Wind

There's quite a gale galloping down the ridgeway towards the bay, spilling fog every-which-way. The houseboat is swaying like worried mother, and I don't feel all that protected right now. Despite the sun's valiant stand off (the bay itself is still basking in bright light and blue sky), the cold seems imminent. This is not the way I like to see things, but it's how I see things.

I forgot about wind. When I lived at Slide Ranch, the nights were often filled with wind coming in from the Pacific. It seemed to reach the Cypress trees right above my trailer first, and with full power fists, it would bash the boughs against the rooftop all night. Dangling branches would creak and pop, and sleep would become a far away thing. During those long nights, it generally wasn't fear that gripped me--more, the sense that these things were trying to say something to me about movement, about chaos, about letting go. I stayed awake in frustration and anticipation of something I sensed I wouldn't realize unless my eyes were open.

Here, today, the wind screeches, hums and howls. In the marina, it pokes at every loose rigging and jangles it incessantly against mast and boom. It feels like the end of something. My heart stands tip-toe, brim-full of possibility that could quite stagnate into dread. I wish I knew what to wish well.

Endless

I'm inside a cloud this morning: mist moves around me, thick enough to feel the pull of gravity. I'm infatuated with the miracle of wool as I watch the water bead into tiny droplets upon the strands of my shirt and stay there, leagues away from my skin. Despite the absence of sun and the cold rising off Richardson Bay, I'm warm.

I've been riding my bike through the salt marshes these mornings. Eight lanes of highway scream by, but the colors of the plants are louder: purple sea lavender, ancient rusty dock, glaring green sedges, and yellow fennel pollen that puts the cyclists' reflective gear to shame. The calls of tiny birds darting among the rushes and grasses pull my attention away from the whirring of my own wheels....and I'm out in the stand of water, peering through the surface with the eyes of the egret, spying on fish and frog, waiting for the precise moment to strike. I glance left, and watch a flock of gulls rest calmly like ducks on a pond. The light in the air takes up residence in their bright white head feathers, and suddenly they're angelic, heart-stopping and awesome. I brake, put my feet on the ground, and brush the tears from my eyes. When I regain focus, I notice a golden spot hovering inches from my face. It's a spider, walking on air, following the line of her own silk to no known end. I trace her thread back to the fennel stalk, 6 feet away from us. She's made it this far from anything solid, and still moves gracefully and intentionally forward, into nothing.

To my right, cars, trucks, SUVs and Hummers speed southward towards the alabaster city of San Francisco, northward into the mountains. There is no juxtaposition.

Love

I don't think of love as the answer or the solution. I think of love as a force of nature--as strong as the sun, as necessary, as impersonal, as gigantic, as impossible, as scorching as it is warming, as drought-making as it is life-giving. And when it burns out, the planet dies.

My little orbit of life circles love. I daren't get any closer. I'm not a mystic seeking final communion. I don't go out without SPF 15. I protect myself.

But today, when the sun is everywhere, and everything solid is nothing but its own shadow, I know that the real things in life, the things I remember, the things I turn over in my hands, are not houses, bank accounts, prizes or promotions. What I remember is love--all love--love of a dirt road, this sunrise, a day by the river, the stranger I met in a cafe. Myself, even, which is the hardest thing of all to love, because love and selfishness are not the same thing. It is easy to be selfish. It is hard to love who I am. No wonder I am surprised if you do.

But love it is that wins the day. On this burning road, fenced with barbed wire to keep the goats from straying, I find for a minute what I came here for, which is a sure sign that I will lose it again instantly.

I felt whole.

-Jeanette Winterson, Lighthousekeeping

Bush is like so stupid

...this was the graffiti message that greeted me on my morning walk through the redwoods of Mill Valley, California today (and no, I don't think it was written by the trees, although I'd completely understand if it was). Regardless of who wrote it and why this person had to do so in such a pristine, un-Bush-y environment, I was confronted by the sad fact that Californians, as present to the truth as they might be, just sound really dumb. Yesterday I had an incredibly insightful conversation with a very successful and intelligent woman who works in the natural food store by my house, and she was telling me about how she's been trying to convince her father in Kansas to get his 50 acres of hard-shelled pecan trees certified organic, because then he could sell them for nearly ten times their value as conventional nuts. Additionally, she went on about how Kansas growers, with all their production of soybeans, could easily localize their own fuel source for all their farming by creating biodiesel, and then cut loose from the corporate dominated monocropping of their landscape, diversify crop production, increase the nutritive value of their bio region, and create healthier communities and ecosystems. All the while, the conversation was punctuated with emphatics like "total" and "dude". Needless to say, her dad didn't buy into the promising possibilities of organic nuts.

I wonder if much of the country similarly tunes out when they hear such phrases as "yeah, like, totally, dude" which is simply an expression of sympathetic agreement, or my personal favorite, "it's all good", which actually refers to the strategic development of considering present events in a more holistic perspective. Are we ultimately just talking to ourselves here in California, and have we adopted the stupid American routine of expecting everyone to learn our language, all the while refusing to develop our comprehension of other tongues?