a calming, rebound effect on people:  They smile, appreciate almost everything, and say things like, "What a wonderful day!" when they might otherwise flip you off or look intensely sullen.  Shoppers were wandering around the mall's open walkways in a meandering, unfocused fashion, like babies taking their first steps.  The sun was warm and birds were twittering merrily.  Peer Gynt should have been playing from the loudspeakers.  Bambi frolicking in the shrubbery would not have been surprising at all. 

No luck achieving fashion nirvana in store number one.  Just short of finding myself slipping into depression about style, body image, overconsumption of rich foods over the holidays, I simply left all the clothes I had tried on in the dressing room and exited the first store, back out into bright sunshine again.  I took big breaths of clean, negative-ion-enriched air and braved a second store.  Ah, success, my American birthright.  My credit card took a beating, and the clerk looked victorious, but I was relieved and satisfied. 

So, now I must dress and be gone, out into the night.  I hear coyotes calling, and I'll tell you why next time I'm back here again. 

Pacific's Wild Horses

We live under a cotton-batting sky, all in shreds and tangles, drenched and dripping.  No sense of when the sun will be visible again.  I continue to feel thrilled by the scope of wind, sky and sea, all thrashing around with wild abandon.  The roads and thoroughfares in town are showing signs of succumbing to the forces of the elements.  Cracks and pot holes have widened and deepened; rain has filled them and washed out any loose fill, exposed dirt thrown around and rocks strewn by passing cars. 

The sea wall along the ocean has been pounded relentlessly by high surf for the entire week.  Where, in the summer months, "surf" amounted to a languid swishing gurgle, the waves are throwing everything into the fray.  Boulders, kelp, driftwood - who knows what else - are all battering, crunching and tearing up stationary surfaces.  Waves come stampeding in like insane racehorses that snort and kick and fling themselves wildly, all crazy with energy. 

I've always been drawn to water, feel a need to watch it and understand it.  What is most compelling about moving masses of water, like storm waves and large rivers, is the chaos at their hearts.  A huge wave comes rolling in for a long time from the horizon, visible as a lumpy shifting form way out there, miles away.  The big red weather buoys lift and then disappear in the troughs and hills of the Pacific when the roller passes.  It's so cold, so deep and so mysteriously forbidding, all that force and energy.  You see big rollers steaming in, mounting up and tumbling with roaring and foaming, grasping fingers all chaotic and rabid.  The random interplay of crashing breakers and the zillions of frothing bubbles makes wavelets, waterfalls, fountains, streams and spray patterns that never repeat themselves exactly the same way again.  It is an indescribable beauty that somehow must be described to be comprehended and believed. 

I have stood every day this week during these storms and watched, completely fascinated and absorbed by the spectacle of storm surf smashing itself against the rocky coast.  It never ever gets old.  It's always exciting and incredible.  Because if I, 98-degree weak little me, were to venture out there, I would be the laughingstock of the whole ocean.  I have not even the slightest illusion of doing that, but I love it beyond compare. 

Swimmin' in the Rain

I swam with friends today who told stories of hailstones on the ground the size of walnuts, of wind tearing branches off trees and the kinds of whoppers that bring dimension and thrill to the otherwise steady grind of getting along with the weather in the wintertime.

A friend has two dogs, both small, and one is young and silly, a puppy.  "She's only five pounds, a little Chihuahua mix, not a Husky. She's afraid to go outside, and I don't blame her. There were potted plants flying around the patio. Just think if she went out - she'd be flying around, too."  Except for certain damage to the dog, that idea has appeal to me.

It was in the mid 40s at swim time, no heater in the locker room and no one wanted to brave the dash from there to the pool much.  It's the only bad part about swimming on a day wrapped in cold wind, delivered with rain and overcast.  The strategy is to get your stuff ready, yell and complain about it with your friends, and then all of you burst out of the locker room at once, run for the pool and jump in, which is what we did. 

Our swim coach is a tough cookie:  "People always complain about having to swim in the rain.  What are they afraid of, getting wet?"  No.  That'd be a fear of lightning, I believe.  "I'll let you know if I see lightning.  If it looks like it's getting close, I'll make you get out."  I thought of all of us caught in the pool by a slamming jolt of lightning.  The only comfort -- and not one that I'd ever be able to relate to a friend later -- was that I would certainly die doing something I loved. 

We were in the middle of the workout, resting briefly at the wall when we heard a low rumble.  The Monterey Airport is nearby and a friend confidently stated the rumble was a jet taking off.  It's possible.  About a 50-50 chance of lightning vs jet, and the sound is easily confused.  I was thinking lightning, not jet, was making the sound, and I felt a bit uneasy, but not uneasy enough to stop and get out.   

Shortly after the rumble stopped, rain - big ice-cube-cold rain slanting down hard - was stabbing our arms and pinging off our swim caps.  We kept on and felt crazy, but swimmers pride themselves on things like that.  Most fringe-sport athletes do.  Rugby players, cross-country skiiers, that kind of athlete.  We are not a pampered and spoiled lot.  We do crazy things like swim in heavy downpours, hail, freezing cold.  Why just sit on the couch when the alternative was so strange and fun? 

Now the rain is coming straight down, stitching lines of water from the even, silver gray of heaven to the dark earth below.  Rivulets are flowing down the street and everywhere is gurgling, splatting, pattering rain.

It was a dark and stormy day.

I was out almost all day today, doing things, checking in on friends, looking at the continuing wild show by Mother Nature and The Ocean.  One shot really takes the cake:  More to come.  This was taken looking north across the bay from Pacific Grove's Scenic Drive at about 2 PM.  No retouching done on this one.  It looked just like this. 

Wilderness in the Waves

The light quality has been shifting all day today, first raining and cold and then beguilingly bright and fresh with blue and white overhead at noon. I set about having a look; I'd explore the shoreline, see how PG had fared so far. 

Lots of people had the same idea.  Anticipating crowds of curious but incautious tourists, the ever-vigilant Police Department and Public Works men had closed vehicle access to certain low-lying segments of the scenic drive that skirts the city's coast.  Sure to flood in storms like this, the road is especially vulnerable at high tide when a 20- or 30-foot wave will run up the shallow beaches, overcome retaining walls and swamp the adjacent street.  Those curious enough to brave the gusting winds were walking beyond the barricades along the roadway, so I set off on foot, too.

A man stood near a row of cars parked along the road.  He had a large camera with a telephoto lens and a monopod to steady it. He smiled distractedly, but his eyes had a certain look, like he was discovering some magic.  He was charmed, entranced.  His little son, Malcolm, walked past us as we talked. He looked muddy and distracted, too; he appeared to be listening, but not to his father.  Later, when I looked over at him, he was hoisting himself up off the ground after having licked a puddle like a dog.  The man was trying to monitor Malcolm (obviously without much luck) and at the same time keep his eye on two surfers out beyond the shorebreak in the next line-up about 300 yards out, hoping for something special to happen.  Out where they were, a few sea lions and a sea otter were among the surfers, dark sleek figures in the surging chop. 

The wind was blowing from the southwest and the swell was coming in from the west.  When the waves come in from that direction, they hit Asilomar head-on.  The swell wraps around Pt Pinos, bending southeast  and then steams into the bay, smashing up against walls and rocks.  The surf is taking a point-blank approach to the Marina and Seaside shorelines east of here, the far eastern curve of Monterey Bay.  With a steady high wind like we have now, the waves get blown back as they crest; they continue steadily and powerfully to the beach and form wild manes of spray that are swept away in a dramatic and beautiful plume.

I walked on west and saw a young woman parking her car along the way.  She was jumping out for pictures at each pullout, and her eyes were wide with excitement - like everyone's.  She caught my eye and laughed, "It's a smack-down by Nature today."  A neurotic flicker of lightning in the distance was the harbinger of a gathering rain cell, approaching quickly.  Thunder boomed right behind the flash of white electrical light; the storm was brewing and thrashing all around us, building momentum.

An old man in shirt sleeves and slacks, exposed to the cold wind, crossed the road from his car clutching a camera, walking with a stiff, stubbling gait.  His face had a fixed, wide-eyed stare, half-grimace, half-smile.  He looked mesmerized, pulled closer to the waves as if by a magnet.  The rain was going to soak him, maybe pound him with hail in a few minutes.  The old man, exactly like little puddle-licking, mud-splattered Malcolm, was held in thrall by the spectacle so close at hand.

I'm used to seeing people at the water's edge, walking or riding parallel to the shore, occasionally glancing up at the distant water or shorebirds.  They usually appear softened and mellowed by the experience, introspective, contemplative.  Today, because the whole marine system was big, galloping and wild, and because the wind was gusting, the sky darkening rapidly, people were transfixed, spellbound, undone.  

There is a knob of land that sticks out at the very corner of the south side of Monterey Bay called Pt Pinos (pee-nose in this case, not peen-yose).  It is said by some that 11 deadly currents spin and swirl around it, but who could count them?  I know that it's where I go to watch the intersection of waves and currents when a high pounding surf comes in.  Today, I stood there, seeing the impending curtain of cold rain approaching, and felt the air, watched the white-paint-chip gulls circling aimlessly against the backdrop of slate gray in the distance, and I heard the waves frothing, thumping, rushing in.  Cold looming swells were lined up to the horizon, faces laced with foaming white, the sea a million shades of gray and silver.  Just briefly, the sun glanced off the surfaces of water and struck them a molten silver, shining brilliantly, all gone dark again in an instant.  

I walked all the way back to my car with the rain at my back and the surf line off to my left.  The roads were empty, cars chased off by the downpour.  All I heard was the incessant rumble of the tide, waves rearing up when they reached shallower depths after days and days, having traveled as an energy impulse across vast distances of open ocean, tumbling and surging on and on and on.  We who watched at the water's edge today saw the rolling breakers hitting seawalls, granite outcrops and beaches, expending their forward impulse, sighing backward to rejoin the deep once again. 

The whole rest of the world becomes inconsequential and unimportant when you stand on what you have been told is solid ground with waves pounding the shore.  The trembling earth below your feet informs you of creation, puts your ego in proportion to all time and eternity - a one-to-infinity ratio, in case you, silly human, had any other notion -  and it seems so grand while you seem so very small.

In the Storm

The stormy weather that had been approaching us for the past week has arrived with all its bad manners and ill temper, holding us hostages in our homes except for brief tantalizing glimpses of sun and blue sky.  Because it's so gray and heavy outside, the only way I can tell one part of the day from another is by paying attention to my appetite or need for sleep.  Without looking at the clock, I feel like it's 10 AM, but it's after 2. 

There have been some big gusts of wind that have thumped the house soundly.  Rain has soaked things already, driving in from left, right, front, back and sideways.  By all accounts, we need this good soaking, and we are all grateful.

The trees are doing a restless little rhumba out there as gusts of wind shove against their branches, but it's a lull at the moment.  Starlings - trash birds because they are non-native - are squealing and chittering, probably recounting the morning's flights to each other.  "You know Sam? Saw him go by a few hours ago.  Was taking aim at a pine branch at 20 feet and missed it.  Twice!!! HAW HAW HAW!!!  Starlings yell and pound the countertops when they talk, whistle at the girls, full of themselves like that, horning in on nests they didn't build and hogging supplies whenever they can.  Other trash birds you've seen around are English Sparrows, pretty dominant in most human-inhabited areas.  They have the most tuneless call, a shriek really, and grab food off plates at outdoor cafes like tiny wild dogs with feathers.  I do believe that if any bird species can snarl at one another, it has to be English Sparrows.  Cute but mean.  They don't count because they don't belong here.  Not that I'd kill them - and this is off my subject - but invasive species throw a spanner into the works of a native ecological system. 

They're all out there - trash or not - dealing with this winter storm, taking opportunities to forage at the moment, tougher than we are.  We wondered where the sea otters go during storms as we looked at the Asilomar area yesterday.  Usually ineffably cute and charming, they float on their backs or make graceful curving dives to look for abalone and sea urchins, crunching them up with rocks they've found on the sea floor.  They need to groom their thick furry coats constantly to incorporate oils and air bubbles, and they need to eat all the time to keep their metabolic systems in high gear.  I think of them when I see the choppy, nasty surf whipped up by the wind.  Somewhere, somehow they're out there, staying alive.

A Quickie

Only seven minutes to write today.  Off to work soon. 

Storm hasn't hit yet, but it's lumbering in.  You can feel shifts in temperature from balmy to cool and back again.  This is the west's version of the famous Perfect Storm that hit the northeastern seaboard a couple of decades ago - three major systems that all came together with deadly results - but our version has two.  The warm southern Pacific system is more moisture laden and the more northern, Alaska-originated front is colder and has faster-moving air. 

At this moment, the air is graying with darker and more heavy clouds every hour, but the air is still and folks are out bustling about with their usual business. 

Motivated to get out of our usual humdrum Saturday morning, we rummaged a few things to carry along, and indulged in a few treats from Pavel's Bakerei on Forest Avenue downtown.  Beignet, cinnamon brioche and blueberry scone - all immense, tender and warm from the ovens.  A few paces across the street to Grove Market to buy an organic Fuji apple and a Bosc pear and we were ready for a walk at Carmel River State Beach, which is my favorite beach in the world, hands down.  That oughta get us through bad weather now.  Hearts and stomachs full, eye-popping scenery in a 360-degree panorama, the fragrance of wild alyssum and booming surf.  Staggeringly good morning. Pictures to be posted when I have more time.  Gotta run.

Storm's Coming

The word's out:  There's an approaching storm, and it's gonna be a soaker, coming in slowly, heavily, from the west and south.  It's just the way nature is.  You know it's coming, taking its good old sweet time, like a fat old aunt who comes and sits on the sofa with a big heaving sigh, settling in for a long time. 

The city hangs its toes over the edge of the country's left coast with nothing but a zillion miles of blue, deep cold water between us and Foreign Lands.  As we teeter on the edge of the continent and peer to the western horizon, we see hints of weather coming, written in code by the clouds.  Just as a soothsayer gleans knowledge from the dregs of Turkish coffee in a cup, we predict what kind of trouble might lie ahead by watching clouds.  We tilt our heads, squint our eyes and look at the ocean's surface, reading the chop and swells, feeling the direction of the breeze.  Then we shuffle back to town for a stiff cup of tea.  We go indoors and stay there, out of the wind and wet, knowing that our homes are sensibly built on solid rock.  Coastal chaparral and stubby trees grow low to the ground with roots in the west and tips of branches stretching to the east, parallel to the ground, bent that way over years of abuse by the prevailing wind.  They are tough and hardy, built to endure.

On the other hand, folks in Pebble Beach (aka Del Monte Forest) prepare for storms quite differently:  They go get an extra round of golf in and then zoom home in their Benzes and Beamers.  They are a wealthy bunch, keen to remain apart from the ordinariness of the Peninsula, safe in their locked community. Better be wealthy in The Forest, 'cause trees are gonna getcha.  Those who live in "The Forest" own expensive properties filled with whippy, top-heavy Monterey pine trees that are just no damn good in high winds.  Every year their houses are smashed and flattened to a spectacular degree when the big storms hit.  The local paper always features dramatic photos of crushed cars, squashed houses and downed power lines - storm damage.  "Bob Jones of Seventeen Mile Drive in Pebble Beach views the remains of his home and car," states the photo caption.  A dismayed man wearing clothing purchased in an LL Bean catalogue stands next to a pile of splinters and distorted metal faintly resembling a structure.  There is usually a sidebar indicating how many trees crushed what number of cars and houses and, of course, how many trees went down on the various golf courses. 

PG has fewer trees.  We are more exposed to the bluster of storms and take the brunt of them before they blow over to Monterey and points beyond.  The trees left standing now are ornery and mean trees that have withstood wretched abuse; they stand around in the evening and tell their tales, spitting seeds to the ground for emphasis.

Our birds have adapted nicely to our blustery climate.  They know how to adjust to severe winds, flying backwards and upside down with a jaunty devil-may-care attitude.  Raccoons, residents of the storm drain system, find higher ground once the rain begins in earnest, but the inconvenience is short-lived for them as the town is built on a slope and the drains empty quickly to the bay. 

About three years ago, an intense storm system blew across the peninsula, and the surf was whipped to a gigantic frenzy of pounding breakers.  The lights flickered on and off for a day and a half, trees were bent sideways and all over everywhere debris and leaves littered the roadways.  Finally, as the storm relented, residents began to emerge and peer about for evidence of the storm's fury.  We drove over to Pt Pinos to have a look at the still very large storm surf, to oooh and ahhh and count ourselves lucky.  It made us feel like gritty survivors, tough and wise in some way, to look at wreckage and destruction. We'd had the good sense to live here, not in a disaster-prone region someplace else, and we had snug homes from which to gaze upon a more unfortunate world Out There Someplace.  Police yellow tape blocked our progress along Ocean View Boulevard, so we parked, got out and walked the rest of the way to the point.  The Big Blue had smashed relentlessly on the bashed-for-eons coast, overwhelming the scenic road that snakes along the perimeter of the peninsula's western face.

In that area of the city's coastline, the distance from the usual surface of the ocean is only about 10 feet below the road's surface.  Storm waves at peak high tide had thrown tons of kelp, boulders and large drift logs across the road, all the way to the nearby municipal golf course water hazard, giving new meaning to the phrase. It was dramatic and amazing and it was a mess.  Sand covered some sections of the road, with seashells, sea stars and anemones littered around.  Usually bucolic and pleasant parking areas were eroded and sections of the coastal boardwalk hung ragged and forlorn, like old laundry flapping in the wind. Waves were still in the 30-foot-high range - surfers call this double overhead - cresting wildly, then blown backward by the stiff breeze.  They looked like charging horses galloping to the beach, manes flying. This was a memorable storm, worse than usual, but that was about the extent of the damage to our coast.  Pebble Beach was without electricity for five days and could have passed for a third-world country disaster zone except for the caliber of cars flattened here and there. 

Gradually our birds came back, some with suntans after being blown all the way to Cabo, and the city righted itself pretty quickly.  Weather just does not take us down.  No sir.  I think the worst I can say about climate conditions in PG is that the air temperature now is exactly the same as it is in the summer when fog throws its wet blanket over us for the season.  It's a very steady specific weather groove, to be sure.

Eating with Intention

I'm reading My Life In France, the memoir by Julia Child, and it's giving me good insight into the differences between the French and American attitudes toward living. Needless to say, there are definite differences. Ms Child  says it can be boiled down to artisanal thinking versus a never-be-satisfied push for larger, more completely dominating business profit and size.  We don't see eye to eye at all in that regard, as countries. 

She described going to a small restaurant in Paris with an enthusiastic friend who loved the little place.  The friend announced to the proprietress that she had two new customers, but she turned away and said, "I have enough customers already." 

Enough! What a concept!  She believed more would be excessive, out of balance with the effort required to produce very good food for more and more people.  That French attitude, if you are American, spells snobbery and exclusion. She was rude, dammit!  Didn't she know she could have made more profit, become more successful? Hell, she could have started multiple locales, franchised the company, right?  

When was it obvious that you or your American peers routinely said, "I have just enough now.  I need no more."  Instead, the American consuming public (huge generality, I admit) is beast-like in its drive to obtain more massive amounts of stuff, constantly.  We, generally, are big, consuming, never-satisfied Jaba-the-Hutts who grab what we want and stuff it into our mouths/banks/portfolios, and we cannot seem to stop.  Give More To Me Now! 

I'm happy to say that quietly, steadily, artisanal foods like cheeses, olive oils, breads, meats and so on are being made by farmers and producers who have turned away from the business model that has existed since the 50s.  I don't have to tell anyone that a tomato picked from a garden and eaten within minutes is intensely, deliciously different than a Monsanto-altered mock tomato that has a shelf life of 30 days, do I?  If you focus on the very simple experience of tasting the tomato in its true state, the small delight is a big pleasure. 

Along the same vein, waiting to eat a vegetable or fruit that grows only during a certain time of the year, waiting to eat it only at that time of year, is a concept we have forgotten.  Yet, it's the basis of the greatest cuisines in the western world.  Relearning what vegetables grow at what time of the year - in the region we live in - requires an awareness of the ebb and flow of the seasons, the way the sunlight angles in across the landscape, rainfall, and soil.  Good old dirt becomes a more complex thing that has immense effect on our eating pleasure.  You want the best apricots?  You wait until the heat of summer brings a blush to their skin and the fruits' sugar to a peak.  Then you have an apricot to sing about. 

Patience is not in many people's vocabulary now that we are spending our time in front of computers in darkened rooms and roaring across vast distances in metal bubbles with U2 blasting in our ears.  

As of today, I am beginning a list:  I am recording the origin of each food item I consume this week, as best as I can know it.  Next week, I'll let you know what that list looks like.  If I can list the source of every single item, I'm going to be very surprised, that's for sure.  Why?  Because, I, like you, have been sleeping on the job basically, consuming but not feeling the connection to what some call the Life Force.  Quantum thinking to some, but getting back to basics for me.  Living with awareness and intention - starting with what I put in my mouth to eat - might be transformational, it might not, we shall see.  I'm curious though.

In the Rain

Much better.  Rain's gone and sky's clear again, air's warm.  Rained last night.  Reminds me about rain on another day when I was 18.

I shared an apartment with my brother back then, here in PG.  He had a Ford Falcon beater and I had no car at all, so I rode the bus a lot and bummed rides off Joe.  He was accomodating most of the time and we did okay, didn't usually fight or get in each other's way.

In the late fall that year, his Falcon died and wouldn't start up again.  Joe cursed and bitched about it for a while, but he finally got it to a repair shop where it underwent some sort of repair that would take a few days.  He might have crashed it or been crashed into; I don't remember.  It was broken and was replaced temporarily by a Pinto rental car, pea green, a much more damnable vehicle in my brother's eyes than his Falcon was.  "Gutless," he growled.  We had wheels though and that was what mattered to me.  Pintos were a very early version of American economy cars.  They were poorly made, badly designed and rapidly deteriorated to scrap once they'd been driven off a dealer's lot.

At that time in my life, I was taking a lot of photographs with my Canon FTB SLR camera and took a class at the local community college, MPC.  It was an evening class, so, of course, I needed rides to and from the class and begged often and pitilessly to Joe for a lift.  He often relented, and I tried not look too obviously like I was his sister when I was with him so he could keep his mojo going, single guy that he was.  It was an unspoken deal we'd made and it worked for us to be our version of "cool."

The coolness by brother employed as he went through his day was attractive to girls, he hoped.  Kind of a no-brainer he needed to look cool, have it together.  My friends thought he was good looking, but I just saw him as my brother, not cool at all and definitely not handsome, not to me his little annoying sister.  We did okay though. 

His coolness extended to his Falcon, a 50s-model two-door sedan that was baby blue and white with a push-button radio and two-tone seats, column shift.  Of course, the seats were buried in trash most of the time, but the car had a bit of coolness to it.  The cool image was shot to hell by having to use the Gutless Wonder (Pinto).  Cool was all gone then.  I think Joe just drove it at night so he wouldn't be recognized in it.

One night, I asked/bargained/begged for a ride to my photography class.  He said okay pretty easily, so we grabbed our stuff and got ready to go.  Immediately, a torrent of rain came slashing down and didn't let up all the way across town to the college.  Part way there, I remembered I needed a couple of rolls of film, so we had to go to a camera store at the mall to get them.  The rain was coming down in bibilical proportions, it was dark, and Joe was cursing the Pinto as a matter of course, mainly to keep a psychological distance from it.  "Goddam piece of shit! Look! I'm flooring it and nothing's happening! Piece of crap!"  Like that, nonstop, all across town.  He hated the car, every bit of it. 

We got to the shopping mall and parked, rain still pouring down everywhere, sheets of water flowing across the asphalt.  I got set, opened my door, dashed to the store, rushing to buy the film, thinking class was going to start soon.  Joe stayed back in the car waiting for me.  It was no use for us both to get wet.

I bought the film, stowed it away in my jacket pocket, stepped outside the store opening and looked around for the Pinto.  The rain was still coming down in sheets and the night was pitch black.  I spotted the ugly green subcompact and lined up for it, pulled up my hood over my head and ran like mad for the car, about 25 yards.  I yanked open the door, began to swing my leg in, and shouted, "Okay, I'm back!"

A little boy fell out onto the ground, making a burbling noise.

I stared at him down there in the puddles and sheets of water.  Why was this kid in Joe's car? I scooped the kid up by his right arm and pushed him back into the car and stooped lower to ask my brother what the joke was and saw the obvious:  The man sitting in the driver's seat was a stranger.  His eyes were huge and he couldn't speak.  With the boy back inside the car, I shouted, "Sorry!" and slammed the door closed.  In a matter of 10 seconds I had dumped a stranger's kid on the ground in the drenching rain and thrown him back inside his car and disappeared from their lives. 

I looked left and right, saw another ugly green Pinto ten feet away and ran for it.  I grabbed the door handle, wrenched open the door, stooped to look at the driver first, saw my brother where he was supposed to be and jumped in, soaking wet.  "You'll never believe what just happened," I laughed.  "Let's get out of here!" 

"Nice one, Christine," he said, shaking his head.  The rain pounded down on the ugly little Ford and we drove off into the night.  Hey, ugly cars look alike in the dark, you know?

Hurricane Hannah

I had a conversation with a hurricane -- a woman I know -- after my swim today.  I felt like going far away afterward and letting my molecules settle back into place again slowly.  I don't believe she and I are members of the same species.  She, I imagine, leaps out of bed at the crack of dawn every day and rushes to the coffee pot, opens her mouth and pours the whole potful in, blasts out the door, rushes to her car and hits the accelerator hard. 

It's easy to feel hit by a tidal wave when you've finished off a conversation with a person like her:  You check your clothes to see if they are still right side out and that you have not lost your socks somewhere.  I think all the buttons on my shirt were loosened and dangling by threads.  I walked in a wobbly circle before I could reorient myself and find my car in the parking lot, opened the door and sagged into my seat, breathing carefully, righting my glasses.  It was really something. 

Small Birds on An Overcast Day

One day I when I was much younger and had no names for things, I stood watering a bush that grew in the middle of my Bermuda grass "lawn."  I knew the yard was ugly, but I didn't know what to do about it.  Someone said, "Ignorance is bliss," but at that time in my life it wasn't bliss.  Ignorance felt like a cement wall:  blank, dull and heavy.  So, I stood on the lumpy unlovely lawn and hosed the bush.  The day was overcast, as dull as my ignorance, and had no beginning or end. At some point it wasn't night; the sun was lighting the low even clouds, but there was no sense of time passing.  The light was the same and cast no shadows. Eventually it would be not-day again.  

The bush was as inert and as graceless as the lawn, passive as it withstood the spray of hose water.  I wet it for a time and my mind wandered.  I felt listless and dulled by the hazy shaded sunlight, and I had no idea what I would do next.  I was in a self-pitying, lonesome mood, but I couldn't imagine how to change my situation and vaguely wondered how to become someone interesting or have an engaging, sparkling existence.  My mind was as dull as the day, perhaps depressed, uncertain of my future or its possibilities. 

I heard a faint, weak peeping sound in the yard beyond the now well-watered bush, a sound that barely registered in my bored ears. The tiny pips continued, and I gradually paid more attention to them.  A bit of movement, a nervous tiny twitching flutter piqued my interest finally.  The little noise became a tiny bird and then many birds, a moving restlessness with a high-pitched, multi-throated, giddy peeping sound.  These were small dun-colored birds that flew in little arcs of flight from grass, to low branch to higher branch, always jabbing at the ground or twigs like tiny mechanical toys.  Unlike hummingbirds that I'd seen whistling in a streak of fury from high in the air, these birds were truly pipsqueaks; they pipped and squeaked in a bustling, bouncing assembly that was loosely formed.  They moved in small rushes across spaces, keeping low to the ground usually, and they, as little mobs of children seem also, were the best of friends. They jostled and gossiped in their soft peeping language. 

I realized they were attracted to my one-bush rain forest, so I stood very still and let the water continue its arc, watched the tiny birds splash and peep-peep in a drop of water hanging from a leaf or stab another drop with their fine dark beak, drinking.  I envied their society and delight.  They were little downy fluffs of nothing but had heartbeats and some little bit of intention; they moved as a coalescence of energy bound up in tiny feathers.  I was spellbound and hoped they felt safe with me, the odd two-branched tree that held a hose. 

I felt a bit of magnanimity for providing water, giving them safe haven as they bathed and drank.  I played god, pretended that if it weren't for me, they would be thirsty, unable to find sustenance, perhaps waste away.  Yes, I was great, grand even, a wonderful human being.  Little birds had come to my feet and sipped of my water, found safe haven.  I wanted to possess them, know them like little friends and understand them.  They could each be no more than an ounce of energy and feathers, all told, and I could see that a puff of breeze would give them difficulty. 

With some tiny-bird signal, the whole busy flock scurried with a dipping, doodling quick flight, away into a tree in my neighbor's yard.  They never looked back, fluffs on  the day's breeze, unconcerned with my grand generosity. 

I was again alone on the lumpy lawn, holding my green garden hose and stared at the now empty bush.  The energy of the little gossiping peeping birds had left with them.  The sunlight was unchanged, neither bright nor warm, just light.  

"They're alive, and it seems impossible," I thought. "They flit and bustle, no more and no less.  And here I am, left behind, but they changed me."  I felt touched as if by magic, elevated by seeing tiny brown birds moving through space and time with a squeaking joy that had cast a spell, and I smiled in amazement.  Who had really played god after all.   

Infant Foglifters

We had breakfast out this morning; it was Sunday and our refrigerator was playing host to science projects, mustard and pickles.  No home cooking for us today. 

We were seated by a frantic, grinning waiter who tossed us a menu and dashed away for a while, so I took a look around.  The place was nearly full.  Most patrons sat heavily, and I noticed an unhurried, placid quality to their chewing.  They were murmuring dully and peacefully, mild-mannered folk who appeared to be content with the lulling warmth of a tasty Sunday brunch.  Quietly mature, definitely uninterested in fads and pop culture.   

A young Hispanic couple came in with their two young, energetic boys.  One of them was wearing high-top sneakers with rollerskate wheels in the soles.  New shoes for Christmas, I thought, and he's just getting to try them out.  His parents were pointed to a table for four, far away, beyond five tables of large, middle-class, white, conservative, just-got-out-of-church patrons.   Our boy began to roll across the room from the front door to the far wall, about 25 feet, in a controlled crash, leaning back and forth, missing chairs and people sitting in them by inches, arms pinwheeling for balance, feet shooting away from him as if the room was an icy pond .  Then he was falling into a chair at his destination table, a little proud he had made a notable entrance.  Ma and Pa Churchgoer to his left smiled briefly and looked very relieved.

Next the skater's little brother was sent out on a scouting mission by his father.  He came to the table near us, apparently hunting for packets of sugar, receiving instructions in quiet but rapidly urgent Spanish.  He held up four packets.  No! He put one down and held up three.  No!  His dad shook his head, gestured again and more staccato instructions were given.  Little Brother held up two packets, one in each hand, looking across the room to Senor Papa, who held up one finger.  I thought for a moment he was a third-base coach signaling the runner on first to run on the next pitch, trying to fake me, the opposing pitcher, with multiple useless signs.  His son put down one packet, clutched the other in his fist, turned and glanced at us with a beaming smile and scurried back to his dad with packet in hand.  Score!  Meanwhile, Big Brother on Skates was dancing his feet under the table like a marionette controlled by an manic puppeteer.  Neither boy ever sat still once, but they ate their food and didn't scream, which, in my book, is a big plus.   

You can occasionally have some surprises when kids are brought into restaurants.  For example, soft, cute, innocent-looking babies can generate fantastically, impressively random, paint-peeling shrieks when the mood strikes them.  A baby, born with the ability to suck all sound in the collective universe into its lungs, concentrating it into one shrill blast of sonic energy without equal anywhere, can generate dissonant intensity that is capable of ruining eardrums for miles around.  You jump, your eyes bug out, your hair stands up and you've just lost a year off your life. Windows shatter and plants wilt. Then you're gun shy, never knowing when another intense scream may emanate from the little darling. 

Our cohorts in the eatery this morning were spared the screams of confined small children, so we ate in peace.  Little Mister Skate Shoes exited the place with the same style he'd come in, teetering and tilting wildly but avoiding collisions entirely.

The grinning frantic man who was our server spent about ten seconds at our table all morning.  I wondered if there had been an unruly screaming-beast baby there earlier who'd jacked him up like that or if it was just a few cups of coffee before beginning work.  My opinion:  Baby vs Foglifter double-shot espresso - the baby wins by a mile.

Cloud Seeding and Chemistry

Strangely enough, it rained, big fat drops straight down, a little while ago.  Now the sun is shining and the day is whispering off to the west, perhaps chuckling to itself; it pulled off a surprise cloudburst and got away with it. 

Certainly, we could use a lot more precipitation than a quick wetting down like we had today.  It makes me wonder if there are still cloud seeders flying around up in the upper stratosphere somewhere, tossing chemicals out of their windows to make the clouds let go of any moisture they hold.  You used to hear about that in the news. Chemistry learned in theory applied in real-time to aid humanity. 

I have dim memories of a chemistry class in which my ever-patient instructor tried to light the ah-hah bulbs over our heads.  We did try, Mr. Kennedy, to "get it," but I needed a seeder to fly around my head and coalesce fleeting and vaguely understood concepts into something permanently understood.  Orbitals, bases, acids, Bohr's theorem (I think), potential energy.  I think cloud seeding as an idea had to have been conceived by someone who sopped up chemistry concepts like my synthetic chamois dishcloth soaks up spilled coffee.  They just think, squeezing the old brain a bit, and an application like cloud seeding pours out.  My mind in relation to chemistry is rather different:  I soak up the lesson and it evaporates.  Sigh.  Mind as hot pavement.  Pffffft! 

I am not grousing about my lack of chemistry brain power; I am just curious if the cloud seeding is still being attempted.  I am a bit fuzzy on the specifics, but I am open to the possibility.  I do worry - if I mull the big picture over for a minute or two - that the moisture squeezed from the clouds, in spite of their efforts to get on south or east or wherever before they are molested by a seeder, was, in a way, robbed from the clouds' intended destination south or east or wherever.  I imagine clouds are formed with an assignment:  Go rain on Merced for 22 minutes at 4 PM Wednesday, or something like that.  So, if we send up a chemist in a biplane who tosses his chemicals out of his window into the clouds (I'm picturing a grinning aviator with a leather helmet and big goggles, a scarf flying rakishly behind him) and the clouds prematurely dump their load on the land below, there will be a further drought south or east or wherever.  Clouds, being like baggies of moisture up there, only carry so much moisture around before they are emptied.  I guess you can tell I never took a meteorology class.  That, and logic, were on my list of Classes To Take Sometime.  I may yet get to them, but until then, I'll struggle on with what I remember from Mr. Kennedy's chemistry class way back when. 

So, okay, what did you say about oxygen and hydrogen? 

Victorian Ladies

Another prime winter day in Pacific Grove:  64 degrees, very slight breeze, mild swell from the west-northwest licking the rocks at the shoreline. Walk along the more historic of many historic lanes, you'll see tidy narrow Victorians shoulder to shoulder, sitting like old-fashioned ladies on a park bench, clutching their purses and looking straight ahead.  Each of the historic buildings sports a small wooden plank, dark green, painted in careful, sensible lettering. They declare their builder's names with an economy of style:  JR Rousch 1898, Robert Jameson 1904, Pearl Addler 1899.  The signs insist that the creator of the building is the most important person to have been associated with the property.  Dwellers therein since then are consequently lesser residents.  These are the folk who converted tent cabin spaces to permanent homes, the town's founders.  Annabelle Jones 1907, TR Kimble 1887, Bertha Quayle, 1902. Careful, just so, no more than that.

The homes have a look of a certain no-nonsense declarativeness; the colors are generally modest, the proportions correct and the materials sensible for the day.  There is, however, evidence of a little derring-do, Pacific Grove style, as evidenced by the occasional run of decorative "gingerbread" above the odd window here and there.  You can almost hear the original primly frocked ladies tittering quietly behind their fans as they considered the frivolity this decorative silliness represented. 

This town was populated by a wholly unsegregated community of Methodists for the longest time.  Their sedate and careful comportment is still reflected in the gridlines of the parallel streets, the many tall narrow steeples along Central Avenue that cap the churches and the original name of what is now called Lovers Point; it had originally been named Lovers of Jesus Point.  The ladies then would surely shudder at the sight of modern living practices now.  In spite of the obvious and permanent changes, gazing at the "ladies" of olden-times Pacific Grove  reaffirms their never-wavering influence on our lives now.

Leaf blowers and Entropy in Pacific Grove

There is a man mowing a lawn across the street, and the sound is penetrating into every corner of my home.  Above that noise I hear the shush of tires on the avenue that crosses my street. An occasional scrub jay's "zjaaack" punctuates the other noises. Now a leaf blower is beginning and I am feeling my mood darken.  I don't necessarily require quiet all around me at all times, but certain irritating noises drill so severely into my ears that I cannot stand them. 

The leaf blower has miraculously stopped.  I hear the clock ticking, a rake on gravel, the refrigerator humming.  Evidences of human activity and busyness all around. My jaw is unclenching, gradually. 

It's the middle of the day and the week, a Wednesday.  Money is being earned, lives enriched.  Pacific Grove is a tidy town and the yard keepers are ensuring that it stays that way.  Many times, too many to remember, I've seen yard workers blowing leaves and dust from under bushes, across lawns and the sidewalk, out into the street.  Usually, the dust is blasted to a point six feet from the curb. There it rests until almost precisely 1 PM when the wind comes up and blows everything back where it came from. 

If there's anything you can really count on in this town, it's the wind coming up at 1. 

My street is narrow and, having just watched the yard worker out there with the leaf blower, I see he has blown the debris across it to the neighbor's gutter.  What a friendly gesture!  To keep the PG neighborhoods looking good, residents (almost all are white) hire Hispanic or Asian men from Seaside or Marina - low-rent towns - to blow leaves, dirt and trash into each others' gutters.  I guess it makes sense in some sort of way.  It's basically an ironic and perpetual situation that balances the local economy.  Everyone seems satisfied (my neighbor has just given directions to the leaf blower and thanked him).  Some young grad student could come over to this little street, put little ID tags on the leaves and use a GPS tracking system to see how many times they get sent back and forth by blowers.  My bet is there are leaves out there that originally fell in 1962. 

It's 12:30 PM at the moment, so in about half an hour the debris I see scattered in the street will be picked up and redistributed entropically, but - my smile is widening - much, much more quietly.  What a funny town.

Regarding My Left Foot

Back on the couch with my laptop at the end of a longish, but pleasant, day, I see my left foot over there at a distance and notice that I can't really feel it unless I wiggle it.  So, over yonder is a body part of mine that is apparently awaiting some news from the home front - my brain - to set it into motion.

Feet are odd, you know?  We only notice them when they are tripped, stubbed, tickled or burned.  Poked and stepped on.

Our shoes don't fit and we blame our feet sometimes.  You get a blister and then you know you have a foot.  It speaks to you loudly, clearly and relentlessly.  They bark at you and nag.

Speaking of nags, it reminds me of horses.  Friends of mine, when I was growing up, had horses.  And that makes me think of their feet. The horses, as horses are, were large and heavy and had metal shoes.  Horses get twitchy now and then and take it upon themselves to let loose and kick the bejabbers out of whomever is nearby.  My friends came to school with U-shaped bruises on their legs and feet.  Surprisingly - to me, a no-horse person - they kept their horses even so.  My guess is that if I were to get myself into a cantankerous mood and kick a few plaster hunks out of my wall or launch a friend into the next stall because I couldn't tolerate my clothing any longer, my friend would drop me like a hot rock as a friend.  Likely, I would be arrested.  Horses, in comparison, are soothed, brushed, helped to overcome their twitchiness.  We believe horses to be less intelligent, so we put hard metal shoes on their feet, straps on their heads and feed them hay.  We believe ourselves to be very intelligent, so we sit up high on top of horses, steer them around, but when they get cranky, they fling us into a nearby bush and clomp back to the barn.

Now, at the end of my day, I have a foot over there resting on the arm of my couch as I type here on my keyboard; it's awaiting my signal to perform.  Kick, spring, balance me, trot, run, something. I wiggle it now and again, but I'm so used to it that a wiggle seems very insignificant.  My foot is bored, remote, indifferent, even perhaps cooly resentful of me. 

Since my horse-owner friends in school often showed up with bruises on their feet and legs, I regarded their mounts as dangerous; my approach with horses was to steer a wide berth around them, far out of range of their hind legs especially.  A horse, if you've ever been near one, can be standing still, looking dull-eyed and sleepy.  Droopy.  About to fall over.  Then, they make a long, deep, throat-clearing sound, and basically you don't know what the heck their intention is.  I believe it means, "Watch out, I'm going to kick the apple out of that tree 20 feet away with my iron-clad feet."  You know a horse's hoof is actually a toe, right?  So, they are like ballerinas en pointe, always dashing around on the tips of their toes. Have you ever seen a ballerina's foot?  They're a mess, all over bruises, sores, reddened and abused.  So, if a horse suddenly slams a stool into the next corral, he's dealing with a tippy-toe existence and blowing off some steam.  

I want my foot to do something unusual, now that I'm noticing it.  It seems so far away, over there, beyond my usual reach, especially at the moment when I feel a little stiff and slow.  At an earlier point in the day, say after one or two cups of coffee, I might get an urge to reach down and touch my foot.  You know, bend way over and connect with it in a friendly way.  I'll bet your feet carry on a lonesome existence off in their homeland, south of your knees. If you're like me, you take them for granted, you barely appreciate them, certainly you don't love them and caress them kindly.  I'm done writing now, but I intend to do something nice to that foot and its brother.  I salute my feet! Thanks to them, I can now walk instead of crawl to my bed and go to sleep.