If: As Chance Would Have It

A meteor crashed and crackled through the atmosphere a couple of days ago. A friend saw the flames and was stunned. He said the fireball seemed to have landed right here in Pacific Grove, and I missed the whole thing, of course. So, I began wondering how many near misses have happened to me, or almost to me. The innocent walk down the street blithely unaware of how close they are to disaster. I get a funny feeling I have had far more close calls than I'll ever know.

Comedians make whole slapstick routines hilarious based on near misses. Remember Tim Allen or the Marx Brothers? They appeared perfectly clueless as whole rooms collapsed around them.

On the other hand, there are really close calls that the whole world watches as they unfold. Michael Phelps's famous 100 Fly finish at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 is one of those. A hundredth of a second - the length of a fingernail - brought him fame and glory, while Cavic was defeated (defeat seems like such an overstatement in a really close race). Dara Torres lost her 50 freestyle by a hundredth of a second at the same Games. Whether it was luck or a true win is hard to figure. If Dara had done just one little thing differently as she swam like mad for 50 meters - and I mean just one thing, she would have won. If - the word sums up the idea of fate or chance in such a nutshell.

Don't you just wonder sometimes how you missed seeing a 20-dollar bill on the floor when someone else spotted it? Or miss the lottery grand prize by just one number? So close! The fun of it's in the retelling and sharing the agony of that realization with friends. Everyone has a few stories about how close they came to some disaster or glory.

That little word: If.

If only the bat had swung a little lower, the batter would have hit the bases-loaded home run. Instead, he whiffs and gets the final out. Tragedy! If only...There are so many ways that possibility can play out - and has been used as a story-telling device in movies and books. If only Cary Grant had realized that Deborah Kerr loved him, had been injured and tried so hard to get back to the Empire State Building in An Affair to Remember, everything could have been so much better for them both.

The thing is that possibility, when viewed as a spur for more focused effort in the future, provides such food for thought and speculation. You see it the other way though, and sit there fearfully avoiding what might happen? The world becomes a bleak and ugly place. I missed the meteor show, but then again, it missed me, my town and roared harmlessly into the ocean (I assume). Whew! And I never even saw it coming - or going.

Pausing For A Moment

It's Fall. We had Winter all Summer and now have Summer in Autumn. Today was one of the most beautiful days of the year, equal to any wonderful summer day of gilded childhood memory, but it's October. Shouldn't it be cool and crisp?

I can hear the ocean waves pounding all around the edges of Pacific Grove, a low rumbling continuous heart beat, a steady hum of energy.  I stop to think for a moment and realize that the waves have been rushing and foaming exactly that way since forever.  Nothing has changed about that. Except that the ocean is continually changing the shore, grain by grain of sand. So, in constancy there is change. It has been a light-on-the-heart day. I loved it.

This is my 555th post, kind of a cool number. It's hard to believe I've written that much. I guess when I reach 1,000 I'll have a party. Thank you for taking time to read my stuff.

Greek Food and Irish Movie in Monterey

Flocks of tourists have landed on the Monterey Peninsula for the Labor Day holiday, two of the flock our special friends.  When anticipating visitors for the weekend we scouted around for things to do ahead of their arrival. This weekend, it's the Greek Festival and the Monterey County Fair.  Those will be drawing the highest density crowds. The Monterey Aquarium is a steady draw, especially now that a young Great White shark has just been added to the big Deep Sea tank, which holds a million gallons. In truth, the entire region is of interest to visitors. The Aquarium's steady efforts to educate the public about the Marine Sanctuary have resulted in many improvements in educational plaques and signs along the shoreline and coast. With the curving roads and trails so easy to access on foot and by bike, most tourists are out in the fresh air from the time they get out in the morning until well past dark, even though it is quite a bit cooler here than most of the country. Almost everyone sees harbor seals, otters, birdlife and even whales pretty easily on any given day.

This afternoon, we and our friends walked down to the Recreation Trail, a converted railroad track that's absolutely flat and scenic along every inch of its length, and walked the mile and change to the Custom House Plaza where the Greek Festival was in full swing. Slowly circling dancers with arms on each other's shoulders sidestepped and cross-stepped to the live music playing. We ate lamb kabobs and gyros and watched everyone become Greek, one tune and one bite at a time.  One man said, "You look good sitting next to me!" to his neighbor. The crowd was friendly and relaxed, easy to feel comfortable in. The lamb was tender, the music lively and the breeze adrift with aromas and sounds. It was like being in a big Greek travel brochure, with booths of art and jewelry lining the plaza, photographs of Santorini and the azure Adriatic sea beautiful and exotic.  

We walked over to the Osio Cinema to watch a movie. It's Monterey's independent theater on Alvarado Street that competes head to head with a multiplex at the shopping center two miles away. We saw The Guard, a darkly humorous movie set in Western Ireland. I'd recommend it with a caution that you 1, pay attention to the dialogue because the Irish accents are thick and 2, realize there is intensity and violence in it as well as a heavy dose of profanity. So what else is new, though, with most movies just as peppered with vulgarity. Yet, it was good and the hero unusual. Definitely memorable.

After the movie, we were on foot again and this time ramblin' over to Henry's Barbecue on Lighthouse Avenue in New Monterey. Henry serves up a nice blend of Hawaiian-style BBQ and traditional dishes. "The tri-tip is the bomb," said the waitress after she took our order. Clam chowder hit the spot for two of us and the tri-tip really was tasty, as were the barbecued beans. I had to take half my dinner home, the portions were so big.

It was another mile or so home again, so off we went, peeking into restaurant windows along Lighthouse Avenue. Crystal Fish (sushi) and Hula's ("Island-style grill") were rockin', as usual. As soon as we hit the border and began our walk along streets in Pacific Grove, though, it became much quieter.  This has been the traditional cultural contrast in the two cities' atmosphere since the early days. Pacific Grove was a dry town (no liquor sold within its boundaries) up until the mid 60s, I believe, and it is still a much grayer and more sedate place than Monterey has ever been.

Tomorrow:  Big Sur.

Swimming Long Course This Summer

So, as my luck would have it, Coach Mark got up his dander and arranged for a "swim clinic" four days a week, held at the Hartnell College's 50 meter pool. The clinic runs for six weeks. At 6 AM, I gather up my swim stuff, then out to the car for the half-hour drive to the pool. It's summer in Monterey, and on the coast that means the day's temperatures vary between 52 and 70 degrees, more often on the lower end of that range.  It's cold out and fog has settled in like a mean old aunt on a big ugly sofa.  

This is the first opportunity I've had to work out in a long-course pool. It takes a little getting used to.  Like most sports, if you are familiar with a tennis court or a running course, you have mentally set up measuring points to gauge your speed or strength or accuracy.  In swimming, the pool is gauged by numbers of strokes per lap.  A freestyle 25-yard lap for a practiced swimmer is about 8 or 9 strokes; it depends on how much you use your kick and how long your stroke is. If you swim 25-yard pools, you subconsciously time your effort to last for 25, or 50 or 100 yards.  Not 50 or 100 or 200 meters.  

Now I'm adapting to a much longer course.  The coach is talking about the "speed trap" in the pool and I am thinking in American 25 yards when he's thinking in Continental 50 meters.  The first lap on the first day, I am automatically thinking I am nearing the other end of the pool and look ahead through the water and see nothing but blue and the stripe on the bottom. I'm not even halfway yet.  I wonder where halfway actually is.  How do I tell?  No idea.  So, I just swim. Much later, I reach the other end.  It feels like I've swum the length of a small lake.  I'm hearing the coach yell out helpful hints like, "Engage your legs! Forget about breathing! Rhythm! It's all rhythm!"  I try not to breathe and instantly hate life.  I like breathing pretty much; it helps me feel good about myself, and I maintain consciousness better that way, but I also try to embrace the concept of a long streamlined body position and fluidity of motion as I move.  I'm immensely glad I am not being filmed and forced to watch embarrassing videos of myself thrashing and sputtering, out of control.  I try to channel the ease and grace of wonderful Olympians like Amanda Beard or Liesel Jones.  If nothing else, the mental distraction of trying gets me to the other end of the pool.

A 50 meter pool holds a little under a million gallons, depending on the average depth of the pool its full length. I am three weeks into this "clinic" now and still trying to gauge my effort the length of the pool, remember how many strokes per lap I am trying for and goal times for distances and strokes. Swimmers have a lot to think about.  It'd be a big mistake to believe a swimmer just swims.  To keep all the various moving parts of one's body synchronized and coordinated while breathing air, not water, and to recall the shouted instructions of the coach as you are doing so feels like herding cats.  Some cats get away from me, nearly every lap.

I have an ever-increasing respect - awe really - for elite swimmers who quite literally swim twice as fast as I do. Every lap I complete, plowing and struggling along, impresses this upon me.  The youngsters who swim at the same time in distant lanes from mine zoom back and forth, back and forth for two hours, so I just think to myself, "Ignore them, they're 40 years younger than you are." I realized after talking to a couple of other masters swimmers in the pool with me that I am the grande dame of the group.  I hope to kick their booties once or twice before the clinic ends in three weeks' time.  It's not a plan; it's a hope, and hope is good.  I perversely enjoy the fact that they are suffering as much as I am, even though they are going a bit faster.

After my swim is over and I've showered, I drive back through the wide reaches of the Salinas Valley with its rich agricultural fields, farm machinery, farm workers bent to their tasks in long lines, doing hard labor in the long rows of lettuce. I go back to the coast and my rocky shore-bound town. I'm enjoying my own hard work in the pool.  I do wonder why I am not content to just sit poolside and sip a cool drink.  Well, one answer is that there are just very few hot days when a cool drink would be needed.  Coffee is what's needed with so much fog now.  No, moving fast in a big pool just feels good when I can get everything coordinated and going in the same direction at the same time.

Adjusting to Summer Cold

It's really summer now.  Wherever you are, the weather is wrapping itself around you in its own special way. Here, where the  western edge of the Northern Hemisphere is also called California, nothing unusual is going on. No tornadoes, no blazing fires borne on high-speed winds, and no humidity. The nothingness of our summer has settled in.  Come here. Take a break from all that extreme stuff and cool off for a while. We love visitors, especially ones with red sweaty faces and puffy ankles who live in inland areas where it's so darned hot.  I think I remember heat.  And sunshine.  Round bright thing in the sky, right?

I try to explain why we get this gray fog all summer on the coast. Sometimes I make some sense as I try to explain low pressure and high pressure, cold ocean and inland heat. There's no denying that we wear sweaters in the summer and that only ten miles away (6 k for my readers outside the US), the heat is much more noticeable and the summer much more, um, summery.  I have to go there for a summer-weather fix because it sure doesn't come here.

When I was a small child growing up in Carmel Valley - 12 miles inland from Carmel - I was content to remain right where I was. When I looked west in the afternoons, I could see a hideous gray wall of engulfing fog, a misery that made no sense to go near. I spent my summers shoeless and in the pool, chlorinated and tan. The fog bank caused, and of course still causes, an afternoon wind to pick up in inland valleys, but we were protected from it by a weather ceiling that lifted about 6 miles from Carmel in the area called Farm Center (a local's name for a small shopping center).

"Do you kids want to go with me to Carmel today?" my mother would ask entreatingly.

"NO!!!!" would come the instant yell from five throats.  No way, too awful, cold and gray.  I'd always end up shivering and having to wear two layers of clothes at the beach.  Beaches were for idiots as far as I knew, idiots who liked sand fleas, kelp and 50 degree water. I did not buy into the idea that girls wore bikinis to beaches anywhere. It was a lie.

So, here I am living in a place like Carmel, but not as precious as it is or self-indulgent, and I am wrapped in a cold gray expanse of featureless weather all summer long.  Sometimes I can't wait for the summer to pass; it's never short enough now.

So the real question is:  Why do I live here if the summers are so miserable?  I'm making a list of pros and cons, and the cons are starting to make more sense - at least in the summer.  The rest of the year?  That's a different story.

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.

Posting Less, Writing Better

Over the past year, I've written every day, posted something most of those days and looked at what it means to me.  Essentially, writing every day is a discipline and a goal that I've reached as of the beginning of the year.

Now, looking back on the year or more of daily discipline, I've noticed a few important things.  One of them is that there are some major steps to producing a publishable work.  Obviously, the prime step of sitting down and writing out an idea comes first.  Then comes the next step or steps you must take to refine work, edit and hone ideas.  That's something that has not been given enough attention in the past, and it's showing up as an annoying problem, in my mind anyway.

Some ideas or subjects are pretty quick to develop, and I'm satisfied with what ends up on the "page" here. Others I would have liked to have taken a lot more time with, and of course I still can go back and rework them.  This leads me to the next step now, which is that for the most part, I will be posting less often and developing ideas and themes to a fuller extent so that they seem more complete to me.  I want to take more time to delve into that creative space and see what can come of it.  After that, I will submit finished work for publication and see what happens.

Most, if not all, creative thinking requires a warm-up period when the mind is set to work on a task and needs to be let loose and wriggle around a bit before really hitting its stride and feeling good.  Athletes and other folks call it "the flow."  You know it when you feel it.  After some warm-up time, you feel less hesitant and more energized.  At the same time, you're less aware of the immediate surroundings and distractions that may pop up.

It's that feeling of flow that I have had not found enough time to reach.  By imposing the daily post goal, I've often rushed to use time and get something posted, whether I really was fully satisfied or not.  On the other hand, it does take me less time to write out what I want to than it used to.  The daily discipline has been excellent in that regard.

So, I will write daily but only post every other day or so.  If I hit a stretch of time when I can write for a longer period of time during the day, I may post something here more frequently, but the goal will now be for quality instead of quantity.  I hope that makes sense.

Thanks for reading, subscribing and passing my posts forward to friends.  I know quite a few people are subscribing and checking in regularly, which is cool.  I appreciate you having you as a reader, wherever you are.  Anytime you want to respond, you can do so by posting a comment or emailing me at bottaroc@gmail.com  .

Curiosity: Small Feats of Courage

At the merge zone between wet and dry that we call Asilomar Beach, courage and curiosity did a quiet duet.  The dancers -- a dog, a girl and a dancing woman -- were and curious fearful explorers where the ocean breeze and bright sun played off one another in counterpoint.  Shorebirds looking for tidbits in the sand seemed indifferent but kept their eyes on the dance, a tiny audience that moved about on stilt-like legs at the periphery.

Creatures and people walked or trotted along the shallow water's edge, but in the heart of one small black dog courage and curiosity took hold in equal measure.  He was a runner, a dog whose body built speed quickly and stretched out with long beautiful strides as he went after his bright orange ball.  The ball, thrown by his master far down the beach, barely kept ahead of the dog who stretched his body out straight with the effort of each stride.  Then, with the ball caught, he would slow, taking a dozen more strides to reach full stop, and then galloped back with the ball in his jaws.  He was a canine athlete, exceptional in his running ability, and we stopped to watch.

The master had a throwing tool popular at the beach, and the dog was eager to go.  The throw was long again and the dog launched himself into a reckless run, bound to catch the devil ball as soon as he possibly could.  But this time the ball arched out over and then into the ocean water's heaving swells, and it became immediately apparent that the dog was not a swimmer.  He had no idea that the water would only go up to his chest and no further. His perspective only allowed for the fact that there was no firm ground on which to stand where the ball was and that he saw it plain as day, bobbing in the surf.

He trotted to and fro, glancing at his master and then eyeing the ball intently.  It may as well have been on the moon.  Where before he had had the heart to run to tomorrow and back to retrieve his ball, he was undone by the fear of water.  He trotted in up to his elbows and retreated, anxious to get to the ball but held as if by a leash.  The master and his friends walked up and encouraged the black dog to go out, go on, you can do it, but it did no good.  His eyes were locked on the ball, but fear had a firm lock on him.

We looked in the opposite direction to the north end of the beach.  A strong young man walked out into the wide shallows where rippling remnants of waves lapped at his ankles and calves.  He carried his little girl whose hair lifted on the luffing breeze, and her arms were loosely hung around his shoulder.  When you are two and carried up high, the world takes on a very different dimension.  She was carried by her striding father far out into an endless ocean, where she lost reference points and did not understand the new liquid dimension before her.

He bent over and showed her the rippling surface and the shallow sandy bottom, held her out like a little airplane and let her examine the water for a long time.  He let her down low to dip her toes in.  She was having none of it, no sir.  She curled up like a pillbug and refused to touch the wet coldness.  She was interested, curious to know about the ocean, but she always curled up her legs and avoided the final knowledge through touch.  It was far too big and uncertain for her to cope with, not at all like her bath at home.

A dome-like sandbar had formed offshore, a hundred yards long and a hundred yards out beyond a lagoon-like area of rippling tidal movement.  A young woman waded steadfastly out to the sandbar and stood there looking for all the world like Christ walking on water.  The sandbar was partially submerged, just deep enough to have wavelets wash across its surface but only ankle high on the young woman.  She trotted back and forth out there, thrilled apparently with the unusual sand formation and the vantage point that it afforded.  She danced and twirled and stooped to look for things.

The small girl watched her from her own perch in her father's strong arms and looked down at the water.  She pointed to it and he swooped her down again, an airplane girl with wide wings.  She reached for the water and touched it with her fingertips and then was swooped up again, smiling.  A sailboat rounded the point to the north and bent to leeward as it sailed south.  The man with his daughter held snugly watched it with shaded eyes.  The white sail was full and taut and cut a fine figure as it moved across their view.

The black dog waited until the tide brought the devilish ball closer in.  Then he timed its rise on a small swell with a quick lean farther out over the water and snapped it up in his mouth and turned to hear the applause from his people who were still gathered behind him on the firm sand.  The shorebirds skittered away and continued their hunt while the ocean moved making burbling sounds everywhere.

Winter Gardening With A Friend

When I was a neophyte gardener a few years ago, I was timid about pruning back older plants.  I thought they'd die of shock if I trimmed them.  Not so.  One friend has been a great sounding board for my gardening questions through the years and she has given me dozens of cuttings and starter plants.  She gave me my gardening gloves and showed me the how-to about nearly everything in my garden.  It's quite a thing to have a mentor, whether they see themselves as one or not.  In this case, we see each other as friends and agree that digging in the dirt to make things grow is a huge pleasure.  She's just been doing it a whole lot longer than I have.  

Thanks to her, I am bolder and more at home in the garden - just like I imagined I would be.  But I needed her guidance, and she has been giving it steadily through the past dozen or more years.

My friend grew up in a family of siblings who all admire a fine garden and who are all resourceful and don't mind rolling up sleeves, donning gloves and getting to work if it's needed.  They cook what they grow and spend time with each other talking and working.  And laughing.  I just listen, lucky me, and join in the work, which never seems like work at all.  

So, two days ago when I had a day off, my friend and I went out into my yard, took a look around and then drove over to Cypress Garden Nursery in Monterey to see what we might see.  One mustn't hurry through a garden center on a fine day with a good friend at one's side.  This is early in the year to be looking for six packs of color spots for a spring garden, but what we did see satisfied us, and I made a few purchases.  Euphorbia was one choice, and I've put it in a fine old terra cotta pot an uncle gave me a few years ago and it has a sunny spot where it will look handsome.

Once I said good-bye to my friend that day, I set to work pruning the abutilon monster that had taken over one whole area.  That bugger just needs a dose of rain and then grows like wild, and it's always blooming. I finally pruned the roses and everything got fertilized and watered.  It felt good to do the work, all preparatory tasks and chores that will ensure a bounty of blossoms later on.

Gardening is satisfying, so much so that a sense of generosity somehow arises as the tasks are undertaken and your hands have been busy with roots, stems, tools and soil.  The earth and plants will do what they do, but to be able to facilitate the life within them to become optimal so that they flourish and thrive can be the most nourishing and calming things a person can ever do.  

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...

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..."

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.  

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.

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.

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.

Big Black Wet

This morning glowered with heavy clouds that looked more beast than atmosphere.  It had rained all night, and I kept the window cracked to hear the dripping and pattering wet out there, a pretty sound that belied the rumbling, shifting masses overhead. Sometimes clouds like those seem to be more like movie set props that need to be shoved around and into position by harried stage hands than like they do actual clouds.  All that the whole sky needed was a director with a megaphone, "Let's pull that monster over Monterey and darken everything.  Heavy on the rain now.  Action!"  

In Pacific Grove, I was right underneath them and didn't really get the full measure of their heft until I drove north around the bay to its far eastern edge near Sand City.  Once I got out of the car and looked south, the dramatic layered aspect of the clouds arrayed all along the southern horizon was impossible to ignore.

The cumulus crowded around the hills and stood up on their hind legs pawing at the air, spoiling for a fight.  Some had white edges and a puffy quality for a few moments that was positively pretty.  Not for long though.  Constantly changing and tumbling, the cloud density increased and then lowered, impenetrably opaque, and soon rain was falling in the distance.

When clouds are heavy and stern, commanding attention from stage center as they were today, they act like an iron lid that has clanged down and darkened the water.  The color palette is a study in steel gray, silver, and iron black.  Rain hangs down like curtains, billowing and slanting across the hills and tree tops.

With that much dark water booming at the shore, it's simple to imagine a tsunami looming on the horizon and having to run for your life.  Or to imagine large sea monsters rising up and making awful noises while they lick their chops.  Winter cold and uncompromising forces of water and wind were taking no prisoners, from the look of it all.

There was no broad daylight as I looked around even then, at high noon.  Big surly rounds of churning moisture could have just sat down on the ground and squashed everything.

More rain to come in this sodden winter, and certainly a few days of storm surf and billowing clouds too beautiful to ignore.

Writing Resolution

I read about different writers who are considered a success, significant in some way, creative and ingenious.  I was told I might be able to write and make some sense now and again, but the trouble was a lack of belief and resolve to jump into the fray and begin.  I have a bookshelf next to my bed piled up with books that I see when I open my eyes every morning first thing.  There are a lot of books.  The stack is high.

I think to myself, "A writer sat at a table for a lot of hours, a very large number of hours, to make that book and that book and that one.  What are you going to do?"

I got the brilliant idea to start a blog nearly two years ago and kind of liked the idea.  Then, I was A Blogger.  I only impressed myself, believe me.  If you look, you'll see I didn't write every day in 2009.  I kind of toyed with the idea.  I noticed that writers were saying that they write every day. I felt dismayed because I wasn't doing that, but I liked the idea of calling myself a writer.  But, when I said it, I knew I was lying.  I felt intense admiration for writers who had successfully published good books, but it was obvious that what they were doing and what I was doing were two very different things.  They practiced writing.  It was their discipline, just like any other physical or mental discipline.

A year ago, come New Year's Eve two days from now, I finally decided it was high time to walk my talk and get down to business.  Time to take on the practice of writing.  So I made a resolution.  The promise was:  Write every day of the year, no excuses.

So I did.

Oh, my poor husband.  He supported and encouraged my journey, but I don't think he knew he was helping create a monster.

The more I wrote, the more I realized I had no idea what was required to know.  Big gaping holes in my knowledge of writing - the craft - yawned before me.  Terms I'd never heard of were bandied about by writers, left and right.  I think I fell in and nearly drowned with embarrassment. What was a trope, a precis, a koan?  Would it be possible to write anonymously?  With a bag figuratively placed over my head to maintain my invisibility? I barely grasped point of view or plot structure. What the heck is passive and active voice?  Writers had agents, editors, publishers, and web pages.  They went on book tours, spoke to groups, and they wrote.  A lot.

In late winter or early spring, I noticed that Belle Yang mentioned Red Room on Facebook, so I checked it out and asked to join.  Bless their hearts, they let me, and I felt both like a poseur and a very thrilled neophyte.  On Red Room, writers generously discussed their ideas, writing practice and successes; they shared wisdom and misgivings.  One author, Jessica Barksdale Inclan, posted the name of a writing workshop in Northern California's Lost Coast area. It was a big step, and I hesitated to go, but I finally signed on and spent the best week of the summer in the company of other writers.  It was another huge  step for me.

Frustration accompanied my excitement and amazement.  I work full time in nursing and find myself being jealous of my time, unwilling to squander it on other hobbies and work when I could be writing.  Of course, if I write all the time, I have nothing to write about, so I have to not write, too.  I have to live in order to write.  But, I find I am writing in order to feel enlivened.

I took a short-story writing class this past Fall and learned some more.  Gradually, I'm weeding through my ideas, just like a gardener thrashing through a weed patch, preparing it for spring planting.

Something will come of all this writing, something more than daily postings on my blog.  Possibility is the one thing I have come to believe in.  That and balance.

My husband has taught me a lot about surrender, giving up the resistance to change, understanding that I am not in charge here.  I have just set the ball rolling with writing, but I am very certain that I do not really call the shots; I am just holding the stick while something else guides it to hit the cue ball, (to extend a metaphor).

My resolution of writing daily, making it a habit, is one of the few promises I have ever kept through the course of a year.  In my whole meandering life, this blog is the result of a successful New Year resolution.  It is humbling and exciting and mysterious, but that's pretty much what creativity always is.  Just like a garden, I am sowing seeds.  I just don't know yet what the harvest will be.

Thank you very much for reading.