healing.

some good cheer for jana:

because her pictures of flowers always give me
a surge of simple pleasure, no matter how i feel.

i hope mine will give a little of the same back to her.

namaste.

worship.

tonight i drove home* between the full moon rising in the east and the sunset gleaming orangeredgold behind catalina in the west, the ocean emanating all the light it has soaked up and stored all day. and as i drove, i found myself declaring my love to the ocean. the light. the sun. the moon. the earth. and it made perfect sense to me why people worship the heavens and the earth.

*i'm house-, dog-, bird-, and turtle-sitting in laguna beach this week.

fire.
tonight as i drove home the sun blazed redgold in the west, infusing the sky with warmth and light. it was stunning. but that beauty was born of the disastrous fires blazing to the east. which were in turn caused by my beautiful santa ana winds. this symbiosis between beauty and destruction haunts me. i look at my world and it is so beautiful. but it is so devastating. not just the physical world, but humanity, too. i believe community is unavoidable--that human beings are naturally social creatures who form bonds of beautiful intimacy and love. but i also believe that the very actions and words that forge those bonds isolate us. we use the gestures and actions of friendship to turn inward, to hunker down, and avoid the pain that interaction demands.

i do not know how to navigate that paradox. and today it has me feeling tired, eyes heavy with tears i do not want to shed, wishing i could take refuge in misanthropy. but i can't. because despite the destruction, the beauty is there--glaringly unavoidable. like the sun in the west, reflecting the fire in the east.

wordless.

wednesday

wordless.

wednesday

weekend.

• 1 BBC production of a favorite piece of classical literature (in this instance, the new jane eyre).
• karma sufficient to find parking AND fritters
• a plate of chilaquiles topped with fried egg and black beans and accompanied by watermelon agua fresca
• a quiet afternoon of reading in comfort
• delicious handmade flour tortillas served warm
  
• homemade morning chocolat chaud with toasted challah for dipping
• avocados, orchids, and sunshine in a beautiful yard
• a visit to an abundantly stocked independent bookstore
• exploring a significant portion of the l.a. basin
• cajun--gumbo, hushpuppies, blackened catfish; superyum
  
• coconut macadamia nut fudge ice cream cone
• a walk down a pier at sunset over a glimmering twilight ocean
  
• all accompanied by laughter and conversation in good company

it was perfect. after a weekend like that, monday is more than manageable and i feel like i can do most anything.

ocean.
tonight i went to the beach. after dark. in december. it rained last night and this morning when i drove down the canyon and looked out over the ocean, there were white caps dotting the ocean as far out as i could see. and the crescent beach just north of laguna was being pounded with big waves sending white spray up the face of the cliff. i wonder if the water would have reached the mobile homes that were just torn down two or three months ago. when i drove back into town this evening, i could see the white of the waves as they hit the shore at main beach. so i stopped. on a whim. and walked out and watched for a bit.

i've lived near the ocean most of my life. i rarely go to the beach. but i know when i'm not near it. and i miss it. there's something indescribably magical about the ocean with all of its variable moods and colors. the thing i love the most about it is the way it soaks up all of the light of day and then, when the sun is setting and the darkness of night is coming, it gives that light back--glowing long after the sun has gone. at those moments, it seems possible that this world can find peace.

peace.
morning mist on my lake. part of the hilton lakes in the high sierra outside bishop. i took this about three years ago, the first time i went into the mountains with my brothers. going there is like going home.

i've decided to do an image of the week. sometimes a photo i take. sometimes a photo from someone else that's meaningful to me on a personal level. sometimes a photo or image that i've discovered and think is beautiful.

happy.
some simple (and sometimes silly) things that make me happy:

• rain dripping on the metal rain gutter just below my window
• hot chocolate and a book on a cold, blowsy afternoon
• the way the cap screws on so cleanly on a new tube of toothpaste
• clothes folded perfectly and arranged in a rainbow of colors
• the ruby gleam of a hummingbird's neck in the sunshine
• cut daffodils opening in a vase
• new growth on roses
• a single albino poppy plant in the middle of a field of golden yellow
• email from a friend just asking how i am

to be continued...

sustenance.
yesterday i walked into the canyon. the sun was shining and it was unseasonably warm for february. i had never been up rock canyon before, though i lived within miles of it for years. and i have loved it for years. it is where the day gives birth to sunshine, the light streaming through the canyon illuminating the rocks long before the sun crests the peaks.

at one point, i saw an old car upside down in the gully along the trail. its bottom was rusted, the tires missing, and plants and the earth have claimed it. the bumper was still chrome and the faded blue door had bullet holes in it. i don't know how it got there.

as i walked back out of the canyon i stopped and sat, my back to the sun, on an enormous rock. just listening to the wind. the wind in the mountains is unlike wind anywhere else. it speaks in a soulful but delightful voice of the secrets buried in the mountains. it caresses your cheek at one moment and in the next rages against your body.

before i left the canyon, i climbed up to a rock wall and leaned against it, absorbing the strength of the earth, its peace and its solidness. i kissed the rock and thanked the earth for being mine. and then i returned to my world happier.

transgress.
i love clouds. they are such interesting things--beings, almost. today the valley was cloudy. not one solid mass of grey but many different shades, different bodies of clouds piled upon one another, the light seeping through at moments. i love it when the clouds are low. celestial bodies roiling, stretching towards their terrestial counterpart, the lake. transgressive, something that should not happen, cloud touch earth, melding with the very source of its existence. when the clouds are so low, so distinct from one another, three dimensional rather than the flat background they generally appear to be, they seem almost alive. i walked through a cloud once--down a mountain. the air visible, swirling around me. such a strange sensation.

grace.
i love watching snow fall. so weightless, drifting unpredictably towards earth and sometimes back upwards again. i walk in the snowfall, watching as the world is covered in grace. how odd that this light, almost bodiless substance can become the weight of destruction. branches cracking and breaking; bodies falling; roofs caving in. and if it is spring, if the beauty of rebirth has begun, the devastation is that much more heartrending--limbs loaded with blossoms bearing the weight of the heavens with no relief until they snap and plunge. i wonder about this strange relationship. i do see snow as grace--as a beautiful covering for the death of the world. unasked for, freely giving, offering the water of life. but simultaneously devastating. is this the nature of grace?

realize.
yesterday i watched a fly die. it was strange. he crawled up in front of me on my desk and tipped over. he stayed there, off kilter, one wing in the air the other under his side until i flicked him off the back edge of my desk. he seemed so big, sitting there dead on my desk. much larger than the pesky nuisance i would have considered him had he been alive, buzzing around my head. somehow his death made me realize how real his life was in a way i never could have had he been his normal buggy self.

sometimes i have moments like that--realizations of how incredible the world and life are. strangely, many of those moments involve insects. lying on my back on the grass, looking up at the trees thinking that this must be what a beetle sees. standing in the dark face to face with a hovering fire fly the summer I first discovered them. finding two beautiful fuzzy, black & white, striped and spotted caterpillars crawling their crazy crawl along a fence post. i don't care about the science of insects, about how their lives work biologically. but the facts of their lives amaze me.