In Jail With Pill Bugs

I was in fifth grade in a small elementary school with kids I'd grown up with.  I had confidence and felt as secure as a kid can be who knows nothing about the world at large but believes they do.  While we were learning times tables or history or something one hot day, Anna picked her nose two aisles over, I watched dust motes turning like thin little fish in midair, and Mr. Sinclair sat at his desk while we sat at ours.  The dust motes were high overhead, and my head lolled to the left to see them. I thought of outer space where the motes surely came from.  The light fixtures looked like space ships, and a limp flag hung at the front of the class that we saluted every morning.  There were holes made in the ceiling tiles that were meant to absorb sounds, and I had an idea that if the sounds could be retrieved and played on a phonograph, they would reveal all sorts of jumbled and mixed messages, that no words were ever lost at school.

The fifth graders at work in the class bent to their work, the little drudges.  I, on the other hand, could not get my head in the game and looked about for something to entertain myself.  I looked left and right, peeked up at the teacher who sat grading papers at his desk in the front right corner of the class.  High up on the wall over his head, arrayed in a long row of panes, was an open window. A kid got picked every day to be the window monitor and pull them open with a long pole equipped with a hook at its tip.  It was hot and the windows were tilted open into the class.  The dust motes danced in slow motion.  I glanced at Anna, a skinny blonde girl with plastic headband raked through her hair. I was feeling a little sour and irritable. I sighed heavily.  Mr. Sinclair looked up and then down again at the papers.  Erasers scrubbed at papers and feet scuffled the floor.  The clock on the wall ticked its hands mechanically into the next minute position.  2:21 it said tediously.

I noticed Anna again and felt disgusted with the finger mining the interior reaches of her nasal passages.  I wondered if there were boogers on my own desk from whoever had sat there the period before.  I wanted to get out of there, leave a trailing swirl of dust motes behind me like a cluster of reporters asking after the escapee.  Don, a plump and usually good-natured boy with a bristling buzz of hair on his round head was at the desk in front of me.  He wore a thin cotton plaid shirt that stretched across his wide back.  Idly, I picked up my pencil and twirled it.  The tip was nicely pointed and I felt its taper in my fingertip.  I reached forward and poked Don in the back almost as if my hand had decided all on its own to take the stab, without malice, without forethought.  I could have been poking a board for all the interest I had in the action.

Don screamed instantly and whirled wildly around to face me.  He swept my books off the top of my desk to the floor where they landed with a crash.  The teacher jumped up and moved swiftly to Don, grabbing him as if he had suddenly become insane without provocation and needed restraint.

"Stop that! Go outside and don't make a sound!"

"She stabbed me!" Don looked crazed, and I was thrilled, amazed at what had just happened.  I started giggling at the absurd sound of a boy screaming exactly like a girl and the sight of my books strewn on the floor.

"You go outside, too!  I don't want any noise out there from either of you or you're going to the office."

We went out to stand in the heat and doldrums of midday.  Don, whom I'd actually considered to be a friend of a sort up to now, said his back was fine and why did I stab him with my pencil.  I shrugged.  We stood looking at one another and started kicking pebbles, both of us now in jail, hoping for a shiv or a way to be freed for good.  Don said he was glad he didn't have to be in the classroom anymore and that his back was okay.  Me too, I said, and we were friends again.

I looked down at the cement walkway.  We were in an outdoor space covered by a wide overhang of the roof.  Pill bugs that we called rolley pollies - surely invented by God to amuse kids - were moving around down by my feet, so I picked some up and made them roll up.  I saw the open window up at the top of the wall and motioned to Don to aim for it.  We started lobbing pill bugs in through the window, with the only concern being that we make the shot each time.  It was the best fun of the day so far and beat times tables by a long shot.  Then the pill bugs were all gone, thrown to their fate through the open window. Next, we found pebbles and tossed them up and in, never hitting the window pane once.  We became very accurate with every pebble arcing up and through the window space, disappearing into the dark interior of the classroom.

Suddenly the door was pushed open and Mr. Sinclair was standing there with a reddened face.  "Do you know what's been landing on my desk?"

"No."  I tried my winning smile, all my charm, certain he would smile back at me.

"Don, come in here," Mr. Sinclair growled.  Don walked to the door and glanced back at me, grinning, then waved adios.

I was left on my own out in the hall, oblivious to the little havoc I was wreaking, submerged in my boredom and aimlessness.

The door opened again, and I was motioned in by the red-faced Mr. Sinclair.

"Sit down."  I sat and looked around.  Anna wasn't picking her nose anymore.  Kids were staring at me. I looked at the floor and saw pill bug carcasses littering it, a few pebbles.  Don had his back to me.

"Apologize to the class for your disruption."

"Sorry," I said.  I was not sorry.  I wanted to stick Don in the back again and hear him scream.  It was quite a sound he'd made and he'd gone wild in a very exciting way.

"I didn't hear you."  Mr. Sinclair was looking at me, and I looked back at him.  I was pretty sure he was trying not to smile, clenching his teeth, making the ridges of muscle stand out on his jawline.  He was a teacher I generally ignored as best I could, a man with not much imagination but who seemed fair enough.

"I'm sorry," I said, only sorry the bell had not yet rung and set us free.

"Will you ever stab Dod again?" he asked.

"No."

"Don, say you're sorry to her," Mr. Sinclair said.

"She stabbed me with her pencil!" Don shrilled.

"That's enough."

"She did!"

"You threw her books on the floor.  I want an apology or we are all going to be here until I get one."

Don heaved back into his chair, disgusted, "I'm sorry I threw your books onto the floor after you stabbed me with your pencil," he stated, not looking at me.  Mr. Sinclair glared.  The class was silent.  A kid next to me eyed my pencil tip.  I suppose he was looking for blood although I hadn't poked Don hard enough to draw anything more than the reaction.

Inside I was happy with this development, surprised Don had had to apologize, satisfied with the entertainment I'd stirred up, and glad not to see Anna picking her nose anymore.  We scattered at the bell and the day's heat gathered us into it's suffocating arms.  Don gave me a wide berth after that and I found no more opportunities to lob bugs or raise cain.

Flowers Help Me Wait

Today is not the kind of day one runs outside with a song in one's heart as the sun bursts into view and birds sing.  The birds are soggy and huddled on the leeward side of trees, and the sun is staying put in the tropics, thumbing its nose at us who are inundated by rain and buffeted by wind.

There are many things we can call upon, tools in our toolboxes, that we can use to get through the gloom and gray of wet weather.  I like to play good music and move around indoors, which usually does the trick.  If that doesn't work, one must root around in one's "toolbox" for other devices to ward off inertia.  Plenty of storms that plunder trees of their flowers and weakened branches make one feel intimidated and reluctant to move off of the sofa or out of bed, wishing it would all go away.

Two days ago, when I was scurrying to the grocery store to get out of the wind and wet, I saw a display of fresh flowers, grabbed some and continued on about my shopping.  Having the little beauties at my side as I went up and down the aisles did me a lot of good, and they look cheerful now on my kitchen table.  I love flowers no matter what.  It seems to be they are a really good gloom antidote, so I keep them around, ready to cheer me every time I re-enter my kitchen or any other room where I can keep them.

Surely the rain will cease someday soon and the flowers outside will bloom as in no other year.  Spring is here, on paper, but the season has yet to warm us in real life.  I'm ready, very ready, with my flowers cheering me as I wait.

Desiderata at 5 AM

Prudence and experience teach you that it's wise to stick with the routine, the ordinary, and the safe things in order to make it to old age.  But what am I to make of that now that I have reached my middle years and life seems mundane?

Not being so wise, I guess, I am up at 5 to make my way across town in time for the 5:30 swim. I am driving along thinking to myself, "Yuck, rain" when I look up and see what seems to be a tribal ritual in full swing, vividly displayed in sedate and peaceful Monterey.

I sit up higher. What could this mean? Up ahead, I see city trucks with flashing lights.  And there's fire!  There are men and they are looking at something, and yes, there really is fire.  Now I'm awake.  I squint to see exactly what could be on fire in all the wet and cold.  There are two men in yellow safety-striped foul weather gear.  Are their feet on fire?  I see bright, open, leaping flames in the middle of the dark street. I need to take a closer look.  I feel my heart beating, wish I had my camera.

The men are looking intently down at the ground and one of them is holding a long broom-like wand shooting blue spikes of fire, waving it back and forth through the flames.  The ground actually is on fire and white-hot tongues of it are licking upward in the dark morning.  Their work truck lights are flickering off nearby plate-glass windows and the rain-slicked streets shine with the firelight and beams from headlights.  And there is no sound.  The silence perhaps is the most eerie thing.  The wolves of death are not howling, the winds of time are not whistling in the rafters.  The rain is pattering on the roof of my car.

I imagine the layered meanings of this scene, the symbolism, the overt oddity at least.  Is this a signal that evil lurks even in quiet conservative places where nothing much happens? This could be an ordinary city street transformed from pavement to ritual altar upon which smokes and leaps a white-hot bit of hell.  Pure hell and the men are doing the bidding of the devil himself, captured in the middle of the night while they were out clearing drains and now forced to set everything on fire.  It's a battle, a test of wills.  The men cannot resist the evil intention of Satan and are stunned, cowed, forced to do...work?  But why is Lucifer intent on setting Monterey's wet streets on fire at 5:30 in the morning?  Why not Las Vegas or LA, the dens of iniquity?  It is very possible that the calm complacency of our small town needs a bit of bone rattling and I am lucky witness to the vanguard forces that intend to rattle the bones, set the place alight, bring it to ruin and ash.

With the hunched silhouettes of the two men playing with open flame in the dark quiet of a rainy morning, I can surely expect to see some large monolithic slab rising up out of the chilly ground and an orchestral blast of grand music.  Can't I?  There is no giant beam of light splitting the dark from the far edges of space and no mothership in sight.  Not that I can see anyway.  My eyes are riveted.  Thus Spake Zarathustra rings across the reaches of my memory, and I look for a femur to throw up in the air with my fellow apes.

Deep sigh.  No leg bones in reach; just my umbrella.  My fingers touch its sensible nylon fabric and escort me back to reality.  I guess I'll get back to slogging, doing ordinary good in the world, go quietly amid the noise and haste, miss my 15 minutes of fame.  My glory will live and die in my own mind.  I'm just me.

The signal light turns green; I shift into first.  My imagination subdues itself gradually. I shift into second gear and accelerate away from the fire-bedeviled scene, the yellow-clad men disappearing in my rearview mirror.  It could be worse; hell could actually be my daily reality and misery my constant companion.  Playing it safe could make it safe for others to emerge from their own infernos, I guess.  But the flame had such a sinister appeal and stirred up a little of evil in my soul.  It would seem that even the most sedate among us have a shadow that lies in obscurity, that howls at the moon and emerges when bidden by fire.  

Luck and Courage

“Anyone can give up, it's the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone else would understand if you fell apart, that's true strength.”

The people in Japan who have survived what appeared, for all intents and purposes, to be hell on earth are exhibiting strength in ways that are never known to us unless we are faced with overwhelmingly bad odds. Courage like theirs began with dumb luck:  They were near a pole or railing when the raging waters swept past or were near a path leading to high ground to which they ran and survived.  After luck left them high and dry, courage and strength emerged.  They will have to hang onto that far longer and harder than they did to the post or rail.  For the Japanese people we're watching on TV, life and death is a whole new game they were thrown into, ready or not.  And the rules are being written on a daily basis.  

I think we'd understand if they all had nervous breakdowns or if they fell apart or sat sobbing and inert for days under all that stress.  This is crushing stress, and the behavior we might be witness to on the daily news may seem inexplicable if you are sitting comfortably within the depths of a cushioned sofa or Barcalounger.  Make no mistake though:  The stress of this disaster and disasters on that scale we have seen at other times is literally forming new neural pathways in the minds and bodies of these survivors so that they will be forever impacted by the experience.   

Nearly all former neural paths that gave rise to movements, thoughts and responses to normal life in their villages and towns prior to the tsunami now need to be replaced - nearly instantaneously - by new ones.  All frames of reference, landmarks, routines are gone.  All of it.  

Think about how much you depend on things being where they are in your familiar home.  Keys?  They're right there.  Gas station?  Four blocks away, thank you, and it's always open from 6 AM to 10 PM.  Food? Four supermarkets within a three-mile radius with every possible luxury stocked for your convenience.  Pretty nifty being safe and sound, eh?  

The survivors are left with a few instincts.  That's it.  Drink water, find food, get warm, find your mother, or find your child.  All frames of reference are shattered and strewn far and wide.  You don't have a toilet   or a bed anymore.  Money? bank? car?  Gone.  Pffft.  

People in those circumstances are only able to behave based on instinct and automatic movements.  The rest is dazed, uncertain and uncoordinated, and it often appears to be nonsensical to observers.  A woman, for instance, was seen taking some items to a recycling bin at a shelter and recycling cans and bottles.  All around her for miles and miles were crumpled heaps of splintered trash and she is going through the motions of recycling.  And it's because she is stunned and shocked by her experience, barely able to function because her mind's neural pathways need to rebuild and renew.  She was nearly in ruins herself, but she was functioning, albeit on a very basic level.  After all, she had survived hell.  

Fate is a cruel hunter in Japan these days.  If there is anything that is obvious, it is courage in a quantity that surpasses the wreckage by a thousandfold.  All that pain and all that sorrow surely affects us all in ways we cannot know.  I only hope that, at the very least, our admiration and respect for their courage affects them in a positive way and gives them further strength as they heal.  

Walking On the Right

Sometimes at dawn the new day calls so entreatingly that to deny the urge to go listen more closely is impossible.  I answered the call and went out for a very early walk.  I took in the day while mulling over recent conversations with friends, the fleeting thoughts of world news, all the while looking at changes in the neighborhood but not really seeing them.

Eventually, I felt a quiet change from walking automatically while still thinking and not noticing much to noticing quite a lot and walking more calmly.  In other words, the walk integrated my whole self eventually:  Body, mind and spirit.  I wouldn't go so far as to say it was walking meditation; I've done that before.  But, I did at least notice the shift from unawareness to integrated awareness and creative observing.

It felt like I woke up all over again.

Much of what I do involves automatic behavior, based on habits and old patterns developed over years.  Sometimes when I'm driving I'll realize I hadn't really been thinking about driving and that the car seemed to have driven itself.  My mind was fixed on some problem or past situation that I was reliving, and whatever I'd passed on the way I'd never even noticed.  It's not a very satisfying feeling, and it can even feel unnerving, being so distracted by worries and mundane details of the day.

That's the way my morning walk started out on this particular day.  But, little things were capturing my attention and holding it briefly, long enough to make my feet slow and my eyes linger and even take a photograph.  At some point, perhaps after 10 or 12 minutes, my looking became more deliberate and the present time finally required all my attention.  It was that mind shift I've written about before - when interest and creativity are more available because the mind shifts its function to a different neural area that allows for creative thinking and functioning.

At that moment, I was present but relaxed, and I could notice things without analyzing them.  I could now see flowers as form and color instead of a five-lobed subspecies of the pea family or something.  One is not better than the other; it's just a shift in brain function that is manifested as "creative, right-brained thinking."

So, my pace slowed a bit, I let my feet and eyes determine my destinations along the way, and I got more into photographing.  Logical thinking in which I had been reviewing work from the night before gradually faded away and I "forgot about it."  Which is to say, my mind let it go and let me imagine possibilities and see objects in new interesting ways.

So, on this walk I left thinking on the left and came back home thinking on the right.  Perhaps that's the call of the wild - at least to me.  Set aside tasks and lists and let the juices flow to see what might become of your imagination.

Tsunami: The Real Event and Its Television Counterpart - Which is Worse?

I walked at the shoreline today and looked at the water out there, deep and blue.  It looked agitated and unsettled.

Or maybe it was me.  I'd been up last night watching television, CNN, to see what the latest news was about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.  All of it showed massive movements of natural forces on a scale seldom seen ever before.  Giant waves swamping whole towns, big buildings being shaken as if each one was in its death throes, swirling gyres of foaming water in a bay, massive quantities of cars, houses and buildings smashing and tumbling on the back of an angry-looking invading tide.

Who knows if the buildings and cars witnessed in the maelstrom contained living people and pets.  It is all grim and horrifying and in some ways fascinating.  People are talking about having no idea about the force of nature, seeing it in real terms for the first time in their lives.  People are asking if this shows an upward trend in significantly destructive natural events, considering Australia's huge flooding storm, New Zealand's destructive earthquake, Chile's massive quake last year and Haiti's devastation.  We have witnessed it all, again and again, as television brings us into the maw of each and every natural disaster on the planet.  Our collective anxiety and unease is rising.  We are eyeing that Mayan calendar that ends in 2012 with widening eyes.  Surely there must be some significance to this, a sign that The End Is Near.

In my opinion, we are victims of our intense need to know everything all at once everywhere, now.  Years ago, news was gathered and dispersed over a longer period of time.  We found out about events over a longer period of time and the media used were still photographs, written eye-witness reports, stories.  Eventually, film became the medium we depended on, but there was a time gap and a psychological filtration of information produced by that lag time that we don't get anymore.  Television cameras took over and real-time broadcasting began to impact us in startling ways.  Censorship, or as they said then, editing for content and the impact the news would have on its viewers, was a prime consideration.

Television grew more widespread and sensationalism rose with its popularization.  Currently, television and cell phone cameras are nearly completely unedited and the push is to obtain dramatic images to show as events are happening, all over the world all the time.  We don't have time to reflect and learn from the events that happen in our communities in meaningful ways; other events distract us away and interfere with the possibility of recovery and development of wisdom.

People wonder why they're anxious.  They wonder why kids are hyperactive and distractible.  Really?

Could it be that we know so much about things that cause harm, that we know about every crime committed in our country every day, that we hear about negative events on a continual basis, that we see massive destructive events as they are happening from 100 different angles, that we have proved that there is no hope beyond 2012?  All that?  You hear it all on the news every day from a few million televisions perched ubiquitously on every wall in every room wherever you go all day long.  Do we really want to live like this?  Why?

I am one person.  I know Japanese people and love them, especially one because she was my exchange student for two months, and I will never forget her.  I so hope she is safe.  The inundation of news, the barrage of statistics and facts about everything in the world is too much.  I have to edit it to what I can cope with.  I think, for the sake of all our sanity, we need to think about the impact of constant news.  It's a tsunami in its own right.

Night Noises

Just when you think you're doing okay, that you're faultless and were meant for the movies, God laughs.  Only, I have come to believe that God's laugh comes disguised as the rumbling, echoing night noises that humans make during sleep.  Yes, the creative power of the universe invented human nasal passages, larynxes and esophagi vulnerable to the vibratory effects of deeply inhaled air while sleeping serenely.  Snoring and other barnyard noise production is a humbling experience that may or may not happen to everyone.  One thing I can tell you is that if you snore, you usually don't hear yourself.  And that is a very good thing.

As a nurse who worked on the night shift for a few years, I checked patients' rooms on rounds.  If I heard regular breathing and the equipment in the room was humming along normally, I was satisfied.  Snoring was good as it indicated normal sleep that was restful for the patient, and I went on my way.  Choking, gurgling, gasping and no sound at all caused a little bit of concern, and I checked further just to be sure.  Apnea was no laughing matter, an extreme condition that had to be remedied and monitored.

Our unit was on an upper floor of two stories with the lower floor's lobby visible from the nursing unit.  The hospital is architecturally unusual and seems more like a hotel in certain areas than it does a hospital.  One night, after I had done my initial assessments and hung IVs, I was back at the nurses' station to chart on each of my patients.  The unit was relatively peaceful and quiet, and each of us was sitting at a computer catching up on doctors' notes and writing our own for the work done so far.  In the distance on the main floor there is a large indoor fish pond with a fountain that provided a peaceful white noise of flowing water that everyone enjoyed, just loud enough to really soothe tired spirits.

I was sitting at my computer and heard a loud rumbling noise I hadn't heard before.  It was stopping and starting at regular intervals, and I attributed it to mechanical things working somewhere out of sight.  I went on with my work and didn't pay much attention.  It continued.  It got louder and took on a more ominous quality somehow.  We began to glance up every once in a while as it was certainly a more unusual kind of a night noise.  The sound was low, rather like a large motorcycle revving in the distance. I supposed it was possible that I was actually hearing a motorcycle outside, but it seemed like that would have been a pretty obnoxious thing to do, rev your Harley at 2 AM at a hospital.

Two of my nurse cohorts and I stood up together at last after we heard the sound crescendo and reach a level we could call a roar, and it seemed to be coming up through the floor and through the walls from a neighboring unit.  We called Engineering and asked what they were doing downstairs that was causing all the noise.  Nothing going on, they said.  We all got up and rounded on our patients and came back to the nurses' station feeling mystified. Our eyes narrowed, heads turned, ears pricked. The sound reverberated everywhere.  It was hard to locate and seemed to be everywhere.

I walked slowly from my station to a point nearer the fountain area and listened.  I leaned over the balcony and listened some more.  Then I found the culprit and couldn't believe what I was hearing.  A large man was sleeping on one of the couches in the lobby below, lying there like a rag doll someone had dropped from above, snoring in a way that, had it been recorded, would have set a record in the Guinness Book of World Records.  He was doing what many people do at hospitals:  Visiting a loved one overnight and taking a nap, totally useless to the world and the person he was there for.  I watched him for a moment and wondered why his teeth didn't shake loose from their sockets and his skull develop cracks for the immense sound he was producing.  I thought to myself, "Wow, I'm so glad I don't snore like that."

Last night, deep asleep, I heard a loud awful noise, an embarrassing noise that only a mythical creature like a dragon could have produced.  It was a deep resounding snort that probably cracked our window and sent small animals running for cover.  It woke me up as well as my husband who yelled, "Oh my God!" He described the sound being akin to a culvert vacuum cleaner.  How romantic, how lovely, and oh how humbling.

A Fourth Dimension: Imagination

As if arising from the echoing darkness of metal gutter pipes, a sudden din of raucous crows resounds along streets and off of fences. A cat creeps, hoping to go unseen.  The birds have spotted her and sound the alarm.  Gulls join the bedlam and shriek in exaltation.  Then all is silence; the panic subsides.

I step into an exhilarating quiet blanketing my still-sleeping town, outside where I feel the breath of cool dawn air.  It is damp out here, but arid of bustle and distraction.  It is a world into which my dreams stretch, transfiguring time and space.

The crows croak to their cohorts to make way for me.  They are tricksters with eyes in both worlds, dark feathers rustling like silk.  My mind lingers in the fourth dimension of altered mind where color and shape become emotion and spirit.  I am a marionette, a spirit doll, jerky and then smooth.  I walk and notice my walking.  It pleases me to stride like this.

I think:  Don't think; feel.  

I am unsullied by weariness or disappointment.  I am an instinctive creature, a prowling cat myself, a tree, a gust of air, not yet mere human.  I am moving quietly, I am loose, light, still softened by sleep.  My eyes see, my spirit feels, my body follows its own rhythms, walking.  I am in a sleeping town that will awaken and then change the way I can move and see, ensnare me in humanness.  I have time in which to breathe and move.   I still inhabit the in-between spaces where dreams prevail and the sternly vigorous demands of the working day are as yet unprovoked.

With sleep so recently upon me, where I walk and how I feel is unguided but seems intentional.  It's as if I can juxtapose awareness on a dream or see things from the inside out, feel them and know them in an altered way that gives me access to their substance, as if I am living sensually in absolute terms.  Nothing but my senses - no recall of nagging requirements or limitations - propels me.  I am free to wander aimlessly, compelled to move by feelings of curiosity alone, and it seems akin to sanctuary.  I play here, in this way, free of talk and interpretive words.

I want to learn anew what I have always looked at and perhaps not seen.  The day wants, I imagine, its many parts to be peeled away and reassembled.  The sky is clear, the sun is naked, and there are intense shadows.  Backlit petals are tiny flames.  Colors have odors, textures have sound, and sounds have flavors.  They blend and blur into an illogical melange.  A flower blushes, a leaf seduces, a tree groans and its roots coil deeper into the darkness of deep earth.

Simplicity of intention allows me to enter and live in that loosely held, time-unbound existence of creative mind/automatic body.  There, I imagine; I create; I think and love and feel and live.  I am alive.  I am more myself in this state of unawareness and altered mind than any other.  I feel renewed, transformed in some undefinable way.  This is what I seek at dawn.  

This in-between condition feels as essential to me as breathing water is for a fish.  Deliberate introversion in the quiet stillness of sensual existence is my air; it is my creative medium.  I cannot be alive without it.

Not a Bad Dream

My car's headlight was out - or so I thought - so I took it over to the mechanic's garage and dropped it off for repairs, bracing myself for the bill by walking down to the ocean, two blocks away.

Places around town are referenced by saying you go up to the store or down to the ocean; everything's on a slope.  You can walk around, goat-like on the horizontal from one place to another, but a lot of the terrain around here is up or down.  Well, that's an aside I guess.  But, if you're on a bicycle you're very aware of the up-ness and down-ness of your route - your legs are telling you things about the terrain you never pay attention to in a car.

So, I was down at the ocean and noticed the titanium blue of the water, the healthy swell coming in and then heard a little squalling voice.  Just like I'd heard before last month at the Monastery Beach shoreline, it was a little sea otter pup yelling for its mother.  Mom was close by and scooted right over to the anxious pup, and they put their heads together and jostled in the waves until Junior was calmed again.

The little sea otter was about 18-24 inches long and the mother was fully mature (a gray muzzle clues you in to maturity in sea otters), probably 36-40 inches long.  In order to get a good photo of a sea otter, you need a pretty long lens and a tripod to keep shake to a minimum.  They're active animals, constantly diving to the bottom to look for shellfish.  They bring up rocks, too, and bash the shellfish open on a rock held on their chest.  It's an effective technique for opening up thick shells.  Then they dig in and devour the soft interior meat.  On quiet days you can hear the clacking sound of shell hitting rock and then their loud crunching as they chomp the seafood.

Cormorants, swimming low in the water, were diving for fish using their wings to propel them down to the bottom in the uprising swell of big waves.  Our ocean is not always clear, but lately it has been and when the swell is less vigorous you can see areas on the bottom that are sandy interspersed with rocks and kelp as well as other intertidal plant life.  Sometimes a big swell stands up and seems to pause before it crests and then collapses against the shoreline rocks.  As it stands there, you can see seals or the diving birds swimming in the blue-green water as if they're in an aquarium.

The Recreation Trail is one of the few horizontal and relatively flat routes for joggers, walkers and cyclists to use easily.  Generally my progress is slow because the shoreline that parallels the trail is so incredibly distracting.  Today, I found myself idly squinting out at a stout fishing boat powering toward the Monterey harbor or one of the sea otters or harbor seals working the shore, but then my mind wandered to all sorts of other things, and I lost track of time and everything else as the rumbling surf lulled the morning's ambition right out of me.

My mechanic called me and said the headlight was fine, none of the lights needed to be replaced.  Well, okay then.  Hmmm, I guess I was dreaming.  The shore walk was refreshing; I would have missed it if the headlight had not fooled me.  Or did I dream the whole thing?  I wish I had dreams like this all the time.

iPhone 4G Shots: Trying It

I don't have much time to write and create a written piece as I had planned, so I'll post a few photos taken with my new iPhone 4G.  I'm getting used to it, remembering I have a few options I didn't have before.

A few tips:  Stay away from contrasty images where there is a lot of intense bright and dark shadowy areas.  Keeping the camera focused on an entirely shaded subject gives somewhat more accurate color.

You probably won't be able to focus in any closer than about 18".  I've tried to get closer, but no matter how still I am the lens itself is the limiting factor.

Hold very still when touching the phone's shutter icon on the center bottom of the screen.  Of course, if you want to blur on purpose, it can create a good blurring of color.  Play with it.

Look all around you.  You never know what's going to grab you and seem like a great shot.

I was out at Asilomar State Beach last night as the sun was setting behind some storm clouds.  Earlier, I found a quiet spot at the shore and noticed a little sea anemone shell with some pebbles.  iPhoto helps balance warm and cool shades and refines focus and then I'm ready to post.