The Heart of San Juan Bautista

Mission San Juan Bautista State Historic Park is beautiful and so is its little town.  It's simple, old and lovely in a way that authentic old towns are.  If you look very closely; if you jab, poke and look look for flaws, you'll see lots of them.  But, the flaws, when you step back and look at the whole of it, become the exact thing you hope to find when you travel:  Authenticity.  

I don't want to see manufactured happiness or hear recorded messages.  I don't want to be what corporations have calculated I should be or see what they want me to see.  I want to see places like San Juan Bautista that have survived and endured all that its citizens and weather have conspired upon it, and I want to see the streaks of its tears, the laugh lines, the sagging roof lines or the gnarled old trees whose roots bend the sidewalks.  I want to see places that were built out of human necessity, not a corporate calculation to maximize profits and homogenize and neutralize my perceptions.  

San Juan Bautista is old and lumpy and sags at the corners.  Its slip is showing and its shoes are worn, but it is lovely and sweet and more than a little proud.  It surrounds on three sides an old Spanish mission built more than 200 years ago, and the little town moves to and from the mission grounds like the tide flows to and from our shore here in Pacific Grove.  They fill it with joy and sadness, anger and indignation.  As they should, the emotions and ideas of its people appear in its storefronts and along its streets in colors, textures and signs.  

What is most remarkable about this littlest of small old towns in busy, roaring, overpopulated California, is that it retains its charm and authentic character year after year.  Get to know it, and go with an open heart.  Be ready to meet it and sit with it awhile.  Give it time to slow you down to its pace and style.  You'll be the richer for it.  

Cuisine and Romance: Roy's at Spanish Bay

In a state of self-indulgence, we took ourselves out for a very special dinner at Roy's in Pebble Beach this evening.   It was our anniversary, after all, and what better reason to break the bank than love?

We were seated by a window at a table for two and were presented with a menu specially printed with anniversary wishes, a very nice touch.  The staff greeted us and showered us with happiness and salutations.  We smiled and loved it all.  Then, as hoped, the sky presented us with a glorious sunset filled with gold, scarlet and dramatic clouds.  Surfers beyond the Spanish Bay links were catching beautiful curling waves in an unusually consistent set of breakers.  At about 6:30 the traditional bagpiper played for everyone outside on the patio that extends out to the links beyond the restaurant and hotel.  It's not required, by the way, to pay to hear him play.  One of the most romantic and unique experiences one can have on the Peninsula is to include sunset over crashing surf and bagpipes playing.  Of course, a drink and a bite to eat out there is even better.  

We had quail with mango chutney as well as kobe tataki for starters and then moved on to a complicated tower of various things comprising a delicious salad.  Edamame kept us busy as a complimentary nibbler dish, welcome change from bread or chips.

Roy's specializes in Pacific Rim cuisine with many island touches including bequeathing shell leis to celebrants like us.  Main courses consisted of sea bass with crab crust on swiss chard and seared ahi tuna, wasabi sauce, ginger and bok choy.  Dessert rounded us out - literally - with a plate of homemade cookies from the dessert chef and pineapple compote with coconut ice cream set in a small cup of crisp pastry, served with coffee.

Dinner was special, just as we knew it would be.  Roy's has a fine reputation for gracious service, a very romantic setting on Spanish Bay, and inventive foods made with products from the sea right out there beyond the window as well as the agricultural riches from all around the county.

Love was the theme of the evening, for obvious reasons, but was also felt in the staff's gracious attitude and intelligent presentation of very good food.  That special ingredient elevated the evening and added a rare serendipity that good restaurants make look effortless.  Cheers!  

Rain Coming

The shifting clouded sky looks haunted, distressed.  It's streaked with tattered shreds that look like dreams and nightmares, vaporized and drifting aimlessly.  Ominously fantastic clouds are stretched from one corner to the other of the heavens.

There is a heavy swell piling up on rocks and shoreline, overwhelming tidal pools and then draining out in gurgling rivulets.  Long heaving rushes of water, each one going further up the shore than the last, have interludes of silence between them, as if they are pausing to consider staying or returning once again.    

The air stinks of guano and rotting seaweed, nearly palpable in its density, at lower tidal zones, in areas shielded from currents and waves.  When the breeze blows, it's edge is cool and sobering.

An encounter between warm, heavily moist clouds from the south west and cold impatient currents from the northeast are meeting at the shore, high overhead.  Today the sky is haunted with sad memories, sagging with regret, weeping with remorse.  Teardrops of rain are flowing, running, trickling down the hillsides, eventually joining the salted depths of ocean waiting at the shore.  The swells gather them into their arms, forgiving, grateful.

Too Fast or Too Slow

I was given an assignment in the online short story writing class I'm taking from Jessica Barksdale Inclan.  It was: Write a scene about a lie, a second one about lust, and a third about a party.  I was to take five minutes for each subject.  I thought it was an exciting challenge, but the minute the time began, I realized how slowly a sentence takes to get out on paper or keyboard/screen.  I swear that the clock sped up as soon as I started to write.  I'm certain of it, and I'll bet big money on it.  Zillions.  

My admiration for sports writers and journalists who have to meet a deadline went waaaaay up.  Hats off to those guys! I wrote a lot of garbage that I instantly deleted and tried again.  Same result.  Wow.  Dead in the water.  Missed my mark by a mile.  As a matter of fact, I am going to tell my teacher that my dog ate my homework.  I call my delete key "Dog."  

Later, after more writing - not the same assignment - I found myself staring at my screen, waiting for a page to load. My problem stems mainly from owning an old-school modem that kicks me off (of what?) pretty frequently and laughs at me the rest of the time.  It was moving so slowly at one point that I found myself blowing on the screen to hurry it.  Not sure why that would work, but boredom does things to a person.  

So, thinking about these two representations of quickness, be it nimbleness of mind or fleetness of internet, I really have no idea how to get my mind thinking faster or what is going on in my computer or in the air - Apple now connects everything in a Cloud up there somewhere - that makes it slow or fast or anything, really.  

I just pray a lot and smile at my computer and remind myself to be patient.  I find alternatives to situations where I need to write like blazes and have small turtle icons and holy shrines around my home that I hope will influence the computer gods.  That and blowing on the screen every now and then.  Something has to work, right?  

British Tea and Pasties: Authentic and Delicious

I visited a small but excellent Tea Room yesterday called Eddison and Melrose in Monterey, which is odd, because I'm not much for tea.

It goes without saying that tea is nearly worshipped in England and all countries it has colonized.  Cousins came all the way from South Africa one year and had to teach us all how to brew a proper pot of tea.  I was grateful to know, but I was not able to understand the passion for it.  It's very bland to me.

But getting back to the visit yesterday, I was curious to try this place.  Several years ago, I met the owner, Karen Anne Murray, a London-trained chef, after she had given a talk about fresh food and healthy eating.  When I chatted with her twin sister, who is a colleague in nursing, the topic of good food came up and her sister's tea room was mentioned.  I'd never heard of it before, but Karen's reputation as an elegant and passionate chef sold me on the idea.

Eddison and Melrose is on Soledad Drive in Monterey.  It's open from 11 to 3 Tuesday through Saturday.  It features bangers, pasties, salads, tortes, pies and cakes.  Ms. Murray is a slim pastry chef, virtually an oxymoron, who practices what she preaches.  That is, she uses high quality local foods, well prepared with a minimum of processed ingredients, always chock full of delicious flavors.  Visually, her foods are artistic and beautiful as is the simple but pretty Tea Room.

I was the first to arrive at the place yesterday.  It smelled clean, fragrant, and appealing.  All foods are prepared from scratch on the premises, and catered meals are assembled in the large certified kitchen, right there on site.  I didn't have a chance to say hello to Karen, but she had been in earlier and prepared the menu items fresh that morning.

I chose a turkey pasty, which would be called a turnover here in the States.  It was piping hot, savory and very satisfying.  Cheese and caramelized onions filled every forkful along with the turkey and buttery crust.  I was treated to a few spoonfuls of Brighton relish, gray poupon mustard and HP sauce, a close cousin to A1 sauce we are familiar with.  I'd like to have had an ale or hearty beer with the pasty, but the tea house doesn't serve alcohol.  Order "take away" as they say across the pond, and you'd have yourself a fine repast to enjoy at the beach or at home with friends.

Yes, I yielded to dessert, an authentic chocolate torte that had excellent crumb and rich chocolate flavor without being too rich or overly sweet.

Eddison and Melrose has been catering for 15 years, specializing in British favorites.  Stop in for authentic and top-drawer British comfort foods and lighter fare.  I have not found better on the entire Peninsula and I'm pretty sure I never will.

A Candle's Light

A candle stands quietly by me, compelling me to watch its soft exotic dance.  This flamelight recalls all other flames seen in one lifetime -  all campfires, woodland fires, candlelight and firelight.  The moving flame has warmth and a shifting pulsing dimension.  It is never still, always restless.

The night is quiet, the neighborhood blanketed in darkness.  I can hear breakers on the shore if I go out there and listen.  Surf on the dark coast is a distant rumbling like the blood running in my veins.

My candle moves, and I watch its subtle pulsations.  It is a sensitive form, a small tongue tasting the air, consuming candle wax, perfuming the air around me.  It is not without its dangers.  The whole of my world is here in this tiny fire, with the light down low and one flame dancing silently.  All goodness and all evil, all love and all fear are contained and linger there in the shifting waving glow of energy.

Remember?  We have sat by fires and heard the rain roaring on the rooftop, pounding in the forest, and we have gazed into the fire, juxtaposed between fire and water, and we loved that, we have said, all of us.  I am more human with fire near me, with the small flickering light of candles or flame.  It is beautiful; it belongs with me, with us, forever.  

Gleaming, this burning force is ageless, eternal, yet unperturbed on its wick it plays lightly, coy and bright.  Mysteriously, it sways in the company of unseen soft currents, the tiny breath of angels or conversations still moving in the room, long silenced to my ears, enlivened by the heat of this small fire.

Do You Hear That?

I spent the day in a conference room today.  What I noticed right away was what I also noticed at the talk given by Charles Cramer a couple of days ago.  That is, most of the attendees - nearly all Baby Boomers - looked like they were gettin' up in years, a little long in the tooth.  The subject today was Inflammation.  What was on my mind, though, was irritation and startled amazement.

I think generally Boomers are doing fine monetarily.  Their strides are still firm, and minds still sound.  But hearing?  Not so much.

While Mr. Cramer was talking, someone's cell phone began to "ring," a sound not even close to a ring, more a robotic squawking hip-hop/jazz/pop insanity sound.  It rang and rang and rang.  It rang some more and, I'm telling you, the sound was noticeable 15 feet away.

No one seemed to hear it.  Maybe that's part of modern phone etiquette; you ignore everyone else's phones and pretend they don't sound exactly like something intended to make you beg for mercy, cry for your medication, wish a cloud of locusts on the perpetrator.

The phone over there across the aisle rang relentlessly and the owner did not move to shush it or answer it. No one seemed to hear the awful noise.  Wait a minute...was I hearing things?  Could the whole room have finally lost its hearing after all those rock concerts?  After probably 20 rings, someone looked a little puzzled, began to rustle around and eventually found the still-ringing phone, fumbled with it at length and then silenced it.  Finally!  I wanted to applaud.  I was so relieved, I can't tell you.

Today, at the seminar, another phone with a much more penetrating and irritating ring tone began to go off.  It was a sound that I'm sure no one on the planet can say they enjoy hearing.  Again, the people around the owner did not budge, didn't flinch, made no move whatsoever.  "Well," I said to myself, "I guess they're calmer than I am. I should just sit here, too, and be more tolerant."  That lasted about ten seconds.  My amazement overruled my tolerance like a steamroller flattening a sandwich.

I got irritated and then embarrassed for the owner.  How could they not hear it?  I mean they were sitting three rows back from the speaker and listening without hearing aids, right?  Then I was embarrassed for the speaker who was throwing all her energy and knowledge into her talk, valiantly trying to ignore the devilish phone.  She was flinching, though, and so was I.

At long last, after an ice age, the owner came to her senses and groped around for the phone.  She pulled it out, looked at it, punched a few buttons, even shook it.  Worse yet, she got up and answered it, walking slowly out of the hall, wrapped up in some conversation.  Yes, another Boomer, I'm sad to say.  Oblivious, slowed, awareness long since faded away.

Where are the sharp innovators of our generation?  Where is the political deftness, the anger in the belly, the creative geniuses we came to admire among our peer group?  Looks like they've gone deaf and lost touch, from what I've seen lately.

Any kid born in the last 25 years can tell you how to use a cell phone, about 20 seconds after they put their hands on it.  They'll know how to power it up, how to text, use the camera, send emails, record a short video, exchange contact info, change the ring tones, limit the number of rings, change the volume and actually make a phone call.  All that in 20 seconds.  A baby boomer can have their phone for a year and still not know how to answer it.

What happened to the Boomers?  Are walkers next?  Bibs?  I can't handle this....  

You In A Room

If you were placed into a round, smooth interior that is approximately 10 feet in diameter, a room with no color, no angles and no obvious way out, what would you do?

It's silent, there are no windows, no seams that are visible in the opaque sides and you are alone.  You are wearing street clothes that you usually wear and your pockets have the things inside of them that you usually carry.  You are not sick.  You are in the prime of your life.  You do not know why you are inside the space or where it is or how long you've been there.  You are not hungry.  You are not thirsty.

Post comments please.

Two Exposures: Charles Cramer and Me

There were two times when I encountered a camera for the very first time, and then there was a third.  

I stood looking down at my hands and what was in them, in the middle of a morning, outdoors on our gopher-ruined lawn.  I realized I had a Kodak Brownie camera with film inside of it, loaned from one of my parents.  I looked through the viewfinder and everything changed; the world had become two dimensional and was contained within a small frame.  

The Brownie, essentially a pinhole camera allowing very little control to the photographer, had a button to push to take a picture, a viewfinder screen to look at with one eye and a crank to forward the film.  That was pretty much it.  You don't need much else as a kid, really.  You just need to look at things and see them, and then keep looking and seeing as you decide what to capture - or stop - on film.  

I took a roll, about 12 pictures, and they came back to me in a week or so in an envelope handed to me on another morning.  I scrutinized them one by one and then again, peering at them and seeing what the camera had done with the light, the shapes and the colors.  Most things were fuzzy, as if Vasoline had been smeared on the cheap little lens, and it could have been scratched and abused by the time I got my hands on it.  

We lived in a rural area, and I spent a lot of time outdoors, so the camera that day served as a catalyst for my eye to begin looking around at my surroundings, my home, my cats, my family.  It was as though I came more into focus rather than what I was looking at because I had to examine colors and patterns deliberately for the first time.  I was about 10 years old, perhaps younger, and I only used the camera one or two other times, but I put all the pictures into an album I still have.  

Fast forward about six years, maybe seven.  In high school, a small single-lens reflex camera was put into my hands, again without asking for it.  It felt like it just landed there, and I was told, "There's a roll of film in there.  Go take some pictures."  Pretty simple.  I was given the most rudimentary instructions and was sent away.  I walked again as if I was seeing the places around me for the first time and spent a good hour or more walking around the school and nearby wooded neighborhood looking at things, shooting the roll.  

I came back to the classroom, handed over the camera, went home.  The next day, the roll was developed and hanging by a small clip on a line strung across the classroom, a graphic arts room.  I was taken into the darkroom and, for the first time, saw a contact print being made.  When it was dry, I scrutinized every little 35 mm print meticulously, seeing in two-dimensional black and white what I'd always barely noticed in color.  

In those two encounters, I was triggered, permanently exposed, if you will, to photography.  It was a perfect storm of naive youth, creative mind and access to information all converging in a potent mix in which I was completely and immediately immersed.  This technology called photography was completely mine almost within the blink of an eye.  One minute, it seemed, I was a young schoolgirl minding my own business and the next I was practically inhaling chemicals, caressing cameras, fondling film and going entirely insane about every possible aspect of photography that I could absorb.  I was handed books and read all of them, memorizing every page, consuming them like drugs.  This was love, deep and undeniable.  I found it seriously amusing at times to see myself constantly using my viewfinder to see the world.  But, on the other hand, I was infatuated with creating images, manipulating light, understanding focal planes and exposure times.  

The third camera was my own Canon FTb SLR that I bought with money I'd saved for a few years, a camera I still have now.  There has never been another tool that felt quite so perfect in my hands, and no other implement for creativity has ever been quite as exciting as my Canon was and has been to me.  

I saw and understood light, learned the zone system Ansel Adams had figured out, tried out filters and a new lens.  Then, unfortunately, I began to feel frustrated by the mismatch between what I saw and imagined and what I could produce in the school darkroom.  I cleaned it meticulously, spent hours and hours in its dark confines trying to make great prints but did not progress beyond a certain point.  The enlargers were sturdy and fine for beginners as were the storage and mixing containers for chemicals, but lots of kids were using the space.  Spills, dents and dings took their toll on equipment, so prints were good enough but no better.  

What I didn't know - still being pretty naive really - was the severe lack of funding for the graphic arts classroom and the high cost of the materials I really needed.  The instructor provided as much for interested students as he could, but eventually the material and space limited my progress.  Then I graduated and put my camera aside more and more often until I was without it much more often than I carried it.  

I tried building my own darkroom in a spare closet at our house, probably one of the smallest darkrooms ever used, but it fed my interest for a while.  I eventually lost interest in maintaining the darkroom, moved away and never rebuilt another, and my intense interest gradually dissipated.  

I went to a presentation and exhibition opening for a fine nature photographer named Charles Cramer today.  It so happens that he took up a camera at almost the exact same time that I did, but his interest never waned, and he did not let discouragement hinder his progress and eventually mastered of the art of photography.  His work is a great gift to us all.  His images and talent have matured wonderfully.  They are lyrical, magical and ethereal in character, suffused with a quality his friends call "Charlie light." 

I'm not saying I'd be as good as he is today.  I'm just noticing the way paths wend their way through time and take us here and there, through thick and thin.  I let my discouragement stop me and he did not.  Now his images are so beautiful and pure that they make everyone, including me, feel like it's an easy thing to do, which is always the mark of a fine master craftsman at work.  

I'm still clicking every so often, and I think sometime I'll invest in an exciting digital camera and learn to use Photoshop or Lightroom fluently.  A third exposure may do the trick.  

Recommended:  See Charles Cramer's work now until Jan. 9, 2011 at Sunset Center in Carmel where The Center For Photographic Arts (CFPA) is located.  There are 60 transcendent, beautiful images to admire.  

Sweet! A Basil Surprise

Between raindrops I looked for dahlias but found chrysanthemums at the Farmer's Market.

It was pleasing to see the season coming on.  The beauty all around got me thinking about autumn flavors.  Gourds, squashes, nuts and root vegetables captured my eye, colors glowing in the midmorning light, piqued my cooking curiosity.  Pie?  Yes, I think so.  I do indeed.

Further along the lane, some vendors were selling exquisite orchids.  They are both precisely formed and whimsically pretty.  They never change; they're always perfect, like children's faces atop tall stalks.  The faces looked expectant, hoping for pies?  I like the idea; orchids sitting down to pie.  

Apples and now plump grapes are in many stalls, both tasty and tart.  Still thinking about pies, turnovers, sauces, butters and eating the little wonders right out of hand I remember how I meant to buy some golden raisins and more dried apricots.  There were so many distractions; the sight of flowers got the best of me.

Next week - I admit, I am already planning - I'll get some golden raisins and look for the unknown, the unfamiliar, the surprises. The best surprise today?  Dark purple sweet basil, fragrant and gorgeous, certain to become the delight of many meals this week.  Delicious and unusual herbs like the basil, freshly picked, elevate ordinary foods to fabulous levels.  A bunch of purple basil is a bouquet of many kinds, satisfying the nose, the eyes and the palate all at once.  

Cut flowers - the mums and dahlias now -  change the room with their presence, which is not true of very many things, or people.  Serendipitous combinations of color, texture and even flavors in edible flowers are nothing if not delightful.  The mums are not edible, but that wonderful basil and its pungent distinctive aroma is calling out to me now, many hours later.  

Now to find some recipes... 

Storm Coming

The ocean far and wide was cast in shades of silver, a reflected light that looked hollow and soft. Cirrus streaks spread a molten metal arch from heaven east and west, and bits of it dripped to boat masts and mooring lines in the harbor.  Circling gulls were silent, touched by glints and highlights, stilled in a quiet calm.

A shroud of shifting clouds held the light from the east until a string of flying geese stitched vapors and light, one to another.  The sun neither moved nor warmed anything but lit a fringe of breakers on the east-shore beach, miles of white plumes expanding and flattening in the distance, up and down the bay's edge.  Every wavelet, ripple, and swell held some shade of silver while painted vessels and wharves were bled of vivid color to become darker grays, shades and shadows.

The morning had reached its midpoint and there paused.  A nadir expressed itself, a hesitation between up and down, calm and storm, movement and stillness.  This was a moment of unfolding change between fair weather and storm, a drifting melancholy infused with filtered light.  It was as if the universe had finished exhalation and was ready to inhale deeply, begin its work again, renewed.

Perfection is ordinary in this light, so pervasive and unyielding in its quality that it goes nearly unnoticed.  Like a graceful dancer who floats above the floor in her soft movements, telling untruths about the seeming ease of movement, so a silver-hued sky caught mid stride in a change of weather mocks our sense of scope and time.

The geese beat restlessly in a ragged line, their black forms heralding a coming tide and turning moon.

Wackadoodle

Wackadoodle is my favorite word, a word so completely satisfying that I never get tired of saying it.  

It was a wackadoodle day, all told, and I'm glad I'm going to get ready for the next one now.

Comments always welcome, and followers encouraged.  But I'd consider that carefully, especially since wackadoodle is my favorite word.  And you never know where I'll lead you.  Feeling brave, are you?

See you tomorrow...

Making the Transition

I kick off the covers, roll to my side and sit up, feel every joint and muscle begin a chorus of complaints.  When I stand up, which is more a slow-motion conflict between gravity and body parts trying to resist, a memory of a long-ago yoga class slithers through my mind and exits with a dark look at my lumpy physique.  Oh, things have changed.

One little insistent memory cell sings out the word:  Coffee.  I respond with automatic shuffling to the kitchen and find the pot.  Coffee, darling coffee, lovely coffee.  I love thee and thy dark heart.  I am smiling now.

After more automatic movements, I find myself in the bathroom dressing.  A look in the mirror is, shall we say, unfortunate.  I have to look away.  The mirror trembles but remains whole, thank god.  

More coffee.  I am moving more smoothly now, but not much.

My swim bag finds its way to my hand as do my keys and a few necessities for errands.  Out the door into the bracing cool foggy air of Pacific Grove.  I feel like I need my goggles on in this cold thick atmosphere.  It is not the kind of weather where your mind shouts, "Let's go for a swim!" Nuh uh.

My mind is shouting, "More coffee!"  It will have to wait now.  I'm driving across town, and the car knows the way, has known it for more than ten years.

Okay, body, out of the car.  Hey, I''m having an out-of-car experience, I joke to myself weakly.  I blame it on the cold fog, the time of day.  I hoist the swim bag and walk.  I feel like a homing pigeon, looking for the bird seed, the familiar roost.  Instead I am a landlubbing swimmer looking for my pool.

I find myself with toes curled over the edge of the old pool.  One friend has already begun her laps with her peculiar weed-whacker stroke pattern; she swims hard but it is not pretty.  Other friends emerge from the locker room and eye the rectangle of chlorinated liquid before them.  It's obvious the pool is a kind of respected adversary to most, a thing to be overcome.  To me, it's just wet.  I am going to have to get wet, and at first it will be cool on my neck and my back, and that is not appealing to me.

I think - peculiarly - only a half hour ago I was stumbling around in the privacy of my own home, not thinking of getting into a wet environment at all, and now I am.  How quickly things change in an hour.

The hardest part of getting in is, well, getting in.  Another friend gets into the pool by easing her thin body very, very slowly down into the water with a look of extreme discomfort etched on her face.  I turn away, unable to watch the slow, painful-looking process continue.

Okay, pool, it's time.  Well, maybe not...

There is always a point when I have stopped mentally drifting around and run out of resistance to the idea of getting wet and just finally get the hell into the water.  I have seen hundreds of swimmers, maybe thousands, look the same way I do.  It's the approach, the staring at the water and the other swimmers moving around in there, contemplating nothing in particular, but then the settling in of the idea of a swim.  All that seems more uncomfortable than you might imagine for someone like me who loves to swim.

Then, on no cue that I can ever recall, I just jump in.  I'm in, I'm swimming, and that's the end of the agony.  And the beginning of another kind...

Flying Hooves, Fierce Heart: Secretariat

A man stood in the shallow stream bed of Canyon de Chelley, listening.  Around him were craggy sunblasted canyon walls, cottonwoods standing with leaves like golden coins and a softly gurgling water.  There was a sound of a distant rumbling that grew and grew.  He glanced up at the royal blue sky and then upstream where the riverbank curved and disappeared.

A screaming challenge tore the quiet morning in two, and then violent splashing resounded from the distant bend.  As if from the thin air, a herd of wild horses thundered up the river, led by a dark chestnut stallion who nipped at his mares and tossed his head as he ran.  The horses flew by, compelled by internal bolts of lightning, their unshod hooves smashing and crackling on the water and stones of the river.  The solitary man stood with his heart pounding in his throat, certain he would be trampled, having nowhere to go so suddenly had the horses appeared.  The ground shook.  Duns, pintos, bays and blacks with flying manes and tails held high like flags, breath steaming in the air and water splashing like diamonds, filled his whole world.

Just as quickly, they were gone, a herd of wild horses racing so free and full of themselves that they seemed to have charged straight down from Mount Olympus.

This happened to a man I know, and he says now it is a scene that is unrivaled in his experience.  The raw beauty of 40 wild horses pounding through the beautiful river bed brought tears to his eyes and humbled him, rendered him speechless for a long time afterward, he says now.

I saw the movie called Secretariat yesterday and recalled the way I felt when that bold racehorse captured the imagination of a nation, perhaps of many nations, when he ran.  An almost indescribable perfection of grace, power, speed and indominatable spirit met in a very special horse and created something that was unmistakably larger than life.  Every person who ever saw him says so; you could see it on a fuzzy television screen while sitting thousands of miles away from the horse himself.

He moved with powerful grace, tossing his head and kicking his heels, galloping fast for the fun of it.  He was a ham, a clown and a charming child in a horse's body.  People who handled Secretariat speak about the combination of his physical qualities in reverential tones.  Long strides, a twice-normal-size heart, love of running, and durable muscular build. There certainly are other great horses that have run like the wind, horses like Spectacular Bid, Affirmed, Cigar, Man 'O War and Seattle Slew, but most agree that Secretariat had something Olympian in him, a charisma and panache that swelled our hearts and filled our imaginations.

When my friend described the stampeding herd in the canyon, I thought of how I felt when I watched Secretariat back in 1973 when he raced, especially the astonishing Belmont Stakes when he won by 31 lengths, going away, over a mile and a half.  Thousands watching there and on television witnessed the transformation of Secretariat from storied racehorse to mythical god.

He lifted everyone up when he ran and left witnesses babbling superlatives.  He set course records, race records, world records that have still not been broken.  He ran races with his chestnut coat glistening in the sunlight, seeming to have sparks flying off his hooves.  But, as quickly as he came to the tracks, he was done and retired to a paddock in Virginia, leaving our imaginations aflame with the glory of his accomplishments and beautiful long stride.

It's a little peculiar to name a horse as one of your greatest heroes.  A hero, however, represents the qualities we hope to carry within ourselves:  Grace, courage, joy for life, intelligence, passion.  He was to his fans an embodiment of heroic qualities we can only hope to witness once in a lifetime.

A Short Pause

Walking between raindrops today.  Cool dark weather kept me indoors all day.

Staying indoors all the time makes a day feel like a place holder instead of a legitimate day, but it came and went without waiting for anyone to figure it out.

More tomorrow.  Safe travels.

First, A Vision

What struck me about the day today?

That artists and writers spend a lot of time retrieving the tangible from a fuzzy nothingness, a place that's not visible to anyone but themselves.  That they see what's there so vividly the act of creating is more one of pushing away the material from around the envisioned piece in order to reveal it than it is an act of producing it one stroke or one letter at a time.  

Michelangelo saw his statues that way, already standing there, perfectly formed.  He knew his work was to remove unneeded marble encasing the figure.  Creation of the statue at hand had occurred in full long before the first hammer clanged against the chisel.  

That visualizing a scene, a pot, an image or a house vividly enough to know that it believably exists is the gift.  The work is to take the necessary time to pull it into the three-dimensional world where everyone else can see it, too.  

That what I see in my mind's eye will stay there unless I decide to do the work to bring it out into the open.  

Each thing that is done is visualized first; everything is a re-enactment of a creative thought.  Imagine a place, a story, a world, a table or a cake because that's where it has to exist first.  Then, be the technician who uses tools and time to help it emerge.  Right before our very eyes.  

Watching People

After I pumped the gas at the station, I went inside to pay with cash.  Two men stood in front of me, one very short and the one closest to the counter very tall.  The clerk smiled at everyone automatically, and she had long bangs dangling down across her face.  I wanted to snip them shorter so she could see better.  She looked up at the hulking man swaying slightly across the counter from her.  He wore size 16 shoes, maybe larger.  His jeans were slouched down below his black t-shirt and gray hooded sweatshirt.

He mumbled something.  She smiled and moved here and there, back and forth, glancing up at him, always smiling.  He turned away to leave and his face was that of a person worried about their digestive system and their hangover.

The next man, much shorter, more wiry, fully alert said, "Wow, he's messed up.  Look at him out there."

We looked outside and the big guy was trying to find his keys in his pocket, eyes focused on the middle distance and body barely balanced on his big feet.  He groped in the pocket for some time, pausing to negotiate the swaying pavement, then continued.

The short guy said, "If I were that big, I'd be playing in the NFL."

The short guy and the girl with the long bangs and incessant smile chatted quickly and he turned to leave, too.  She flashed him the finger and when she caught my eye she laughed.  "I know him."  

A little later, at the Farmer's Market, where no one flips anyone off, I walked slowly past the SPCA pens where small dogs are displayed.  Dog people come over to pet them, consider adoption, make kissing sounds and silly talk to the dogs, who stand on their small paws and look up at the people.  Who knows what dogs think.  One of them was a small wire-haired terrier mix who looked like furry energy with paws.  One small boy wearing Crocs, jeans, a diaper and a t-shirt stood away from the wire pen, hesitant, fascinated with the dog.  His eyes danced.

He began to make a noise that, coming from the mouth of an adult, would bring medical attention very quickly.  From him came "Aaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeee," up and down, and he walked sideways slowly to the left and to the right, tilting his head and eyeing the dog as it scurried around.  The sound of discovery and animal kinship all blended into one squealing wail.  His body was eager to move to the animal, but he couldn't.  Sideways tiptoeing and quick up-and-down squats became a dance of eagerness.  His hands clenched and opened and then clapped.  He didn't know what else to do, how to understand Dog.

His mom caught his hand and led him away, but his eyes were riveted on the little dog.  She pulled his arm up and behind him with his hand clenched in hers, but his other arm reached for the dog.  He was transformed by the moment, mouth slack, eyes wide.  The dog, moving in the stiff-legged tip-toe way that small dogs move, kept studying faces, looking for an exit.

As I was leaving, I recognized an elderly woman I see often near the college after my swims.  She is very short now, but she was several inches taller in her prime.  Her hair is white, cut straight across just above her shoulders, wiry, held in a barrette at one temple like a schoolgirl.  She has narrow shoulders and she walks as if on eggshells she fears breaking.  She wears polyester slacks and large running shoes.  

The bodies of very old women often take on a particular proportion with big long feet, large noses, skinny spines and wide hips.  I always see her shuffling on the roadside from her neighborhood to the college, in the middle of the road.  She stops walking when cars approach her and then starts again, satisfied she has not been run over.  She was walking down the middle of the stalls at the market, very slowly setting one big foot down after the other, but getting there under her own steam, going where she intended to go, looking straight ahead.    

Gone Missing

How odd.  The laundry is all clean again, but there are five socks without  partners.  The hampers are empty, the floor is picked up.  He and I wore two socks apiece, each day, one pair at a time every day, but now there are three white socks and two dark ones that don't match anything else.

It makes me think other things could be going missing that I may not be noticing.  And Halloween is coming, you know.

I started thinking of this about 15 minutes ago when I was folding the laundry and putting things away.  As I thought about it, a sudden wind sprang up outside and all the windchimes started thrashing around and, well, chiming.  Pretty spooky.  I guess, though, on a scale of 1 to 10, it's about a 2 or so.  But, could it mean something?

The unexpected things that happen without warning seem a little creepy this time of year, a mood prompted by neighbors who have strung fake spider webs in massive quantities in their yards and by all the pumpkins showing up everywhere.  I mean, where do those darned pumpkins come from anyway?

Weird things happen, like lightbulbs that pop suddenly right overhead, a bottle that falls off a shelf in the bathroom, a pile of magazines that gives way and slides to the floor.  No warning, just goes.  Makes you want to, you know, DO something.

I'm not a person given to wild screaming and panic.  No, I'm the opposite.  Dead calm, like the albatross around the Ancient Mariner's neck.  Or something.  If I get a little on edge, you can imagine that truly nervous people would be vaulting into total bug-eyed hysteria.  My approach is:  Admire their energy, which is really something to see, and then settle down with a good book.

A few missing socks do not seem like cause for panic, and yet it does give one a sense of unease.  It is perplexing, you know, to have an ever-increasing supply of singletons no matter how careful you are about your laundry routine.  I'm going to chalk it up to a little spirit, a trickster having some fun.  I'll leave the screaming and panic for times when I might need them.  Like if suddenly the socks' partners appear.

The Face of Change

When nothing becomes something, does god laugh?  Emergence and change are constants in nature, artifacts of forces and substances intermingling in a dance that sets its own pace regardless of our observance.

A stone grew teeth, or seemed to when I saw it.  Big laughing teeth jutting right up out of the ground.

At the moment that I recognized the stone to have teeth, I became interested in it.  Until the very moment of being recognized, it was just stone, plain and simple.  Igneous rock sandwiched between sedimentary rocks, substances formed over a span of time we are barely able to conceive, form the grin.  It's easy to see the bits of things they are made of, but now those things are becoming something else.  They have never stopped changing and never will.  

I once recognized Clint Eastwood driving in his Mercedes in Monterey.  Until the moment his face became a face I could identify, he was just a driver in a green car at an intersection taking his turn to pass through.  Ho hum.  After the surprise of recognition, the moment became important, and I talked about it to a friend.

I wondered what else changed, but now I know that the simpler question is what did not change because the answer is:  Nothing.  All of every single thing changes all the time.  Force and substance always do their dance together.

Former classmates from high school have faces that time has weathered and gravity has worked on.  I feel my mind clanging through data banks, opening drawers and closing them quickly in a search of a match with old images captured long ago.  "Is that...?  No, can't be."  But it is.  A face once solidly familiar has changed and become nearly entirely unfamiliar.  

Children you first saw when they were born and last saw when they were two walk up to you in high heels 15 years later and say hello, and your mind does a stutter step as it looks for a familiar landmark on the face before you, one that identifies this young woman as the same child you last saw in diapers a short time ago.  A blink of an eye, and everything seems different.  I wonder if it's me changing, rushing through time while everything else stands still.  It feels like that.

Old trees and landmarks seem imperturbable and abide changes, show us how to do the same.  I stand next to old trees and think that they have seen a lot, endured much, withstood change every minute of their lives.  Strong and gnarled old trees, warriors dancing in the wind, defy the forces around them but change constantly in spite of themselves.  

The toothed rocks will be there for a long time I imagine. I just saw them for the first time.  They seemed the very grin of god.  I wanted there to be eyes, too, and a big resounding laugh that would echo off the hillsides and roll up into the clouds.  What's next to emerge, what will come into being and what will be lost eventually?  I happened on a grinning rock that laughed for having emerged, whether I was there or not.  Knowing it's there, I smile too.

Bearded Woman Robs 7-Eleven

Three fictionalized accounts based on a short report in the local paper two years ago:

“This is 911.  What is the nature of your emergency?”  

“I think I saw a robbery at a 7-Eleven.  It was really hard to tell.  I was driving by and...”

“Is the incident in progress now?”

“No.  There was a big tall woman, I’m pretty sure, but she had a beard.”

“Why did you think it was a woman?”

“She was wearing a skirt and panty hose.  Really tall, long legs, wig, black purse.  She needs a shave.”  

“Did you see her carrying a gun?”  

“I think so, but it might have been in the purse.”  

“Where did this take place?”

“Just now.  Like, just a minute ago.  My hands are shaking.  The robber is driving a brown car and you can tell it’s the car because the panty hose is flying out the door.”

“Where is the 7-Eleven.”  

“Oh, man, he’s back. I can’t believe it.  Hurry up and send the police.  Oh, I see her or I mean him.  He’s running in these black pumps and...”

“Is there a gun, ma’am?”  

“I don’t see one, but this has to be a guy in drag.  I’m telling you.”

“Where are you calling from?”

“Across the street.  Hurry!”  

******************************************************************************

“Can I...?  What do you want, mister?”

“Shut up.  Gimme the cash in the drawer.  Just shut up.  Move it!”

“Don’t shoot.  I got kids at home.  That’s it.  No more here today.  Go away.  You're very ugly in that wig.”

“Down on the floor.  Now!”

“Okay!  Okay!  I’m innocent!”

“Adios, bitch.  I’m outta here.”  

“Hello, boss?  Oh my god, you should see what happened down here.  You gotta come now, come here.  I got robbed by a big ugly man dressed like woman.  Yeah, big wig, lipstick, beard.  Yeah!  Even wearing a skirt and panty hose.  I saw him.  He took off.  I’m okay.  I gotta call the police.  I’m okay, but all shaking all over.  I can’t believe it.  I want outta here.  No more for me.  That’s it.  I’m going to have nightmare forever.  This is very bad luck for me.  He might know me now, come after me.  He got the petty cash in the drawer.  He had a gun.  I think I pissed myself.  Man very, very ugly.  Really tall man with beard.  Yeah, I call the cops now.  No, just money.  Oh, oh! He is coming back!   

I have to run away now!”

**********************************************************************************

“I didn’t think he’d really do it.  Yeah, he’s a freak all right.  I told him Thursdays people buy the lottery tickets and that 7-Eleven gets a lot of cash.  He went for it.  No, never before.  He’s so freaking ugly, and he put on women’s clothes, man.  Yeah!  Panty hose, wig, lipstick, the whole nine yards.  Guy’s a freak, man, no brains at all.  Took his girlfriend’s stuff and put it on and went out after he’d had a few.  Broad daylight.  Cops caught him, got him down at the jail.  Thought he could fool someone?  No way.  Not with all that hair sticking through the panty hose, man.  Ugliest thing.  Yeah, he’s about 6’5” or so.  Black skirt, all done up.  I can just see the look on that Korean lady’s face at the 7-Eleven.  She’s, like, five feet tall, lookin’ up at this hairy freak.  Yeah, black beard, dude.  Lipstick and a wig his girlfriend had.  He wanted the money I guess.  Did he think it was a joke or something?  Man, you do not go waving a gun at a crazy Korean lady and get away with it, not dressed like a freak.”

Watching From The Cheap Seats

I knew the Giants had a lead in the series against the Braves and would either win it tonight or be tied and have to return to San Francisco to play again with Tim Lincecum pitching there Thursday.  I watched the last three innings.  I don't watch baseball much, but I've been reading the sports page.  I wanted to see what the game looks like now.  


I saw the players chewing furiously on things and spitting bits of those things out while they stared intently off camera.  I watched the team managers, older men with large paunches, walking out to pat the pitchers on the butt or talk and spit with them on the pitcher's mound and walk back again.  I heard the cheerleading PA system blaring a tom-tom drumbeat and saw fans with big red puffy hatchets waving them back and forth like railroad signals.  They chanted on cue and stood up to yell.  There were a lot of big sweating American men and women screaming and yelling earnestly and loudly, waving signs, wearing Braves hats mostly and team colors.  


The television announcers recapped every move, used special yellow arcs to show again and again the path of the pitch.  There were dozens of replays of every catch, every tag, every swing, every throw from angle upon angle, down low, up high, overhead, and everything in between to analyze and examine every last twitch and scratch of every player on the field.  Nothing escaped scrutiny and analysis.  


The Giants won.  Another series begins soon to determine who moves on to the final level of championship prowess, the world series.  The men on the Giants' team hugged one another, grinned, slapped shoulders, hit backs, and howled loudly, smiling and laughing.  All the players were allowed into a special champagne-spraying room that was hung all around with plastic.  Players ran into it, were handed large bottles of champagne and sprayed it over each other and throughout the room while they howled and embraced.  They carefully dropped their emptied champagne bottles into blue plastic waste bins and found more champagne to spray.  


I thought back to the World Cup soccer matches when I watched players race madly in circles on the field when they won, hugging, piling up, leaping into each other's arms with wild abandon.  Baseball players trot and then stand still, chew rapidly and spit.  They look like they are going to have a stroke.  


Big, large strong men, some of them very fat, wearing the traditional baseball uniforms played a carefully groomed game.  There were telephones, headsets, special gloves and gear that players wore.  All angles of movement, play possibilities and batting stances, trained into their bodies for years and years, were watched by the thousands cheering and yelling.   Players earn millions of dollars, receive catered extravagance at every turn, providing surprise and no surprise at all.  Wild pitches were balanced by prompted cheers.  Big swings of large bats were balanced by quickly edited replays of the same swings from four directions.  


In spite of appearance of luxuriously equipped players and their support crews, I imagined a few thousand people in the high seats of the stadium who have followed the ups and downs of their team perhaps for all their lives, perhaps even for generations before, who keep score cards and stats and for whom their team endures the storms of glory and ignominy.  


Baseball is different up there, for those folks, the ones who only ever come as close to opulence as the nosebleed seats at large stadiums one a season or so.  Baseball players are big and fat so those guys way up there can see them.  They swing big, and the guys in the cheap seats can feel the fan of the bat.  Way out there in the weeds, where real life is going on, lives the game of baseball, one much more modest in scope and size but still big in the hearts of its fans.