The Roar of the Chickadee

I was just outside in the sun, it being just past lunch, when a breeze ran by from the ocean, jostling the vines on my balcony.  Every plant is flowering and the soil is damp, redolent of pungent living things.  A chickadee is yelling its small head off, shouting its song to the stars buried behind a thick periwinkle sky, and he is unnoticed by many.  And yet, the song of the bird is layered over the nuanced fragrance from young plants and the ocean nearby, and together the message is bold and clear.  Life is everywhere.

What is it that grips my attention exactly?  The angle of the sun is rising every day, flattening shadows as it reaches its zenith, rainstorms have gone away, and the sun's warmth is urging the swell of buds and unfurling of petals.  But, like the shouting chickadee, each single flower goes unnoticed.  The volume of song and the intensity of color as one flower joins its many cousins in a color shout of their own has reached a critical mass of beauty that is now undeniable:  You must notice it.  Otherwise you are surely blind and deaf.  The day is so beautiful that even if it were not seen or heard, it would be felt and that is enough.

Life is on the march.  The urgency of its pace is unique at this time of year, its footsteps a drumbeat made up of infinite small hearts and veins of pulsing sap.  Abundance is akin to possibility; no one and nothing can deter it.  Too many small voices and too many small energetic  living things are responding to the urging of the sun for them to be subdued.  The shouting chickadee whose head is thrown back as he summons his own chirping roar of invincibility is one of a chorus of shouting voices.  The energy of life is now eager and free to rise until it can rise no more.

Life Is

While the light was still rising and the day was still fresh, my garden, modest, small and quiet, simply existed.

Luckily for me, I went and looked at its little glories.  

How fine this bit of life looked today, dressed in lavendar.  An iris:  Exquisite, silent, perfect, asked nothing, not even admiration. If I had not noticed, what then? It bloomed anyway, with or without my attention.  It had gathered in all the loveliness of Spring and offered it as six petals on a stem.

Who says there is no magic in the universe?  

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.

Sit Up and Take Notice, It's Fall

In spite of my best effort to hang onto Summer, I do believe Fall is leaping into action, kicking summer around, dragging it off to the trash heap.  There it goes, thrashing the tree branches around, scaring up the leaves and sending them all in a dither to gutters and windbreaks.

I thought at first that I move more quickly in fall than I do in Summer because it's nippier, but now I think it's because the time between sunup and sundown is shorter.  You have to cram your daylight errands and chores into a shorter time span than you did in June when the summer solstice added all sorts of languid feelings of ineffable contentment to your mindset.  What?  Hurry?  We've got all day long! Come sit here on the swing and have a nice cold one with me.  You and Billy Holliday sing "Summmertiiiiiime, and the livin' is easeeeeeeeeee...." and a golden filtered light looks like amber has coated everything.

But, in Fall, it's looking brisk and edgy out there, more like a Catholic nun whacking her palm with her yard stick.  "Get going, youngster.  None of that lazy nonsense in MY season.  Time to get down to business."  Whack, whack.  She is not looking furious just yet, but the lollygagging is over for the year.

I bought a bag of apples, turned my back once and for all on stone fruit, and I'm eyeing the winter squashes in the store.  It's a start anyway.  Spring is way over on the opposite side of the year, frolicking in Australia about now, or in South Africa, in her pale green sprouts and light fragrant scents made of crocuses and jonquils.

That ol' nun Fall is a stern headmistress, but she knows how to get ready for Winter, so it's time to pay attention and sit up straight.  It's high time.

Cannery Row: Love Conquers All

Spring is in the air today - literally.  A seagull sailed overhead, its voice sounded like a rusty hinge, and its mouth stuffed so full of grass and twigs that it could have been mistaken for a flying shrub.  It landed on a rooftop in the neighborhood and continued its call, then presented the shrubbery to its mate, pleased with its success.  

In the last three days I have seen more spring nesting activity than I ever have before.  Yesterday, as I walked past an abandoned commercial lot filled with weeds, trash and detritus on Cannery Row, I saw a large gull walking around in circles, looking around for sticks and dried leaves.  He appeared to be anxious, rather manic if you ask me, and took aim at a scraggly fennel stalk, eyeing it critically.  I don't know how a seagull eyes anything critically, but this seagull had enough focus and intention to look at this fennel with a very intent stare.  Then, he lunged at it, grabbing a large twig in his bill, assuming he was going to fly away with it.  He was obviously thinking he had to get back to the pregnant missus quickly.  My guess was he had forgotten to bring her some of her favorite fish scraps from the wharf and was about to be sent to the proverbial doghouse unless he made up for it with prime nest-worthy twigs.  I heard her scolding in the distance, at the water's edge beyond the cement foundations and crumbled walls.  

The twig was attached firmly to its stalk and wasn't about to surrender, only to become nesting material.  It was rooted firmly in the cracked cement, clinging dearly to what life it had left to it.  The gull was stopped short, and he was very surprised.  He backed up a step and yanked vigorously, and then again, and again.  No luck.

The gull dropped the twig and looked even more intently at the whole plant.  It was a baleful stare this time, the look of a determined, irritated male unwilling to be made a fool of by a mere itinerant weed occupying cast-off space in an overgrown junk yard.  Heck no.  Mind you, the lot was full of other twiggy plants and clumps of grass.  A thousand seagulls descending on the lot to shop for dried material for their dream nests would have all gone away replete, satisfied, happy with the bargains they would have discovered littering the yard.  He could have easily gathered up huge mouthfuls in other areas.  His stubbornness precluded any other options.  The die was cast.  His whole being said, "You and me, bush, this is it.  You're mine."

The gull stood before the mocking fennel.  He looked like a general contractor regarding inferior material laid before him by a second-rate supplier, disgust all over his face.  He lifted his feathers and settled them down again quickly.  He grabbed the base of the plant and clamped down hard with his strong bill and then yanked backwards again.  The plant began to give in.  It made a little shredding sound.  Sensing his moment, he hauled off and yanked one last time.  Snap!  The twig, and the whole rest of the plant was suddenly uprooted from the cracked cement.

Then the gull dropped the offending plant in front of him, vindicated.  He lifted his beak and yelled about it once or twice, then snagged it back up into his beak and took off, sighing with relief I'm sure.  His mate would be happy once again.  No doghouse for this guy, no way.  

I watched all this from my vantage point on my side of the chain link fence, seeing the perfect metaphor for American family life played out right before my eyes.  More specifically, it seemed this gull was a bird straight from the 50s, a bit paunchy, overbearing, his mate a stay-at-home female who was literally feathering her nest, readying for the two chicks to come.  It was kind of weird, but I had no problem imagining martinis shaken and poured at 5 PM, a La-Z-Boy nearby, and bowling shirts hanging in their closet.

In contrast, a community of cormorants balanced serenely on the high cross-members of cannery ruins as they adjusted the nests at their feet.  They lifted their bills in the air when the breeze intensified briefly, sniffing for delicacies and possibilities in the calm sea below their perches.  They took turns diving into the water and dredging up sea lettuce, which they held lightly in their long hooked beaks as they returned to their nests.  Something about their stances and attitudes spoke to me of their work in the shallows of the oceans, swimming with swift strokes, looking for little fish among the rocks and kelp.  They were elegant and keen to socialize but at the same time kept a perfect distance of a wing's length between themselves and their neighbors on either side.  It would have been an affront to them to stare openly, so I averted my eyes when they were exchanging bits of kelp from beak to beak at the nest.

No one has ever seen such a Spring, full of vigor and green life, birds hard at work readying for parenthood.  First came volumes of rain, over and over, with plants of all kinds responding with lush growth and full larders for animal and bird alike.  Now that mating has been accomplished, the next phase of preparation is in full swing.  From all apparent signs, there is a baby boom to come, and it's really going to be something.  I wonder if that gull has considered a minivan yet.  

Lucky Stars

The Groove is bustling today and full of energy, although it is a bit cool and breezy.  It's just a good excuse to run indoors every so often and count your lucky stars, protected from the chill.  There are a few key sun-bathed walls you can find downtown where there is total shelter from the cold wind.  You can roast for a bit and then dash for the next one as you go out and about on your errands.

Speaking of lucky stars, I have a friend who's a creative house painter and who paints the sky up there on the overhead plaster.  You feel like you're flying when you wake up in the morning.  I'd like stars on the ceiling, lucky stars.

Spring continues to feel brisk and blowy out on the bay, which translates to layers of clothing during the day and bundling up at night.  Not too far inland, folks are feeling more heat during the day.  In summer, which is a barely noticeable change from winter here, fog will come creeping over us.  But, for now, we have sun and a whole host of flowers blooming wildly everywhere.  Even the most neglected gardens look terrific.

Which reminds me,  my garden is calling my name, in need of much attention for the next few months.  Lemon tree, herbs, flowers, vines and ground cover are all growing fast, so fast you can almost hear them.  It's good work, and I love to do it.

Song

Peace reigns in the heavens today, and soft petals are floating down with curling contrails of delicate perfume winding and bending, playing like a dancer's hands.

Standing in solitude on a granite rock lying among the supple grasses on this hill is a singing bird.  He is no bigger than a laugh, no smaller than a smile, as light as air with black diamond eyes.  His song is a cascading ripple of sound played on a silver flute, and the notes fly on the light breeze up past the treetops, lifting through the dissipating storm, over all the hills and then the mountains where stars gather at twilight to relay the notes of his song to shooting stars.  His feet hold him to the rock even as his heart is inclined to lift with the song straight up the winding contrails of perfume.

Soft breezes run across the grasses and strum them in rippling waves of shushing air and then climb up into the emerald and peridot oaks.  Just like they had six hundred years ago, after six hundred other birds sang their spring love songs, budding for the two hundredth time, the oaks waved and bent lightly, motioning with their arms for more music, applauding and wondering when they'd ever heard such loveliness ever, ever before.  And it was always so, these trees, this rock, and this bird and his song.

Mean Kid Winter

Winter is roaming the streets outside, like a mean kid looking for a dog to kick, pissed he's not still in Alaska and wants back, now dammit!  Cranky kid with short sleep and a bad sense of humor.  I think I heard April whining in the dark last night before Winter returned.  

I'm cold.  Trying to speak with a cold lethargic mouth produces linguistic novelty, so I play around with it.  I answer the phone:  "Huhwoh.  Yef, I amb.  Thoh, than wu."  The jaw is moving, but lips are not.  Is this what Botox feels like?

I'm looking at my hands, clay imposters of what used to be agile and nimble.  I wonder:  If all the blood in my hands and feet has left and gone, where did it go?  Probably Mexico, maybe Hawaii.

Some of my furniture is made of wood.  Surely something will burn well.  A bonfire in my livingroom seems totally reasonable.  Hey, a nouveau form of spring cleaning!  If summer warmth ever does come around again, I'll have plenty of new space to decorate.  Logic, pure and simple.

Meat locker is not the way you like to describe your own home, but this place was built in the architecturally dismal era of the early 60s when stucco, single-pane aluminum windows and no insulation at all were good ideas, I guess.  One inefficient wall heater, designed and built in some god-forsaken gulag on the Russian steppes out of left-over scrap metal, is all I have to ward off the chill.  I wonder if I should keep a window open, though, in case the thing is giving off toxic fumes.

The air temp is 52 degrees today, but the wind-chill factor, with a furious gusting and snorting wind coming straight down from the tundra, is -47.  I swear.  Well, in my mind I swear, because my lips are frozen into one numb incoherent blob now, and I can't speak anymore.

I have one saving grace:  My laptop sitting on my knees is keeping me warm - another reason to keep writing.

A Riot of Color

The sun is cooling her heels just now,  set on getting to Hong Kong soon.  I'm on the couch, halfway between vertical and horizontal, debating the merits of staying alert vs draping my carcass over a few pillows and watching TV the rest of the night.  I had a brief idea about getting up and over to Asilomar to wave good-bye to the sun, but, no I'm not going to.  I'll send an email and wish her well.

I saw some surreal color down in my neighbor's yards on my way home today and stopped for a few shots of magenta and gold.  Gorgeous.  Spring is a riot of color, assaulting my eyes at every turn, and I love it.  Mostly, there is a heavy green fullness to the oaks on every hill this year, after the many showers that have soaked way down to the deepest roots of the trees.

It makes it very hard to think of going to work and sitting indoors for eight hours.  Shouldn't I be out in the world instead of locked inside?  Is that what's best for us all?  I think I am always a better version of myself if I can fill my lungs with fresh air and walk for miles out in the world, not cooped inside.  It's a conflict that no one of us has solved for good in any of our modern lives.

Fools? Not Just in April

Even though I try, I don't know what motivates people to do things I'd never do in a million years.  There are at least 3 billion people swarming the globe now - most likely, the number is much bigger - and a lot of them are doing things this very instant that I find unbelievably odd.

I had lunch with friends a couple of days ago.  Ubiquitously, silent HDTVs were showing scenes of extreme skiers helicoptering to the highest, most vertical peaks of craggy mountains and then shooshing down at breakneck speeds.  To add a dash of extra sizzle to the experience, they were doing cartwheels and flips - on purpose - off of cliffs, over treetops and down avalanche chutes.  Surfers were launching themselves down the faces of enormous black-water waves that rose up out of the ocean like sea monsters.  Just to pique their fancy a bit, the surfers would zigzag up and down the faces of the waves.

Skiing is not odd, nor is surfing.  But, skiing down a 60-degree slope on two very slippery planks of breakable material attached to molded bowling balls on your feet is so far beyond the bounds of ordinary in my life that I can hardly cope with it.  It's daring and exciting to a life-threatening degree, but not odd.

Odd behavior, though, goes more to just plain goofiness.  Like Guinness Book of World Record kind of stuff.  That guy who held his breath underwater for 17 minutes on the Oprah show was odd.  The guy who built a platform on top of the highest building in our town, above the flagpole, and skated around in tiny circles for as long as possible definitely was odd.  He was up there for three days, is what I've read.

Gettin' the girl is usually the motivating force for most of male behavior, but it doesn't explain everything.  What girl would be attracted to the guy who swallowed 75 goldfish?  Or the guy who decided to fly away in a lawn chair with balloons attached to it as his mode of transportation.  No plan, all action.  

The man gets a wild hair, a nutty urge, an irresistible impulse and launches himself out of a cannon or sits in a chair with dynamite underneath it to see what it feels like.  Who knows....I guess an April Fool is born every minute because there never seems to be end to silliness.  Spring is in the air every day for them.  Trouble is, they interpret "spring" literally and leap into situations that they may or may not survive, and all we can do is shake our heads and wonder.  Happy April 1 to every fool out there.  You make me laugh, and I definitely appreciate that, though I'd never return the favor in the same way, thank you.

Out with Winter, that old goat.

In the middle of winter I never believe days like today to be possible. It's true I have never lived in the midwest or north or anyplace that will kill you with its cold. Transplants here from, say, upstate New York feel very lost not having blazing hillsides of autumn color, shrieking blizzards and yard-long icicles hanging from their eaves in winter. I'm attuned to the slightly more subtle changes of season that happen in most of California. As fall eases into winter, I notice the angle of the sun is lower on the horizon, there's a bit more chill earlier in the day, more dampness in the shade. Leaves drift away. Fog patterns change during the day.

In spring, the shift away from winter is as quiet. You might think you'd seen the blossoms on fruit trees earlier in the month but cannot actually recall when that might have been. Though living on the coast moderates the wild swings of temperature you'd see inland to a sometimes boring sameness through all the seasons, you learn to look very closely to notice tiny signs of change.

Today is spectacular. I'm sure anyone coming to town this weekend would be rendered giddy and lovestruck by the intense colors of, well, everything. Sky, trees, weeds, ocean, houses, even trash I guess. "Have you ever seen anything like that?" Go down and look at the Magic Carpet succulent ground cover along Ocean View Boulevard. It's a vivid Pepto Bismol pink done in zillions of tiny flowers.

The year is still building toward the apex of summer. When I kept bees years ago, peak honey flow would begin now, the hives rocking and rolling like little aircraft carriers with bees zooming in and out around the clock. Workers carried home gobs of nectar in their bellies, vomited it out as honey and jetted back out for another run to trees and bushes. Did you know that honey is bee barf? Maybe gross, but very true. There is really no better fragrance in nature than a bee hive opened after the keeper's smoke has layered over the waxen honeycomb. The bees sense smoke, rush around thinking there is trouble, gorge on honey and then can't bend in the middle to sting. They all turn into little couch potatoes looking for the ottoman and a beer. "Good grief, I shouldn't have eaten so much, but wasn't that honey GREAT?" Little bee slobs, drunkenly wobbling around in a daze.

I went out into my back patio a while ago and was just floored by the array of finery everywhere. I had the good sense to apply top dressing to all my containers earlier this year, pruned the snarf out of my roses and bushes and just hoped God would be kind enough to send along some rain. She did and I am so grateful I cannot say. I won't list my flowers' names because I don't actually know them all, but mostly there is purple, lavendar and white. Every blossom is a miracle - just look up close and there you'll see many of them. It's like when you see a baby sleeping, all perfect, warm, growing right before your eyes. How could anyone possibly, even remotely, believe that man can improve on nature? "After the artist, only the copyist."

My Meyer lemon is looking more promising than ever. Meyer lemons are to ordinary lemons as Belgian chocolate is to Whitman's. Can't compare. Don't even try. So, I go out to my patio and caress the leaves gently, admire the small green lemons-to-be and talk quietly, praising the effort of the tree. Once in a while, not daily. I'm not THAT bad yet. You can be a little silly in spring. It begs for it. A mom calls her kids, "Come and eat!" and nature on spring mornings calls, "Come and look! I've tossed winter out, that old goat!"

So, today it's obvious winter is gone and spring is in full cry. My faith is renewed and my optimism refreshed.