In the middle of the night I am up with my computer on my lap. I can't sleep. I haven't written here for months now, but I've considered sitting down with this quite a few times. Disciplined writers work at it day after day and get through blocks with persistence and fortitude. I suppose I am not such a writer. I have been painting instead and changing - not just the color of the rooms of my home - but myself. Change is constant, as you know, but sometimes the eventfulness of the change is pretty consuming, and that's what I have noticed since I wrote last. Continual change. The way I see people, what matters to me, how people affect me. More important than me - my opinion, my self-orientation - is the way the world works out problems, how equilibrium plays out in real time. You know, the dynamic steady state. A little of this and a little of that - balancing each other out, playing off each other. Chinese call it the yin and yang of existence. I think about that. A lot. I see it everywhere.
On the other hand, we have blogging. I guess that what I want to do, and what blogging is, are two different things. Blogging is: "I went to the store today and saw the new shop that has just opened up. I went in and bought a cute little doodad and wow was that cool." Or it could be: "I am a specialist in the field of political punditry and my opinion is very important. You should pay attention to all I have to say each and every day."
Realizing that it is 2:57 AM, I am not unblogging. Instead, I am certainly uncertain about which direction to go with writing. I write because I think. Better than that would be: I think because I write, which is true. But, if logic applies: If I don't write, I don't think. I'm lost and I don't think it matters right now. I'll straighten it all out later.
It's nearly Christmas 2009, the nighttime world is asleep.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Springing into Fall
The sky is singing blue happy. I was out there for a while and could not possibly take in enough of it, all of the autumn crunch in the grass laughing. It is this change after a long low howling summer that makes me sit up and blink. Yes, it's good. Yes, it is the 180-degree turn back toward spring in the distance, boomeranging us soon enough through winter.
The summer was a dog all right, lying there all twitchy and dreaming, not moving much except in my imagination.
How else can you tell you're alive if you don't notice the air outside or the dirt under your feet when you walk? Stand on a hill away from town (if you have a hill somewhere to go to) and yell as loudly as you can. Take a deep breath and just HEY! really hard and listen. Not only does your heart beat harder but you hear evidence of life: A shout in return.
Birds do it in the morning: It's very quiet in the predawn gray light (if you're lucky). Then, randomly, a little bird ventures a chirp, a cheep, a twitter, tentatively. A pause. Another in some other tree or bush responds. He senses it was another, not himself, who chirped first. A few others join in and all those little ones with tiny hearts beating at some ridiculously fast rate as they sit still (even before the first cup of coffee), all shriek in their way. Light! It's light again! Every and all little life-lets with feathers are run through with the energy of the new light dawning.
Then, after all of them sing their twittering arias, peace reigns, coffee is poured and a sigh exhaled. Damn! that was good.
Why does that first bird sing? It's a good question. He's got something worth saying: God zapped his little shorts and he's telling us about it in no uncertain terms. He made it, did not become a midnight snack for a cat. He made it. He MADE it! He's alive! Same reason to go yell HEY on a hilltop next time you're up there. You're alive, life is in you and you've got something that must absolutely come out - loudly.
Too still outside to fly a kite on shore, it would be good to be out on the bay in a boat, rushing over the water, aware that onshore in the distance autumn is settling on the trees like fine dust on a curtain. You can see a million miles across the bay today and imagine the Pleiades dancing around the moon. The sky is singing blue happy. Isn't it odd how Fall feels like Spring sometimes?
The summer was a dog all right, lying there all twitchy and dreaming, not moving much except in my imagination.
How else can you tell you're alive if you don't notice the air outside or the dirt under your feet when you walk? Stand on a hill away from town (if you have a hill somewhere to go to) and yell as loudly as you can. Take a deep breath and just HEY! really hard and listen. Not only does your heart beat harder but you hear evidence of life: A shout in return.
Birds do it in the morning: It's very quiet in the predawn gray light (if you're lucky). Then, randomly, a little bird ventures a chirp, a cheep, a twitter, tentatively. A pause. Another in some other tree or bush responds. He senses it was another, not himself, who chirped first. A few others join in and all those little ones with tiny hearts beating at some ridiculously fast rate as they sit still (even before the first cup of coffee), all shriek in their way. Light! It's light again! Every and all little life-lets with feathers are run through with the energy of the new light dawning.
Then, after all of them sing their twittering arias, peace reigns, coffee is poured and a sigh exhaled. Damn! that was good.
Why does that first bird sing? It's a good question. He's got something worth saying: God zapped his little shorts and he's telling us about it in no uncertain terms. He made it, did not become a midnight snack for a cat. He made it. He MADE it! He's alive! Same reason to go yell HEY on a hilltop next time you're up there. You're alive, life is in you and you've got something that must absolutely come out - loudly.
Too still outside to fly a kite on shore, it would be good to be out on the bay in a boat, rushing over the water, aware that onshore in the distance autumn is settling on the trees like fine dust on a curtain. You can see a million miles across the bay today and imagine the Pleiades dancing around the moon. The sky is singing blue happy. Isn't it odd how Fall feels like Spring sometimes?
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
In a Strange Land
Pacific Grove has a couple of gems in its boundaries. Mainly, there's Asilomar Beach State Park, way out over west there, elbow to elbow with the exclusive ghetto called Del Monte Forest. I think you could easily say about one fourth of the habitable Monterey area (Pebble Beach, Tehama, San Carlos Rancho, Pasadera, Carmel Valley Ranch) excludes the other three fourths of its inhabitants either totally or only admits them if they hand over a wad of cash.
Pacific Grove doesn't exclude anyone from gazing at its prettiness. Because of that, visitors find it peaceful and tranquil and make plans to move here. If they hand over a very large wad of cash indeed, they commence life as we know it: Very quiet -- hushed actually -- and a bit eccentric. Consequently, it has evolved into yet another kind of exclusionary enclave.
A man I once knew described the little towns on the Monterey Peninsula as fiefdoms, each pointing fingers at the others and each one filled with folks who felt comforted to know that all the bad apples lived in those other towns. A case in point: Another man I spoke with once said he'd moved to Pebble Beach because it was beautiful. (It is) He had lived in Seaside, a town that grew up next to Ft Ord catering to the needs of the Army soldiers training there. Seaside isn't very beautiful but it has the most beautiful view of the Monterey Peninsula you'll find anywhere around here, especially on a clear moonlit night. This man lived in Pebble Beach and no one would talk to him. Neighbors, if they ever inhabited their homes (they could be a second or third home), drove into their garages, the doors closed and no one emerged for long periods of time. He felt alone, existing in a strange void of not-neighborliness. He left in disguest and went back to Seaside. There, neighbors offered each other help and gave out their surplus vegetables to each other. Kids played outside and life had a happy rough-and-tumble feel that he said was "a million times better than being in the Forest."
Pacific Grove is somewhere in between. You'll find both kinds of neighborhoods here. Mostly, people will help you out and consider themselves unique, special, above average. They'll share vegetables with you, but they gotta know you first. You are not welcome until you've found your own friends and established yourself somehow. It takes a long time. People new to the area complain that California is unfriendly, people don't say hello, and they feel lonely. I can see that it's true here. It's not an attitude of blatant, obvious rejection so much as it is a strong hesitancy to venture a greeting, an approach to life and strangers that stems from self-distraction and abhorrence of chaos. Be careful! it says. No loud talking! especially in loud foreign languages. Hush! My quietude and isolation are paramount to my success in the world, and I require you not to intrude into it! I have paid a lot for the right to remain silent! Hush!
Pacific Grove is a pretty town, beautiful even, depending on what view you're taking in. There is a bucolic peace here. But, it's deceptive. It's a twilight zone, an expensive, even a timid one. It sits between a cold deep bay to its north and a wealthy exclusive neighbor to its south. East is Monterey, and I'll get to that another time.
Pacific Grove doesn't exclude anyone from gazing at its prettiness. Because of that, visitors find it peaceful and tranquil and make plans to move here. If they hand over a very large wad of cash indeed, they commence life as we know it: Very quiet -- hushed actually -- and a bit eccentric. Consequently, it has evolved into yet another kind of exclusionary enclave.
A man I once knew described the little towns on the Monterey Peninsula as fiefdoms, each pointing fingers at the others and each one filled with folks who felt comforted to know that all the bad apples lived in those other towns. A case in point: Another man I spoke with once said he'd moved to Pebble Beach because it was beautiful. (It is) He had lived in Seaside, a town that grew up next to Ft Ord catering to the needs of the Army soldiers training there. Seaside isn't very beautiful but it has the most beautiful view of the Monterey Peninsula you'll find anywhere around here, especially on a clear moonlit night. This man lived in Pebble Beach and no one would talk to him. Neighbors, if they ever inhabited their homes (they could be a second or third home), drove into their garages, the doors closed and no one emerged for long periods of time. He felt alone, existing in a strange void of not-neighborliness. He left in disguest and went back to Seaside. There, neighbors offered each other help and gave out their surplus vegetables to each other. Kids played outside and life had a happy rough-and-tumble feel that he said was "a million times better than being in the Forest."
Pacific Grove is somewhere in between. You'll find both kinds of neighborhoods here. Mostly, people will help you out and consider themselves unique, special, above average. They'll share vegetables with you, but they gotta know you first. You are not welcome until you've found your own friends and established yourself somehow. It takes a long time. People new to the area complain that California is unfriendly, people don't say hello, and they feel lonely. I can see that it's true here. It's not an attitude of blatant, obvious rejection so much as it is a strong hesitancy to venture a greeting, an approach to life and strangers that stems from self-distraction and abhorrence of chaos. Be careful! it says. No loud talking! especially in loud foreign languages. Hush! My quietude and isolation are paramount to my success in the world, and I require you not to intrude into it! I have paid a lot for the right to remain silent! Hush!
Pacific Grove is a pretty town, beautiful even, depending on what view you're taking in. There is a bucolic peace here. But, it's deceptive. It's a twilight zone, an expensive, even a timid one. It sits between a cold deep bay to its north and a wealthy exclusive neighbor to its south. East is Monterey, and I'll get to that another time.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Fall clouds, old memories
I live in a small quiet town where most people are very comfortable, sedate and generally unchallenged by the vicissitudes of nature or politics. Killers do not stalk our town and gangs don't bother with us. Well, the raccoons do, but they don't usually carry guns. The wind blows every afternoon after 1 o'clock. There is no summer and no winter. Nothing changes. It's ironic as hell that I live here.
When I was small and lived in Carmel Valley, I would come to Pacific Grove with my brother and sisters, all five of us stuffed into a green Chevy station wagon with fins and a punch-button radio, and visit my cousins here. It's a 20-mile drive from there to here but it could have been a different planet, and we voyaged across some unseen chasm, a transmutation of life as I thought I knew it. PG was as boring and dull a place to live as any kid could hope to avoid, even then. They had sidewalks! I could hardly imagine that and yet I saw it: A life lived without hills, a river, trees; nowhere to run, sing out loud and hear the wind answer. It was horrible. Cement and a contained, restricted existence faced me, confined me. I felt I was in a foolish place when I stepped out of the car. Houses were suspiciously close together, claustrophobic. Life seemed hidden, more uncertain; curtains were drawn; it was cold.
The feelings I had derived from a free-range childhood lived outdoors for the most part. Carmel Valley -- in the village, as it's called -- is inland and much warmer than coastal towns are. Seasons, moderate by mountain standards, are discernible by more intense temperature variations, and trees turn colors in time to them. A river, beleaguered as it is, flows there and has shaped and formed the valley. It roared, gurgled, whispered and shushed in turn, and I listened.
The warm fuzzy glow of a happy reminiscence is not what I am about here. I developed a taste for knowing what grows wild because it was powerful and alluring. I felt the weather changes and seasons. I explored everything out there, beyond the door, by pulling things up, tearing them apart, watching things live and die. I learned, like kids do when they have been shoved out the door with no money, that what grows does just fine on its own. All that I could get my hands on or watch day after day fascinated me and made an impression on me. As far as I could grasp it, God was there in the dirt, up in the trees and flying around in the sky and I was running around in the middle of it all. It was glorious and amazing and intoxicating.
When I returned to the valley after a visit in town, I was happy and knew I was home where I belonged. I was very fortunate and am now grateful beyond measure to have a deep well of wild memories to draw on.
Here in the Groove, we are a quiet, dull bunch. The raccoons chittering and screeching at night remind me I need to stick my hands into dirt, turn rocks over, listen to rivers. I growl about seagulls strafing my car outside, but they, too, remind me of what is real, and it ain't cars.
I saw an unusual sky this morning. Clouds looking like the fourth movement of Beethoven's Ninth were charging in from the north and the wind was gusting leaves across the roadway. It's wild out there, thank you God, and I want to stay that way.
When I was small and lived in Carmel Valley, I would come to Pacific Grove with my brother and sisters, all five of us stuffed into a green Chevy station wagon with fins and a punch-button radio, and visit my cousins here. It's a 20-mile drive from there to here but it could have been a different planet, and we voyaged across some unseen chasm, a transmutation of life as I thought I knew it. PG was as boring and dull a place to live as any kid could hope to avoid, even then. They had sidewalks! I could hardly imagine that and yet I saw it: A life lived without hills, a river, trees; nowhere to run, sing out loud and hear the wind answer. It was horrible. Cement and a contained, restricted existence faced me, confined me. I felt I was in a foolish place when I stepped out of the car. Houses were suspiciously close together, claustrophobic. Life seemed hidden, more uncertain; curtains were drawn; it was cold.
The feelings I had derived from a free-range childhood lived outdoors for the most part. Carmel Valley -- in the village, as it's called -- is inland and much warmer than coastal towns are. Seasons, moderate by mountain standards, are discernible by more intense temperature variations, and trees turn colors in time to them. A river, beleaguered as it is, flows there and has shaped and formed the valley. It roared, gurgled, whispered and shushed in turn, and I listened.
The warm fuzzy glow of a happy reminiscence is not what I am about here. I developed a taste for knowing what grows wild because it was powerful and alluring. I felt the weather changes and seasons. I explored everything out there, beyond the door, by pulling things up, tearing them apart, watching things live and die. I learned, like kids do when they have been shoved out the door with no money, that what grows does just fine on its own. All that I could get my hands on or watch day after day fascinated me and made an impression on me. As far as I could grasp it, God was there in the dirt, up in the trees and flying around in the sky and I was running around in the middle of it all. It was glorious and amazing and intoxicating.
When I returned to the valley after a visit in town, I was happy and knew I was home where I belonged. I was very fortunate and am now grateful beyond measure to have a deep well of wild memories to draw on.
Here in the Groove, we are a quiet, dull bunch. The raccoons chittering and screeching at night remind me I need to stick my hands into dirt, turn rocks over, listen to rivers. I growl about seagulls strafing my car outside, but they, too, remind me of what is real, and it ain't cars.
I saw an unusual sky this morning. Clouds looking like the fourth movement of Beethoven's Ninth were charging in from the north and the wind was gusting leaves across the roadway. It's wild out there, thank you God, and I want to stay that way.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Lunch at Zocalo
Also, my daughter got herself a new job. Just when things were looking too tight and too dismal to handle anymore. Whew again!
The weather forecast for today: super hot - in the 90s at least - but as I'm sitting here at my keyboard, the sky looks gray, there's a chill in the air and not a bead of sweat anywhere in town. So, it's Pacific Grove's version of hot. You need a light jacket and a brisk walk to warm up, but that's okay. I'm in a celebratin' kinda mood. So, how about a nice zingy plate of Mexican fare to ward of the chill midday air and enjoy the good news? Ah, Zocalo!
A Mexican friend of mine who waits tables at another local eatery says Zocalo is her favorite Mexican place, too, and believe me that's a pretty good recommendation. Coco has told me her mother was from Old Mexico and "could cook anyone under the table. I didn't even know what a pancake was until I was a teenager. She always made old-school hand-made Mexican food." So, go to Zocalo and enjoy a nice casual but authentic meal. It's just right.
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