AT&T Golf Tournament Prep Revving Up

The whole Monterey Peninsula is beginning to gear up for the AT&T Pro-Am golf tournament that's coming to town soon.  After the Super Bowl of course.

Many folks around the area are very devoted golf fans and not only play the game frequently but love to volunteer at this traditional tournament that was begun years ago by Bing Crosby.  Locals called it The Crosby, and that was that.  As a matter of fact, those of us who heard the tournament referred to by that name for so many years still automatically call it that.  Officially it's The AT&T for short.

The unique format of the tournament and the early date on the pro golf calendar made the tournament a special favorite for pros and a chance for autograph hounds to get an up close and personal view of not only those pros but celebrity performers and famous people who also played golf.  Mr. Crosby was himself a big fan of the game and rounded up a good number of his celebrity friends to play, too.  Traditionally, a hefty amount of money was donated to local charities, a tradition that continues to this day.

Dozens of volunteer groups perform all manner of preparatory service duties to help the tournament run smoothly, and hundreds of volunteers put in a lot of time making sure the logistics and needs of the fans and players are handled smoothly.  There are a few senior citizens who have been volunteering at the tournament nearly every year since its inception, mostly doing clerical work or helping set up.

Our local swim club has for years had the assignment of passing out golf tournament programs to all the local hotels and motels that asked for them.

With so many citizens pitching in to help, the whole area feels a part of it all.  There is no denying that golf is an expensive game and requires a huge investment by those who have a great deal of money to produce and maintain courses.  Cost often excludes the local blue-collar segment of society from really participating in the game much.  So, the effort of the AT&T tournament to at least donate money to service clubs to benefit kids and underprivileged people takes the sting out of feeling excluded by virtue of economic hardship.

If the weather cooperates and behaves itself this year, golf fans and players will have an excited gallery of fans to cheer their play, and the teens, kids and older locals will be doing their best to help make it all look easy and beautiful.

What I Hope I Remember

Okay, I put my keys down right here.  I know I did.  Then I went in the kitchen to get my coffee cup.  Now I can't find them.  Where did they go?  I need my glasses.  Where are my glasses.  I won't be able to see the keys unless I find my glasses.  So, they were over there on the shelf when I answered the phone.

Remembering is a topic of more frequent conversation among my peers (Baby Boomers) who anticipate their golden years more anxiously now than they ever did before.  In the past, retirement hardly seemed relevant, and those of us who were in good health felt ourselves warmed by an eternal flame of vibrant youth.  The joke was that aging was only something that happened to wine, cheese and our parents.  Most of them got more mellow with age, but some got stinky and difficult to tolerate.  I am happy to say my own parents are ones who have mellowed and who are still fine examples of their generation.  

Let's see, I forgot where I was going with this.  Oh yeah.  Memory.  By now, enough scientific studies have proven that memories are able to stick around longer if they are associated with emotion, pain or adrenaline.  If a car nearly runs you down as you step out into a busy street, it's safe to say that that particular memory and its associated lesson for survival will be vivid in your mind's eye for, oh, the rest of your life.

When you write a grocery list of ordinary things and set it down while you look for your keys, no emotion or adrenaline is attached, so the memory fades about as quickly as your breath on a mirror.  If you write a grocery list while you feel stressed about whether you can get back in time to cook the chicken before the family comes home, that mild stress will help you remember things better; you probably won't even need to write it down.

On the other hand, if you are trying to remember tiny details and you are near panic, the blankety-blank shopping list will be impossible to deal with as your nervous system will be primed to fight or flee.  One way or another, you've noticed by now that some things are clear and other things are very difficult to recall.  Science is working on this whole realm of brain neurology feverishly these days, but there still remain many questions about how our memory works and how to improve it.

The blank in memory about ordinary details such as what actor played the main role in that movie that won the Academy Awards in 1966 is not cause for dismay as far as I'm concerned.  More important to me is a consistency of character, living in alignment with one's beliefs and values.  I might forget a few things, but I am going to act in a way that is congruent with honesty, loyalty, honor and a few others I can't remember at the moment (just kidding).  Except for those of us stricken with Alzheimer's disease,  good character and being aligned with one's values will perhaps be the more important focus for me and my peers.

No matter what age I am at the moment, living honorably and with love more prevalent in my life than fear, I'll be well served; it's how I intend to live.  As long as I remember to keep my values, I'll probably be okay.

Hey!  I found my keys.  They were right here the whole time.

Hapa Helps Me Celebrate

I think I'm going to take a day off from writing and celebrate.  (Wait, wait, wait, why am I writing? hmmm...)

I had a final swim clinic workout today and got some positive feedback on my breaststroke work from that wacky swim coach putting us all through various paces.  That would be Monsieur Temple, here from the hockey-loving nation to our north.  Lucky us.  For a change, I put a few lengths together to the point that he noticed an improvement.  That was pretty gratifying.  Too bad it was on the very last day, and I'll have to go back to my usual swim time to continue fitness improvement.  But, I'll take the compliment; they don't come that often.

Age-group swimmers (adolescents) were zooming back and forth in the first four lanes and we oldsters in the other four.  Then, those groups were subdivided by ability (fitness and coordination) or by stroke.  Most of the oldsters are freestylers, but a couple of us were working on "strokes."  I do breaststroke better than the other strokes.  Of course, I had to kick with the bucket and then pull with various other implements of evil (paddles, tubes, pull buoy).  There are all sorts of things that have been dreamed up by diabolical demons (coaches) to emphasize the areas of the stroke that need special focus.  For me, it's timing and strength.  When is it ever NOT timing and strength, right?  (swimmers are all rolling their eyes and nodding heads yes).

Two other things:  First, I bought a new CD by Hapa called Surf Madness, after having been on Kauai in December and hearing a cut from it that I liked a lot.  The song sounds grand and celebratory to me.  The other is that I am sitting here looking out at gathering clouds and feel the air cooling down.  Rain is possible tomorrow, but so what, right?  Here's why I don't care:  I'm playing Hawaiian slack key music and getting in a Hawaiian groove, and I'm happy I put in the time to get fit again and do some bucket drills in the predawn hours since that's what it takes sometimes.  Check out Hapa, the cut called He'eia, and channel some ancient Hawaiian power.  Pretty cool.  (I saw this group play ten years ago and have been keeping an eye on their music, always feel it has a special energy and reach.  Hapa, by the way, means half in in Hawaiian.  One guy's haole and the other is Hawaiian, both talented and worth a listen.)

A Life Of Plenty

You may think that this winter kale captured my eye at the farmers market today, and you would be right.  You may also believe that I was lucky to be able to walk in a leisurely fashion around a bountiful and lush market in a town such as this, and you would also be right.  

Amidst many other bins of the most fetching varieties of produce, the kale was exquisite, so I took a moment to take its picture for this post.  But I was thinking about Egypt and Tunisia and Mexico and yet was unable to.  There is chaos and pain in those places, suffering and indignity, atrocities I cannot really imagine since I do live here and my life is based on good fortune and pure luck of birth.  I have no idea of it really, no concept of mortal danger.

I photographed the winter kale and noticed its shades, its texture and its shape, how it was arranged in the bin at the farmer's table.  I was not hungry, but I imagined I would begin to have a more noticeable appetite sometime soon.  The kale is safe, clean and delectable, and it is offered to shoppers who may make a multitude of choices about what to cook for dinner or decorate their dining tables with or what they will buy plenty of just to have on hand so that they may have comfort and reassurances in all parts of their unflooded, unburned, unbombed homes.  It seemed so weird to imagine both possibilities at the same time, life and death occurring simultaneously, not because of natural disasters but because of human evil contrasting with human goodness.

There is no answer to why I was born here and not in a place where existence is tenuous and life can be an agonizing crush of pain and savagery.  I just was.  The answer I have to the question why is to honor love and gratitude, to conduct myself in ways that do not support brutality in other countries or even in neighboring cities.

How did a bin of kale bring me to this mood?  It was beautiful, plentiful and the ordinary human beings around me were safe from threat and evil and I knew it.  That's the only way I can explain it.

Weeding Out

The day was warm.  Perfect, actually.  Not hot at all.  After a morning of fulfilling obligations, I changed into my Whack-A-Mole clothes, donned my Teflon-coated gardening gloves, clipped on my clever little tool pouch and stepped into my Crocs.  Ready to survey my Garden Domain, I took a deep, pollen-laden breath  of summer-like winter air and descended the stairs into the back yard.  I cracked my knuckles and shrugged my shoulders to loosen them and prepare for what I anticipated was an hour of work to tidy up the yard.  I began to look around, and...

Oh, my poor plants.

One little miniature tea rose had three leaves, spider webs, one little shriveled flower.  Pill bugs ran for cover when I lifted pots.  Slugs mocked me.  Weeds thumbed their noses at me, and acorns planted by jays last autumn were sprouting up into baby oak trees in my geranium pots.

It's very obvious I have been a neglectful gardener over the past three or four months.  If it hadn't been for the rain we were doused with in November and part of December, everything would be dead as a doornail.

I set to work.  My pruning clippers are a fine tool for potted plants, needle-nosed and small in size.  Weeds and dead stems flew and compressed dirt became fragrant once I dug into it.  The spearmint plants looked really bedraggled, but they'll spring back with regular attention.  All the aromatics like lavender, mint, oregano and thyme perfumed the air.  The scented geranium and society garlic were especially fragrant as I worked around them.

All the steady work this afternoon made me wonder about other things I've drifted away from over time, things I once did with a lot of enthusiasm and that were a pleasure to do.  Things like cycling for instance.  Where once I rode my bike everywhere for years, my bike now sits waiting for me as it has for even more years.  There are quite a few things like that.  I also wondered what happened to certain friendships that once meant a lot to me.  People have drifted away and I've lost track of them.  Where are they now?

On the other hand, I have a few old plants that are far past their prime, withered and gnarled with time.  Instead of going and getting some new interesting varieties of flowers, I keep prodding the old ones along.  Should I let them go for good?  What about relationships that just take so much darn work?  Drop them?

I took a look at a once-manageable flowering shrub in a planter and realized what a beast it has become. It might need tools I don't own, a saw or something.  Procrastination and neglect have not done me any good.  Like swimming, I need to keep at my garden regularly.  The payoff is terrific in spring and summer when flowers are brimming over every pot and roses are blooming again.  It took probably two or three solid hours today and more are needed to get the rest of the plants back in the pink once more.  By the time April is here, I'll be ready for a garden party.

Now to round up some of those old friends...

Sand in a Stream

A small stream flows across a bed of rough sand.  It's bordered by small dunes, an old tree whose roots are broken and gray, weatherbeaten; they dangle above a nearby embankment.  A strong fast boy could make a running leap across the stream without getting wet if he wanted to.

As the water flows across the sand, it seems certain and constant, predictable in its straight and shallow bed.  When one takes a closer look at the streambed, tiny movements of the grains of sand, tumbling from one place to another downstream an inch or two are visible.  Each pebble that moves slightly alters the flow of water, but surely the water's force cannot be overcome by one or two grains of sand.  Or can they?

If you sit and watch the water for a long time, you begin to see tiny cave-ins of the water's edges, and that some grains are slightly larger than others.  Some stick together longer than others and others pile up against them until a more secure obstruction is formed.  These are subtle shifts, small influences on the flow of the moving stream as it stretches across the sand, but they do alter the flow, and when the stream has to shift direction ever so gently, other changes occur.  Every small change causes another, and changes are endless.

Sometimes, randomly it seems, tiny landslides tumble into the water, or cave-ins of sand slump into the water's edge, a few cupfuls of sand all at once.  The nature of water is such that in its fluidity, deflection occurs or pooling of depth, and force is distributed differently; the stream alters its course.

The stream I watched, small and insignificant as it was, acted as a metaphor for me.  I watched it stream out to the ocean across the beach sand and spent some time looking at the changes that the flow of water caused as it exerted force on the banks of wet sand.  I saw that the flow of water was moving sand along the bottom little by little so that it looked stable at first glance but really was always changing, shifting and readjusting.

When we live and interact as humans, we are much like a stream with its shifts in depth, direction and alterations in its boundary zones.  A change in mood or new idea turns us in subtly new directions, and we must allow for change, absorb it and respond fluidly to be able to continue functioning.  Often, the tiniest pebbles' movements in a stream of water eventually confer large shifts because one movement of one single pebble redistributes force, a force that may be just what is needed downstream to turn the tide, so to speak, in favor of the stream flowing more to one side than the other.

We don't really ever know how much our work or mood or ideas change things around us.  It could be said that consistency of effort makes a bigger difference.  Or it may be said that one big effort is much more important to the world we live in.  The truth is that no matter what we do or think or how we move or act, it affects the world, if in no other way but energy or force being exerted on the universe and the universe having to respond.

Swim Clinic: Making Friends With Buckets

Last week of swim clinic.  In the pool at 5:30 in the morning.  50 degrees was on the verge of pleasant for early morning pre-dawn; the pool is about 80 degrees.  Once you're in and moving, there's no problem.  Well, that is until you strap on buckets and start dragging them around the pool.  

The bucket is the swimmer's equivalent of a parachute.  The lovely feeling of moving forward in the clear blue water is instantly gone and you are reduced to hamster status.  Humility is a big part of bucket hauling, I've learned.  But, I have made progress.  I've learned that when I'm pulling my dear darling bucket up and back I can imagine how good it's going to feel to go bucket-less in a little whileVery good.  And that's the point.  If you've been focusing  (my biggest challenge in swimming) on the stroke technique the coach has been yelling about up there on the deck, your arms will feel long and strong once the bucket is taken off.

So, okay, it's a white paint bucket, the kind you can buy for a couple of bucks at Home Depot.  You wear a webbing strap around your waist and a buckle or clamp to hold the strap around your waist.  Then, the bucket is attached to a long nylon rope that's attached to your waist belt, and the bucket trails off behind you in the water as you swim.  The buckets are different sizes.  Strong swimmers with lots of experience use big buckets.  Swimmers like me, new to buckets, use smaller ones.  I keep hoping for a coffee mug back there.  It's low tech and very effective.  It slows you way down, makes you feel every little movement of your arms, hands and shoulders.

To get going forward, you have to focus and think.  There are all sorts of cues coaches come up with for how the water is supposed to feel on your arms and all over you as you apply proper technique.  Swimming is all feel.  A coach will say, "High elbows!" or "Early forearm!" or (my personal favorite) "Forget about breathing!"  Counterintuitively, you have to both not think and focus very precisely on your stroke.  If you think too much, you're toast.  If you fail to focus on aspects of your stroke and get mentally lost in space, you may as well be sitting on the deck.  Actually, it would be better to sit on the deck in that case because most likely you are reinforcing old bad habits like slipping elbows, uneven kick, bad head position and on and on.

Swimming is infamously challenging in the same way a golf swing is.  One tiny loss of flow in a golf swing spells slice or hook and you're in the rough, the trees or a water hazard.  Oops.

So, the bucket has to be your friend if you are going to get more efficient and stronger in the water.  Even though swimming looks entirely physical, it is almost all mental.  When you finally have a good day and the whole thing clicks, enjoy it.  And stop thinking about it so you can feel it.  Remember, forget about breathing.  And focus.  Oh yeah, swim fast, too.

Yellow Potatoes in a Big Blue Chair

I'm going to eat some yellow hot potatoes, steaming hot, nice and hot, with butter.  They need a little smash, so I'll take my fork and a shake of salt and pepper.  I'm going to take and sit myself in the warm bright sun and eat them hot, with memories on the side.  I can see them now.

I'm going to sit on my big blue chair, low to the ground, made of wood and painted blue as the ocean in the tropics, sit there on that nice blue chair and wiggle my toes while I savor those yellow hot bites of potatoes and butter.  The big blue chair I painted with a friend who told me stories about her wedding and all the cats gone wild and yowling in the middle of the night.  We waved blue paint on our brushes and made the chair shine, and our words had colors, some of them blue, back then.  I'm going to sit on that chair in the warm white sun and hold my brown bowl and have a pile of memories and potatoes on the side.

I'm going to hold my big brown bowl, thrown with my own hands long years ago.  My young brown hands turned pale clay red on the spinning red wheel, turning on a wheel of red-stained metal and music playing high up in the room,  black speakers thumping, my eyes down close to see the grooves of my fingertips in that soft red clay.  The bowl rose up from the wedged brown blob and then all squashed down in a wet curve out with my red-brown palms and slim brown hands.  I heard the Beatles sing while the soft clay climbed, rounded down and its a big brown bowl.

I'm going to wear my dark green sweater my grandma made when I was young, made with her strong smart hands and clicking long needles, sitting while Lassie barked on her huge TV console. Ed Sullivan said it was a really fine shoe and here from England are the Beatles to the screaming girls, and I smiled and my grandma's hands made the dark green sweater and her mouth pinched tight and her head shook that's awful noise from those girls tonight.  I'm going to wear that dark green sweater that I still have now because my grandma cooked all kinds of potatoes and smashed them too with her old silver fork and shook down salt and pepper.  Shook it down and it landed, sprinkled and fine, like some food-colored memories with love on the side.  

Beach Dancers

I looked out at the corduroy sea at midmorning, long lines of waves queueing to crash against rocks and tower with waving fronds of froth.  Such an ocean it was, rocking itself to and fro and seeming to slap its hands together, one set of waves put against another, currents interlacing and joining one another in a hissing madness.

Every person at the shore was watching waves, walking automatically or sitting on rock humps and juts to admire turbulence and order intertwining like wrestling lovers.

A small girl was bent over dangling her fingertips in a small tidepool of ocean water on the beach sand, as if she were playing a keyboard.  She looked to the side, listening? or to watch dogs and people nearby.  But, her fingers in the water kept playing. I might have heard a few notes.  Or it might have been the sandpipers racing at the waters edge, hungry to catch invisible prey only they could hear.  

A dog with three legs ran toward me and then past, intent on the flat wide sand where other dogs were chasing tennis balls flung into the surf.  One of them, fluffy and elderly, a golden retriever on a leash, was spotted by a dancing girl who ran to the dog and circled it, giddy in the bright sun, the sight of the smiling dog, and her own light smallness.  Adults eyed the dog closely, surrounded as he was by the movements of the small girl inclined to pirouette and careen with wild abandon.  The dog might much rather have been hunting ducks in the water hazards where the golfers were yelling, "Fore!" He held his ground and the girl twirled away, a sprite with a bubbling spirit.

A young woman posed between her friend and the wide arch of blonde beach and seething surf, her arms extended like plane wings, digitally captured in as many pixels as waves that broke beyond her.  Once captured, she and her friend checked the image with heads bent together, and the wild smashing currents at Pt Joe took up the dance the small girl had left off.

Winter Sunset With Sea Otters

After making my choice on flooring today (see previous post), I needed to get out into the wild and explore, so I grabbed my iPhone, my binoculars, some water and took off for an area I like south of Carmel that locals call Monastery Beach.  There's a State Park walk that is just south of the Carmel River Beach that extends from the monastery beach area north to the river and includes a rocky shore, south Carmel Bay and views of Pt Lobos.  Entrance is free and walking is very easy.

I parked at the entrance gate area and began to look for, well, whatever was there.  I like hiking the area this time of year because the ground is more moist, the grass is greening in and winter skies are far more interesting.  Wintering birds and local sea life are easy to spot, and most areas are usually not crowded.

The coast is ridiculously beautiful from Pebble Beach to points south of here extending another 70 miles or so - the storied Big Sur Coast.  At the time of day I walked, the tide was low, the intertidal zone was fairly exposed and there was only a whisper of a breeze in 65-degree air.  A few other people came and went but I felt like I was alone and free.

Bush bunnies made furtive dashes from one side of the trail to the other but mostly stayed hidden.  Wren tits, sparrows and crows were active but held their songs as they waited for sunset.  Exotic oxalis is blooming now, a vivid fluorescent yellow spot of color here or there.  I thought of pulling them up as they are an invasive species, but it would hardly matter, so I left them.

After gaining the beach in a matter of two minutes, it became obvious that high clouds might offer an interesting sunset later on.  Harbor seals, sea lions and sea otters were visible in the swells offshore, bobbing in a moderate chop and small swells.  Once again, the ocean was soothing after driving and doing errands.

On the distant juts of land that form Pt Lobos, big waves were galloping and surging to the jagged shore and exploding in tall sprays of white water.  On such an undulating coastline, it is common that one area will be protected and relatively tranquil while another area nearby will be getting pounded by much larger waves.  It all depends on the direction the swell is coming from.

The sun sank steadily into the west, now shining, now hidden behind layers of low clouds on the horizon, and as the anticipated time for sunset neared, sea life became more visible.  Egrets standing on rafts of kelp hunted for fish on the surface.  Cormorants dove and pounced on prey.  A pair of black oystercatchers pecked for small shelled creatures clinging to the rocks, and the ever-present gulls circled back and forth quietly.

I noticed a small persistent squalling call that at first sounded like a shorebird, but I located its source - a sea otter pup of a very small size.  Its mother was kept very busy diving for shellfish and returning quickly to the little one to satisfy its roaring appetite.  Sea otters eat something like a quarter of their weight in shellfish every day in order to fuel their metabolism.  They have intensely thick fur that they must groom with natural oils to keep supple and warm.  The otter pup was too small to dive for its own food and stayed put in a small raft of kelp, either busy eating or looking around for the female and squalling.  Each time she came back, he nuzzled her and climbed up on her belly to grab the food she held there while she floated on her back and fed herself and him.

After some time and a few dozen trips under to find food, the mother led her pup south a little way to an inlet and began searching once again.  I looked away for a while and realized I was hearing an alarm call and looked back.  The pup had drifted too close to the rocky shore and was caught in the surf now and had begun yelling loudly for help from the female.  She popped up from underwater and began her own alarm call, which sounded like a scream.  She torpedoed straight to the pup who was getting a good sloshing and tumbled in the waves helplessly.  She got to him in a flash, took him by the scruff of his neck and hauled him out to a point beyond the surf line.  Any lifeguard would have been completely impressed with her firm and decisive rescue.  They jostled each other, she making sure the pup was fine, he keeping very close to her.  She licked him all over before relaxing and resuming her search for food.

With the drama over and calm restored for the time being, the sun trimmed the treetops of Pt Lobos with gold and cast glimmers on the restlessly moving ocean.  Wren tits sang their descending call from the brush nearby.  The pair of black oystercatchers bobbed and peeped on an outcropping of beaten sandstone, and then beat their way powerfully to the north where a pink and lavender evening sky waited.

Flooring Decision

Flooring choices turned out to be interesting.  The usual constraints of money, time, and space restrictions provided guidelines, and I've chosen a product at last.  If you recall, I mentioned flooring in a previous post.  The space to be redone is only about 150 square feet in size and gets a lot of traffic, so the product needed to be durable.  Also, the budget includes money for the product itself and installation.  The room is light most of the time, too, and the walls have a warm palette of colors, so the flooring has to be a light neutral or warm tone.

I considered recycled material because I really believe many products can be reused very effectively.  I called one installation guy who's independent to ask about installing various materials.  He never called back.  Not good.  I looked at cork and bamboo also and found the cork to have too busy a pattern for the space, and some other choices of materials had too big a pattern that would look oversized and odd.  Bamboo is pretty, but it doesn't fit the budget if someone else is going to install it.  I don't know how to install it and don't have the tools, so that's out.

The final choice?  An imitation slate laminate made by Armstrong called Stratamax.  The color is "Camel."  So, there you go.  It's not in yet; a person has to come and make precise measurements of the space and then a date will be set to get the product laid down.

I guess this is pretty ordinary for people who remodel rooms every so often.  I've found that I consider too many choices when I need to make a decision, so I restricted my range quite a bit this time 'round.  I think I'll be happier with new floor once it's all finished.  It feels good to have made a decision.

Feeling the Pressure: The Focus of Swimming

I've been learning how to swim all over again these past two weeks.

When you walk around your town, you're not usually too aware of how you move through the air.  It's only when it's windy that you feel it.  During any swimming motion, water is moving around you, and you have to become aware of how it's moving.  As I am paying closer attention to water and my body as I move around in the pool, I am thinking about water pressure and my hands and arms. Without pressure, you don't go forward.  

A long time ago, I was told to take a look at a good swimmer stroking from one end of a pool to the other and notice this:  They seemed to stick their arm into the water out in front of themselves and the hand extended out there stayed put while the body moved to it, over it, and past it.  I thought it was an optical illusion at first, but it's true.  The swimmer's body was moving so well in the water that it actually moved past the point where his hand entered while the hand stayed in that one spot the whole time.

Anyway, a swimmer has to have a very certain focus on how the water pressure feels at all times.  For me, keeping my mind on what I want my hands and arms to feel is sometimes a lot like herding cats.  I think about a million other things when I swim and have to keep bringing my mind back on track.  When I get my mind in the game and really zero in on the sensation of pressure on my palms, forearms and head, it feels great.  Then, I feel like I'm flying.

Sinbad's Fifth Voyage: A True Resolution

On his fifth voyage, Sinbad the Sailor was in a strange foreign land where The Old Man of the Sea tricked Sinbad into carrying him around everywhere.  The old man was thin and wiry and had gnarled legs and heels.  He kicked him incessantly until Sinbad thought he would rather be dead than carry the cruel old man around anymore.  Eventually, Sinbad created some wine and tricked the old man into drinking some of it so that he became drunk and fell asleep, falling off Sinbad's shoulders once and for all.

Certain things torment us ceaselessly in our lives, and we may reach a point of desperation so that we feel we'd rather be dead than endure the agony any longer.  What we do during our lives to win the battle over the old man who rides our shoulders - or what we fail to do, either by lack of will or knowledge - defines our lives.  There is a moment of recognition that the time has come to begin the real struggle to prevail; no more fooling around; no more tolerating the abuse or compromising yourself anymore.

It's interesting that in the story of Sinbad, no one approaches him to offer him help to get the wicked man off his shoulders.  It's his own struggle.  As in our own internal struggles, no one can help Sinbad because the old man has supernatural powers and he has the sole intention to be carried around by Sinbad alone.  He's wickedly strong, agile, and his demands for portage are unrelenting and painful.

Sinbad uses his wit and guile to outsmart the wiry man who has not yielded an inch to Sinbad.  No negotiations and no mercy are ever shown to him.  Sinbad has to reach a point of total commitment to rid himself of the tormenting man and save himself - regain his life.

At some point, a cruel rider has jumped aboard and is holding on tight, kicking and beating us, kicking hard in places that are often defenseless and painful.  Can the man be gotten rid of?  Oftentimes he is allowed to ride our shoulders because we cannot imagine any other way we would live.  Sometimes we think the struggle is an important one to wage and choose to endure the strangling burden.

The legend tells us that Sinbad cannot find his gifts unless he removes the inhibition and heavy load of pain and ugliness that the old man represents.  Sinbad releases himself from bondage at last and continues on his fantastic voyages, wiser, freer and eventually returns home with vast wealth.

The old man is a metaphor for something that's riding hard and cruelly.  He must be cast off and the journey must renew.  When will it be time?

Rocks, Not Glamour

On a walk today, I saw rocks in sand.

I wanted to find something valuable, I thought.  Something rare and beautiful.  What kid doesn't want to find buried treasure or a message in a bottle?  But, disgruntled, I looked around at ordinary sand, unpleasant sea anemones exposed in the low tide, bits and pieces of trash washed up by the tide.

No sea shells, no drift wood, nothing beautiful.

I thought of driving on LA freeways, standing in line at the DMV, shuffling in crowds on pavement, and other forms of unsatisfying ordinariness.  It had been a fine day with nothing that had happened to cause me problems.  I had no complaints, but on the other hand, I had nothing to show for the day.  I wanted to be able to say there was a high point, a brilliant thing to think of later, but I could find nothing either in memory or at hand there at the shore.  What was I to make of this?

Seems a trifle overprivileged to come so close to whining when I live in a spectacular region, but there I was, feeling exasperated at worst, bored at best.

There were the rocks, the sand, and there were the surging waves, rolling in and over the rocks all day long.  No glamour, no bling, no glitz and not much to look at.  Sturdy, brown, they were standing up to cold, wet pounding waves for how long?  I wondered.  Did I care?

Durability and endurance are traits often overlooked when others seem so much more exciting.  Sprinters get all the press in sports.  Dancers with fancy moves outshine the leading man who shows off his partner quietly.  Businessmen who earn billions are superstars, but their ordinary unseen staff people show up day after day and keep the lights on and the machines running.  They never get credit for being steady and normal.

I took a more mindful look at what was around me.  Definitely not a tawny beach in Hawaii, this place.  Seaweed lay limp on those rocks at low tide and tidal zone creatures awaited the return of salt water.  I had to consciously develop an appreciation for the qualities of the rocks and sand, but there they were:  Sturdy dependability, strength, durability and actually some tiny bits of color when I got up close.

The rocks and sand still weren't beautiful, no matter how I squinted my eyes.  But, there they were, part of the whole of things.  Who am I to say what has value and greater purpose?  I left the shore and went home to my dry house where my familiar objects are set about.  I think they looked better to me than before, a bit anyway, in contrast.  Maybe rocks play a supporting role to more glamorous things in life because without them, beauty would be less visible.

Full Moon Playin

There's a full moon outside, all cool and still while silver stars wink and thrill.  A bari sax moon with a white gold edge, playing songs of love long gone, bittersweet, a long-time friend.  It's a fat man moon, round and silver, rolling up and down the arch of heaven.  Got all night to play, old moon, smoky tunes and torchy songs while the crickets sing and owls call.  Smooth cool moon.  High times in a velvet sky, lit with the memory of the passing sun; she's sweet in silk, long gone now but still so fine.  She is oh so fine, he sighs.  Smooth fine old moon, playing low on the bay and beyond the trees.  Cool as love and soft as pain, the silver-gold moon will play his lonesome tune again.

Breakfast Al Fresco, With Kids

Breakfast at a local restaurant where families are welcome is well underway.  Pigeons look for crumbs falling from tables.  A young mother leaving the outdoor dining area with her small child under her arm:  "No, that's not a dog."  Baby, who is extended  forward and backward like a miniature superman flying past the diners and tabletops toward the exit door, looks down, nonplussed, surveying all, absorbing it without a sound.  The pigeons, who are not dogs, peck and walk beneath the tables, and their eyes look blank.

A waiter comes to the patio with a four large platefuls of food balanced up his arm, all piled with breakfast for the family of four.  Two kids are coloring with crayons and swinging their legs under their chairs.  Parents, glancing around the patio, look at each other and at the two kids.  The waiter's setting plates down now. They are brimming with food and the parents' eyes search for clues.  Scrambled eggs for him, breakfast burrito for her, kids get pancakes, did you bring the syrup?, and she gets the small plate with toast, we also ordered extra sausage, you have it? Oh good, and we'll need hot sauce for the eggs, no more coffee please, put down the squirt bottle, that's for the birds or they land on the table, eat your eggs first, I'll cut up your sausage, scoot your chair in closer, your napkin's on the ground, this looks good.   The waiter leaves quickly.  The family picks up their forks and begins to eat.

A group of diners finish, gather their things and stand up to leave, sorting themselves out.  They walk slowly away from their table toward the exit door.  Their faces are smiling loosely, vaguely looking pleasant but unfocused.  Instantly, five English sparrows rush to the table top and begin fluttering between plates and tabletop in search of scraps.  A boy in jeans and shirt who has short blond hair and no more breakfast to eat, reaches across his table for a squirt bottle with a pistol-grip sprayer and takes aim at the sparrows who are aggressively scavenging leftovers 10 feet away.  The boy's aim is bad, then better and then very good.  An arc of water tags one bird and it flies away a few feet and cocks its head to  the table again.  The boy aims at it again, intent on making it his sole target.  Two other birds return to the table again.  He turns quickly, aims at them and squirts again and again, now trying his aim at silverware and plates, absorbed in his new skill.  Droplets of water land on a couple nearby who look up to check for rainclouds.  They haven't noticed the boy and his squirt gun.

There is another table further away where another family with a boy are eating.  He watches the first boy hitting the bird and then the tabletop with the squirt gun and looks around for his own to shoot.  His mother sees this and says, "No way."  He slumps back in his chair and begins to kick the umbrella pole extending down through the center of the table.  He keeps his eyes on the first boy though.  The first boy has stopped shooting, halted by his own mother who tells him to watch his own plate, the birds are coming closer on his other side.  He looks quickly down and around him as if a lookout in a tower surrounded by marauders, which the English sparrows seem to be.

The waiter comes through the patio and checks coffee cups, asking the adults if they'd like refills.  There are a few takers.  It's a cool morning and the sun is not yet high enough to warm the morning air.  Our coffee cups are full for the third time and breakfast is over, so we gather our own things and leave.  I wonder if the boy will shoot birds from our table, too, once we are gone.

A Meditation: Waves, Beach

At the western boundary of our coast, the ocean rumbles and thumps.  The closer I get to ocean noise, the better I can think.  Loud water is soothing; waterfalls, showers, heavy rain or pounding surf clarify my thinking and cleanse my mind of distraction.  

The ocean is deadly and has no emotion, and yet it inspires every emotion in the human heart.  One's vision is instantly broadened at land's edge; the sea demands attention, and yet its sound provides a still place for your thoughts, a backdrop of white noise, a meditation.  

The land has a lumpy, undulating edge where it meets the ocean. Granite rock and sandstone is abused by the rush of heavy surf and gentle trickles alike.  Very few people go to the shore who do not stop and gaze at it.  Nearly everyone goes west to that ragged edge of land and feels an inward turn of their mind.  

I saw a small girl who wore lavendar pants and pink rainboots.  She stood on a boulder just past the tide's rush with the look of a person intent on discovery and possibility.  Her hair was tangled and loose in the onshore gusts of cold air, and she looked a wild thing, both old and young all at once, timelessly feminine and unaware of her own potential.  She was quiet while the ocean roared.

The ocean has moods and induces states of mind.  The pace of swells, the size of waves and sometimes the cold slap of wind against your skin excite or soothe your hopes or fears.  What you bring to the shore, you most likely will leave off; fear becomes joy, confidence becomes contentment, or sadness becomes acceptance. 

Maybe it's the incessant sweep of waves or maybe it's that odd feeling of inevitability that a huge ocean's restless energy stirs within you.  Maybe it's the innate knowledge that the ocean and your own blood are nearly the same. The sea has a never-ending quality of movement and changeability, mystery and threat, but also inscrutability.  Every wave is beautiful even though always dependably the same.  

That tension and balance between what is known and what cannot be known, of what is out beyond the surf and what is in your own heart, is a recognition that you and it exist in an infinite continuum.  It's just water out there, but it moves.  It moves and moves you inside but stills you, too, until you cannot be still and must move also.  Even then, compelled to move, you find that the kinetic nature of the ocean has brought you calm and peace, a tranquility you hadn't even been aware was missing until you found it.   

Thoughts on Flooring

You would think, by the warm pleasant weather and my deeper-than-usual cleaning efforts for the day, that Spring has already arrived.  California weather will often be coy at this time of year.  After a streak of very cold mornings and then bursts of rain, it's sweet outside.  Like a girl trying on a pretty dress with no intention of buying, just seeing how it feels for a moment, the weather is dressed in warm, soft colors and then, bye-bye!, the weather will change to cold winter again, flinging warmth aside.

For now and the next few days to come, we are expecting to see more of today's gray-blue sky with its white-gold edges.  I'm taking advantage of the winter lull to get my home back into shape after the holidays.  The carpet guy said today, "If a carpet isn't getting cleaned, it's getting dirty."  Yes, sir, don't I know it.

Next step is trying to pick out flooring for the kitchen, which consists of about 100 square feet of heavily used space.  The linoleum that's already there is dated, hard to clean and damaged in several places.

Some friends have said they like cork a lot.  Others like stone.  I've looked at linoleum for its retro appearance and durability.  What I want is a floor that cleans itself, cooks my dinner and gives foot massages.  Well, I can dream, can't I?

In the decision-making process, I have paused to salute my foremothers, housekeepers who had to make do with floor materials such as varied as stone, old wood planks, dirt, or tiles.  As interesting as some of those might be to look at, I'm not sure yet what to pick from modern materials.  Some traditional flooring  certainly has its own appeal.  Dirt? Not so much.  Tile may or may not be difficult to put down, but I've heard the challenge lies in surface preparation.  The old stuff that's there now is potentially the biggest problem to consider and may take an act of God to remove.  Acts of God are expensive, you know.

I'd like to learn to lay tile and do it myself.  Considering I tried sewing a down jacket together from a kit I once bought, and ended up with the sleeves put on backwards, it would probably be a good idea to learn on a less crucial project.  Like a closet floor or something.  Dog house perhaps.

At least the carpet is clean and the sky is not threatening rain.  As for actual spring cleaning, I guess I'll have to do this all again when winter leaves for good.  Like the man said, "Carpet is either getting cleaned..."

Dawn to the Pool

Up at 5 AM for morning swim.  Got my get-ready routine down pat:  Up, dress, fill water bottle, eat small snack, begin to stretch and limber up, gather bag and keys, drive to campus.  Walk over to pool, enter dark cold locker room, leave warm clothes in locker (feeling urge to scream), get in pool.  Yeah, that's it.  Swim, of course.  

Oddly, or not, crackers and raisins are doing the best as a snack before the workout, washed down with water. I'm happy to say I'm still discovering little things like that even now after so many years of swimming.  

Quote of the day from coach:  "Your butterfly looks fine; nothing wrong that a few million laps of butterfly won't cure."

Sigh.  

Best part of swim:  Dawn at the end of the workout.  It's a magical moment that makes you feel both crazy and very privileged.  You've done something challenging, gotten yourself into a position to be able to see one of the greatest free shows available to mankind, and you're nicely relaxed from the exercise.  That is one very specific groove.

Winter Blossoms

Things are damp out.  And the world is rushing to darkness, readying for a downpour.  The natural world has stilled, bracing for an oncoming wind or peppering rain.  People, however, have not.  While the dawn sky is a riot of shifting soft clouds ablaze with the colors of fire, men and women walking, jogging, running along the shoreline in knots of two or three seem restless.  

At the edge of the earth world, where the sea licks its lips, the shore bluffs are lined with massive clumps of "red rockets," a succulent plant that must endure endless insults from sun and pounding sea, especially now in the dead of winter.

Thumbing their noses at the possibility of absolute obliteration by high tide, they have sent up stalks topped with ochre, just like fiery spears. They are ablaze with an indignant refusal to cow to harsh weather and long dark nights.  Electric purple Pride of Madeira braves winter's bluster, too.  They are vibrant amidst last season's brittle skeletal remnants of old blossoms.     

Funny to think that flowers have courage and stand up in the face of massive wind and drenching sheets of water, but there they are blooming as winter glowers overhead.  On my porch rail, potato vines' dancing blooms are tiny innocents, pure virginal white and delicate.  It's January, you little blossoms.  Hang on.  

Now the rain is falling.  Car wheels are hissing on dark pavement.  I am not a flower or even standing staunchly in sisterhood with the winter blooms outside.  I do sit in admiration, though, and anticipation of a vivid spring.  

LIght On a Winter Morning

I wondered what to pay attention to this morning, going here and there, across town and home again.  People? The radio?  The weather?  Ideas?

No.  It was sunlight.

I noticed as I turned onto the main street traversing Monterey that the day's palette of colors was coolly silver with tones of blue and gray.  Everywhere.  Everything, even ugly things, were cast in a special light.  Not so bad to see a big ocean whose surface was riffled by an onshore breeze and the sky's reflection broken into infinite bits of varying blue.  Not so bad to see an ocean look like hammered silver and birds stitching it to the sky with crooked black wings in silhouette.  The rooftop of a grand but dark old building, overgrown with a winter bloom of gold moss and lichen, looked like it had come right up out of the very earth itself.  There were twin round towers of pale silver, tubes that if tall enough could transport hope straight up and joy straight down from angels, silver themselves, as you know.  A king must have passed through, littering the scene with casually flung coins; rain puddles and dew were as good as coin  or sequins tacked to cloaks and scabbards.  If you squinted your eyes just so, that is.  And I did.  Of course I did.

An Assemblage

I looked at my salad and saw dirt-stained hands planting, tending, picking, sorting and selling lettuce and herbs.  Dirt scuffed under heavy boots, along long dark rows of disked soil.  The air was pungent with bruised plants and dampness.

I heard low murmured voices talking about the weather, the sale at Target, the cost of gas as the cheese was made in long steel bins, fragrant with rennet and warm milk.

I listened to the sound of pigs grunting and gates clicking closed, dogs barking and cattle lowing as they ripped green grass and munched it between strong grinding teeth.  I heard the harsh sounds of animals loaded into trucks and men shouting, shoving them forward, fearful and nervous.

I heard rain pattering down on brown earth and the snapping of stems as strong hands moved rapidly through tomato vines and sent the small grape-like tomatoes to containers lying by.

I watched a potter shaping clay on a wheel spinning before her, pushing with curved wet palms against the slick pale lump and the same hands dipping the bisqued platter into a white vat of liquid glaze, the roaring of the kiln with flame in its heart burning at 2,000 degrees for hours on end.

I heard the clash and shout of a factory where the fork was stamped from long panes of stainless steel.  I heard saws and sanders, smelled glue and pine dust in the factory where the table was formed.

I sat at my table with the assembled things before me and thought of the effort of many people who had worked in unknown places at unseen jobs where their hands moved over and under, around the things I was to eat and be nourished by.

Of all the things in my home, few are formed by hands that I have ever touched.  How many people has it taken to make this place?  I'll never see their faces, never know their stories, never shake their hands.  The few things I do have an idea about - photographs, art, a tabletop, a few knitted things, are consequently so meaningful to me that they almost take on life and personality.

The salad was exceptional, and my satisfaction was complete.  In appreciation, I ate quietly and listened again for the sounds of all that had happened before I could have the food on my plate.  It was silent now except for the humming of the refrigerator and the town outside, echoing with voices and engines.

A New Dawn: 5:30 Swim Today

In a vein of self-discovery - or rediscovery, which would be more accurate - I got up at 5 and drove over to the college for the 5:30 AM workout.  I hadn't made the effort to get going before dawn in about six or seven years, maybe more.  It felt strangely exciting to do again.  I guess that's a good sign.

The sky is black at 5:15 and it was very cold for our neck of the woods.  36 degrees.  The edges of frost were beginning to cut at living things, put some real teeth into the night.

A pool at 5:30 with the air at 36 degrees looks haunted.  Steam whisps and whorls were rising from the boiler room, the deck and the pool itself.  Two tall light standards flood the area with just enough light, dark enough to focus attention on the pool and swimming.  The locker room is not heated.  That's where it gets a teeny bit challenging.

The water is 79 or 80 degrees, like having Hawaii in the middle of cold winter.  As soon as you jump into the water, you're good.  The coaches, left on deck bundled in parkas and layers of clothes, are the ones who suffer.  That would be Mark Temple and Mary Hazdovac, coaches of Monterey Bay Swim Club.

What I found as I swam was that I felt really good.  I was enjoying the water, the movement, the rhythm of the various strokes.  Moving up and down the lane was much different than in daytime when everything and everyone distracts me from my stroke.  In the dark of predawn, I barely saw the other swimmers in other lanes.  They seemed like phantoms.  I only saw trails of silvery bubbles whirling from the turbulence of their kicking feet or stroking arms.  A flash of an arm whose skin was lit by the beaming light, undulating bodies in the far lanes doing butterfly or turning at the wall to reverse back to the other end.  Quick looks at merpeople, swimmers moving at 6 AM in the wintertime dark.

With nearly all my visual input reduced to my own lane of water and the darkened underwater view of the bottom below me dim and uninteresting, my mind focused easily on the work at hand.  Today, the focus was on pulling drills using drag buckets that emphasize the smoothness of the entire stroke, the symmetry of the pull and recovery.  When you take the bucket off, you feel fast and powerful.  Tomorrow, I won't be feeling so fast.  I'll be feeling sore.  My muscles will adjust, but it's going to take awhile.

By the time the workout ended at 7 AM, dawn was beginning to creep over the far horizon and Venus was dimming in the southern sky, a bright beacon that winked at me.  "Good morning, old girl," I said.  "We're up early, you and I."  The morning light growing in the east was like stage lights coming up on a play.  A sense of anticipation and possibility filled me.  It was simple, beautiful, quiet and I'd missed it all those years.

The showers were hot and breakfast was very satisfying.  I'm still thinking about possible swims, places to travel and challenges for myself.  A dawn morning in winter is an inspiring thing.

Two Good Feet

If I sit still for long, my feet turn into Klondike bars or frozen turkey patties.  One or the other, maybe a combination of a few frozen-food-section items.  Cold.  They're pretty unusable today; it has been cold and the wind chill has factored the air to colder yet.  Winter is making itself known every day, and my feet are telling me so.  

The Klondike-bar effect doesn't happen when I sit still in hot weather, of course.  No, in hot weather my feet turn into something that looks like a pillow with five little toe buds apiece.   Poor feet, they go from one resented condition to another, just down there trying to do their job, hoping not to be run into door frames, curbs, or into the back of my other leg.  Grace is an intermittently enjoyed attribute in my life.

I remember a biographical show about Ginger Rogers [edited from Grace Kelly] on PBS where she described dancing with Fred Astaire.  They were the quintessential ballroom dancers in the movies.  She always appeared to be floating on a cloud as she danced, smiling like an angel and she never showed strain or fatigue.  It is said that her feet were bleeding from all the torment her shoes gave her as she danced.  I, in comparison, have poor tolerance for any kind of squeeze or pinch from my shoes and become resentful of whoever dreamed up the idea of high heels if they hurt.

In spite of the fact that my feet puff when hot and become graceless blocks when cold, I like my feet a lot.  They're good flippers in the water and have not been prone to disease or disfigurement (mostly due to my very few hours wearing high heels).  But, more than that, my feet are impressively mobile and strong, accommodating slants, angles and rough surfaces that I hardly notice.  Plus, there are ten nails that are fun to polish.

Zillions of people have shoe fetishes, or at least love shoes to distraction.  I don't often notice shoes, and I'm always surprised when people have noticed mine.  I guess I know my feet are without complaint, so I leave them alone. I know there are the select few who feel some sort of urge to walk across beds of hot coals to see if they can keep from feeling them.  Mind over matter, they say.

I don't want to subject my feet to that kind of test.  They're doing fine so far.  If they get cold in this gray weather, it's on me to keep them warm; it's not their fault.  I look for comfortable shoes, avoid stepping on bees and nails, and leave footprints in the sand when the weather is warm enough.

I wrote recently about swimming and trying an open-water swim this year.  A reader replied with an article about a man who lost both arms and legs after being struck by lightning.  He swam the English Channel with prostheses that work like flippers, and made across in a time 10 hours faster than he'd planned.  No legs, no arms, definitely no feet.  I have no idea how he managed, but it proves that will and courage count for almost everything.  Amazing.

Next time I complain about my feet - or legs or arms - I'll think of him and rethink my whining.  As for  now,  I just put up my feet on a pillow and they're doing much better.  Hmmm, might be time for a foot massage, though.

Swimming, Sleeping, Sunning Seals

On a walk today on the Monterey Bay Recreation Trail ("Rec Trail"), the waves were big and sloshy, flopping and sliding up onto the shoreline.  They chugged in to the rock and sand margins of land like an old car with its gears slipping.

Just as loose and lazy was a beach full of harbor seals, whose fat torpedo-like bodies were covered in thick spotted coats.  There were about a hundred of them at the Hopkins Marine Station's protected cove, lying one next to another.  Their limpid eyes peered up at us once in a while, head lifted just long enough for a look and then flopping down again with a sigh.  Flippers stretched languidly and regular deep up-and-down motions of their sides showed how contentedly they were resting.

The bay was dark blue and choppy from a brisk breeze that stirred up the surface in gusts but not so bad that anyone was kept from a pleasant walk along the trail.  We headed from Pacific Grove on the mile or less of flat curving walk.  Out goal was the American Tin Cannery building where we enjoyed a hearty brunch at the First Awakenings restaurant, one of our usual breakfast places.

The waitress mentioned, after we told her about the surf, that a scientist from the Marine Station had spotted elephant seals hauling up on the beach there, an unusual occurrence.  Staff there have hopes that the large animals will make the cove a regular haunt so that they can be studied and protected.  The Station is a jut of land where a collection of buildings houses labs and libraries for grad students from Stanford to learn about marine life.

Once we were full to the brim with our meal, we walked back along the trail and took a good long look at the seals to see if we could spot the larger species.  None were to be seen, but the harbor seals were fine looking and very well fed.

More seals surfed in, sliding up on the beach on their bellies and then humping up to higher ground where they simply stopped to sun themselves for a while.  If a bigger wave rushed up to them, they simply lifted their heads and tail flippers up, barely inconvenienced by the swishing ocean water.  Every so often, one or two seals would ride a large rush of water back out into the little cove and take stock of the day with their heads periscoping around, eyes blinking calmly.

Just watching the seals made me sleepy, and I developed a lethargy that only a nap could cure.  Must have been the blueberry-wheatgerm pancake I'd eaten, but I'd rather blame the somnolent seals.

There's A Bear On My Back, And He's Carrying A Piano

First week back in the water after winter break feels good, but I'm not so sure I look so great thrashing up and down the pool.  I'm glad I can't see myself.  Feeling out of shape is bad enough. It takes about two weeks, maybe three, to regain fitness for every week taken off, which seems to go against all the laws of physics and nature, but that's the way it is.  Take a break, pay for it later.

The pool is an old one and needs replacement.  Eight lanes, 25 yards, deep at one end.  That's it.  The poor old thing was damaged in the Loma Prieta earthquake that occurred in 1989.  Coaches and pool equipment bounced up and down for the 18 seconds or so that the earth rumbled, and patches of plaster and tiles were chipped and crunched.  They have not yet been fully repaired in all this time.  The college campus has been enjoying a gradual refurbishment over the past few years.  Unfortunately the pool is almost the last bit of the college to be replaced or upgraded.  The locker rooms are grim and cold, but we are not complaining too loudly.  We get to swim; that's the main thing.

The phrase "swim" is very subjective, I've found.  Swimmers at our pool range from floppers who barely move and somehow take up an entire lane all by themselves to fitness hounds who cross train in other sports every day, rain or shine, to swimmers heading to Junior Olympics and beyond.

There are no shortage of goals to work toward, and the amazing thing is muscles respond to stress by getting stronger no matter how old you are.  I have set a few personal goals for the first six months, and even after just one week, I feel less like a bear has jumped on my back and more like I am actually getting somewhere.  The bear is always ready to jump on, and sometimes he's carrying a piano.  If you're not a swimmer, equate that to running uphill in loose sand.  Swimmers know exactly what I mean and dread the feeling when it comes over them.  

As for competition, I don't know what will turn up on the horizon, but I'm looking around for something interesting to challenge myself with.  Hawaii?  Maybe.  California?  More likely.  But...that's the fun of it.  Swimmers comprise a big tribe and they swim in lots of different places and kinds of water.  If you know of a moderate open-water swim, drop me a line and I'll take it into consideration.  One possibility I've toyed with is an open-water series in Fiji that I read about online.  Who knows....

You Hold A Baby

The baby is sleeping, a little soft sandbag of warmth that smells tender and sweet, like milk warming.  It is lost to the world, adrift in dreams, limp and warm.  Its cheeks are flushed pink and the hair damp.  It is exquisitely soft.

You hold this baby against your shoulder, its head lying like a weight, lips pursed and eyelashes like tiny strokes of a fine pen dark against the skin.  You are thinking about dinner, errands, your need to go to the bathroom soon, and you are thinking about the baby being very warm against you.  You are holding still, unwilling to move in case it might wake and fuss.  But the baby is motionless save its regular breathing.  Its arms are lying one flopped here under your chin and one there over your arm, both shorter in length than the distance from your wrist to your elbow.

The baby is dreaming now, its eyelids moving, its fingers curling and then unfurling.  It sighs deeply and goes back to quiet respiration, breathing perfectly.  How tender its skin is and how vulnerable it is to everything.  It is just like a doll.  How can a baby dream who has never done anything or been anywhere?  What memory can it have?

Your mind shifts from chores to thoughts of other children, small and large, who were once this small not long ago.  You remember yourself small, how you could see your parents up above you if you looked up with your head tilted back, parents eyes far above you, looking down as if from a distant place.

You forget about chores and time going by and feel the several pounds of tiny human being, a pleasing not-heaviness which is substantially light, alive there right next to your heart.  The baby is soft yet firm, robust but delicate, glowing with life.

Who will this child become?  Whose shoulder did you sleep upon?  You love this peace and stillness, know it will not last but feel a quiet ease in all the rush and worry of the day.  The baby seems to have sprawled against you to hold you down, make you realize that moments like this, moments of stillness, refresh your spirit and center your soul.  You close your eyes and breathe in time with this little one who knows nothing, its life just beginning.  You are in love you realize, just because this baby has fallen deep asleep on you, pinning you - you feeling helpless and amazed - both your hearts beating side by side.

One in Seven Billion, Totally Unique

What is your purpose in life and how do you know if you've found it?  Getting back to the clues the universe leaves around, the fingerprints of your talent and gifts, I believe you know early on what fascinates you, pulls you into its realm of possibility.  Math?  Dance?  Texture?  Words?  Patterns?  Ideas?  No one knows the things you know in exactly the way you know them or will ever live the sequence of events you have lived through.  Horrors and joys, love and anger in the places you have known them make you able to do what only you can do, create only as you can.

There are things that you discount because they are simple to you.  You have not pushed the boundaries of what you can do with your talent if the thing is easy to you or boring.  If the thing that you love to do is difficult but fascinating, do it; something about that fascination is a clue to you about your essential qualities, the you that is nobody else.  Maybe there is something you feel is crucially important to work on and cannot let go of.  That's what's working you; your gifts are being brought to bear.

The most frustrating tragedies in life are often due to a denial of true self.  The great loss of talent and potential through oppression and too-early death is an immeasurable tragedy.  But poor self-esteem, lack of awareness of possibility and a sense of false obligation to standards imposed by others are potentially as ruinous to us as death is.  Often in society we feel obliged to do what others tell us to do, believing they understand our destinies and our hearts better than we understand our own.  But that's impossible.  Nobody knows you like you, and no one sees the situation just like you do.  Witnesses to crimes and catastrophes all have tell a different version of what happened - they all literally saw something different than the other witnesses did.

In a way, the uniqueness of our personal existence leads to loneliness and a sense of separateness.  We may say, "No one sees it like I do; no one understands me," and it's the truth.  In my opinion, I want to see it like no one else does.  I don't want to be the same as anyone else.  I was born me, and that is who I must be.  However, if I forge ahead without considering the giving of my gifts to the world, my talents will become burdens, to me and to my community.

I don't believe that talent or purpose is so easy to recognize that we can just sit under a shade tree until the apple of opportunity falls into our laps.  Joseph Campbell said he wished the term he coined "follow your bliss" had been expressed as "follow your blisters."  It's a trudge, a lifelong journey undertaken to express our talent and find purpose in life.  Who doesn't ask, "Why am I here?"  I have, many times. Seems to me my purpose is to find my purpose, and I'm still trying to figure it out.

Automatic Glory

I was looking into a new computer yesterday.  The one I like has a terabyte of something on it.  It sounds prehistorically glorious.  Maybe it grows legs and screams and runs around the room with large menacing claws. Not likely, but with terminology invented by teenaged boys, capabilities are more likely to trend in that direction than toward cute hairdos and bling.  

Computers are everywhere now.  TVs are computers, DVD players with recording devices are computers, and cars have computers in them.  They start the car, assess the engine, check the brakes and dim the lights.  They tell us how to get to the nearest pizza joint and when to turn and proceed straight ahead while driving in unfamiliar towns.

Nothing is done unless a computer gets its motherboard into the mix somehow.  People go to YouTube to get instructions on how to knit, when in the past they just sat with their grandmothers and learned how.  Now grandmothers are somewhere else getting their hair color balanced (analyzed by computers) and nails polished (colors designed on a computer) or vacationing on cruise ships run by computers.

Airport trams are managed by computer systems.  At Denver International way out on the plains near Kansas, you fly in on a computer-piloted jet (the pilot keeps the seat warm in the cockpit), the bags are loaded onto a computerized baggage system and you find your way to the claim area to pick them up from a computerized baggage merry-go-round after being whisked to the area on a driver-less train.  People step on en masse, grip handrails after being commanded to do so by a computer voice, and the doors swoosh closed.  Then you rumble at a speed determined by a computer through an underground route to your destination, announced by the computer voice.  The doors fly open and everyone is commanded to exit to the platform or risk getting crushed in the computer-controlled door.  Everyone obeys.

The computer-driven world has no patience for laggards.  If you cannot figure out what you are to do next, you are hung up on, left behind, silenced or deleted.  That's it, you're done slow poke.

So, this new computer with terabytes of something is arrayed with features I am to adore and use to bring ease and comfort to my life, freeing up gigabytes of time with which I may whisk through my days effortlessly.  I dunno.  I was kind of hoping instead I'd find a good fireplace and a few good friends to sit around with and shoot the breeze, but they're all busy fixing their computers.

A To-Do Day And Then Tah Dah!

It was a jiggedy day today whose middle was filled with errands and to-dos but it ended in a grand "tah dah!"  It was made of many stepping-stone parts that formed a satisfying whole.  Mondays are often like that; they seem to flop into big chairs and slump with a feeling of "whew, now that was something," like Sunday took all the good things and left junk behind.

First, I swam with friends, back in the pool again finally after a two-week holiday break. Fitness has slipped and I need lots of hours of work to get back in shape.  I had lunch at The Breakfast Club in Seaside where a waitress who was petite, wiry and looked like a roller derby player brought me an enormous plate of salad and a bowl of soup.  It was almost as big as she was.  I saw her staggering along with it and the other plates of food she brought to us.  She needed a U-Haul truck for goodness sake.

Gabriel the New, grand-nephew of minute proportions, age five months, gazed upon his world philosophically until he was handed a big shiny teaspoon.  While I and two loved ones ate our massive lunches, his eyes fixed upon a teaspoon and both hands grasped it with the strength of ten monkeys.  Into his mouth it went, sure as sunrise, for evaluation.  He gummed everything he could find while we talked and caught up on news.  After some good-luck kisses on his soft cheeks, he and his mom said good-bye, to meet again in a week or two.  He is handsome already, and it is assured that girls will find him irresistible, but he will not know they exist, I'll bet.  We shall see.  He has to get out of diapers first.

Friends and errands took up bits and chunks of time until I realized sunset was nearly upon me.  There are many dramatic vistas on our local shores, and today's very low tide produced unusual features of rock, exposed seaweed and stampeding breakers backlit by the setting sun.  Every day, cars and bicycles migrate to the western shore, assembling along Sunset Drive and at Asilomar State Beach.  Clumps of people stand along the walking path or sit in their parked cars to witness the inexorable slow descent of the sun to the horizon and its tatters of gold shredded across the sky.  I don't know how they feel exactly, but in my mind there is music and the Almighty is present in a grand and commanding display.