I didn’t know him, but he curved his body toward me as though I were a daughter. I felt the breath of his words brush the side of my face. 'Don’t listen to the disdain of the experienced. Listen to your heart. Don’t let their laughter and rolling their eyes shut you down.' His voice was calm and certain. 'Don't be fooled by the shallow opinions of those who have grown used to the absence of love. Be open to love in the many ways it will cross your path in a lifetime. You can be cool and clever and armored, call your feelings stupid. Or you can be filled and sing in the rain.'

I am a woman from the south, and some of us women of the south have a tradition of histrionics, colloquially known as hissy fits. A little more colorful and whacky than the bent out of shape steamed diva of the north, but similar in disposition. I strive to be balanced, calm and all that- and I do honor my roots now and again.

That's the unfocused moon caught up in the playground equipment in the middle photo, in case you're wondering.

From another fine, often lyrical, book:
'But the main effect of truth telling is that it will interrupt the flow of lies. It will cause small rents in the fabric of our incarceration...

'One truth is a step toward freedom. Another truth is one more step. As a matter of fact, if one were to tell the truth once a day, I believe that the darkness that lies tend to cause would stop its progress in the life of that individual.'

Workin' on the Chain Gang: Shaking off the dead hand of history
Walter Mosley

Richard E. Nisbett wrote a fine book: The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners think differently...and why. One theme weaves throughout a lot of the research and history he reviews: Independence versus Interdependence, with western perspective on the independence end, and Asians on the interdependence. This underlying principle applies not only to perception of human relationships, but how the parts of our bodies are perceived; whether we focus on objects in the foreground, or on context; are we happier as unique individuals, or as smoothly operating cogs in the machinery; and whether truth is static or fluid. According to Nisbett, Asians tend to perceive the whole pond at once. Westerners tend to focus on the distinguishing properties of individual persons and objects.

I say this from a most cheerful state of mind: go ahead and cry now and again. Absorb, then release the sorrows of your world from your body. Don't hold on to misery. Let the thunderstorms roll through, the clouds burst. Then hiccup, blow your nose, and breathe the smell of sunlit raindrops dangling from washed stems and leaves.

I've been at it tonight, trying to write of the moon, but the moon is its own mystery, its own nonstop performance, its own distant waters. It defies the pen, moves through phases again and again, oblivious to those human labels, and never stopping for applause.

Mistake or opportunity?

Here are four of my many photographic mistakes; top two were out of focus, bottom two were accidental shots. I start to delete them, then stop to play with the possibilities instead. Crop and tweak and see what blooms - sometimes something fun or beautiful, and altogether different from the original intention.

Malcolm X at night

Birthday flower: March 9, March 11, and March 21.

Bumper Sticker: Love Heals

Playground
Dover Street
Oakland

walking this evening -
two towhees, two poets,
new moon,
thoughts of you

We were hanging out one Sunday afternoon in Gruene, Texas, meeting halfway between San Antonio and Austin. We each had a three year old and a baby with us. We hung out at the music hall, no band that early in the day. In the hall there were pool tables. Out back among the oak trees, there was a basketball hoop, standard height. We gradually wound up out there where the toddlers could run. They spotted a basketball and wanted to play. They could barely get their arms around the ball, but after awhile got the feel of throwing it in the air. Impossible for a three-year-old to make a shot into a ten-foot hoop, but they were throwing it up in the air granny style anyway, having a great time. Then the ball sank right in.

To be be like a three-year-old. Paint anyway. Shoot anyway. Try everything, especially when you don't know what the heck you're doing.

cookies
with the chocolate chips still melted
late for class
and there's still a desk
a place for you
and the teacher nods welcome
oh what a nice dream

I stood on a sidewalk
along Martin Luther King, Jr Way
with my back against a street sign:
'Welcome to Berkeley'
The sign post painted a shadow
against the wall of a building.
I took a photo,
my left foot in Berkeley,
my right in Oakland
and then walked on.

whatever happened to
beautiful Rocio
the checkout girl
who brought food home
for her brother and sister
when she was a dark-eyed
grown up not grown up herself

In praise of dead wood:














An old, rotting pine tree is a thing of beauty to a red-cockaded woodpecker. There are bugs and lichen to eat. The wood is soft enough to peck out a nest to raise young. When pine forests in east Texas are cleared by loggers for the wood, sometimes new trees are planted to replace the old. But new trees do not provide food and housing for the woodpecker. The woodpeckers cannot survive. (The red-cockaded woodpecker is listed as an endangered species.)

Farther west in Texas, there are hills covered by ashe juniper, locally known as cedar trees. It seems there's plenty of cedar to go around, but most of it's new growth. The endangered golden-cheeked warbler requires "large blocks of mature [50+ years] ashe juniper" for nesting habitat. These birds are programmed only to make nests out of the long strips of bark that hang loosely only from the trunks of the old junipers. You clear out the old junipers in your yard, even though new ones will appear, you've taken away the residence for this endangered bird for the next half-century at least.

Many of us are accustomed to thinking of trees as ornamental, as landscaping. To take down all the dead wood and decaying branches in one's yard, though, is to take away the specialized food and homes for a diversity of creatures. But we can adjust our ideas of what is attractive to include those with whom we share space. Before taking out a 'dead' limb, it's good to consider who is living there...we are all inter-connected.

[If you look at the pictures above from Lafayette, Louisiana, you'll see why dead wood is not dead. There's a Mississippi kite perched on the pine snag. I once witnessed kites mating on that limb. A red-tailed hawk regularly hung out up there in the early morning, catching the first rays of sun. A pair of flickers(woodpecker-like birds)showed up, also red-headed woodpeckers, and red-bellied woodpeckers. You can see the holes created by some of these birds nesting and foraging for food. The lower pictures of fallen branches show how other plants take root in the pulpy wood. I took the pictures, though, because I was most curious about those shoe-sole-shaped growths. They were fairly common on branches in the moist, woodsy part of our yard- and I don't know what the heck they are.]

There's a framed print in the foyer called 'The Spirits of Barton Springs'. I'll have to photograph it some time and share it. The artist's name is K. Holland. The perspective is as though the viewer is under water, looking at the bluegills and other fishes, some stray bits of trash, a petroglyph of a swimming human, and pale silhouettes of humans above the surface of the water. I've had it for awhile. Even with the plastic bleach bottle in the water, the overall mood of the piece is serene.

If anyone had asked me how many fish are there in the picture, I would have thought, 'Five?' There are three fish that make up the main composition, plus a reflection of one them, but I thought maybe there were a couple more in the backgound a bit.

Tonight, I walked by the print and happened to pause. I looked at it up close, and was startled by several rather camouflaged brown fish pointing downward in a small cave-like crevice in some stones. Several more tiny fish are swimming near the bottom of the springs. What a surprise - I counted 16 altogether!

How could I have missed that many fishes? Perhaps it's a sign of how unobservant I can be. But I also like to think it's a compliment to the artist. With a good piece of art, no matter how many times you look at it, you always find something new.

I did solo sword practice this morning, striking invisible opponents with sincerity, attempted precision, and heart. I'm not entirely clear on all this, how sincere attack ignites growth in both the attacker and receiver, but continue to give it a try. There are surprising effects. I wasn't involved in Shintaido and yoga for long before I realized there's a whole freaking amazing lot of territory that a standard western upbringing and education doesn't cover.

'70 trees,' he said, standing in the narrow lane of grass between the street and the sidewalk. 'We've planted 70 trees around this neighborhood.' Pyramids of dark crumbly earth rested near holes for the next two trees, tall skinny specimans with balled roots, waiting to be tucked into their new homes. He swung his arm toward the streets west of San Pablo and north of Russell to show me the range of their efforts.

Then there was the man with dark hair and beard. I think he was wearing office clothes, flying down Alcatraz and around the corner onto Shattuck, a joyful fleeting apparition. I can hear the descending whirring of the wheels of his skateboard against the asphalt, see the graceful arc of his turn.

And the woman with the dark shining hair, reading her book at the park picnic table, giving precise and accurate directions to the nearest library, her voice gentle and certain.

And the trio unloading their cases of eggs, bottles of juice, boxes of leafy vegetables for the small neighborhood farmers market.

These are my neighbors.

(The bottom photo is of a law school building at UC Berkely.)

We’re flowers and we aren’t flowers though, right? We have the curse and the blessing of self-awareness. We can see we are different, and as soon as we try to be more like flowers, we are less like flowers because we are trying. The humor of the human condition.

We’re designed differently. We have the means to plan and strive and create and make music and worry over right and wrong and feel with our hearts and think with the minds we are given. We are also able to bloom in the sun, to stay in touch with that flower capacity that is both primal and sublime. If we develop only one gift when we've been given two, it’s like riding a bike using only one pedal, unnecessarily awkward and incomplete. When we are balanced, pedaling with two feet, maybe then we function fully as human beings.

Neither humble nor arrogant, flowers don't try. They don't perform. They accept the nourishment from the earth, the rain from the skies, the light from the sun, and in yielding, grow and open. They live and perish unconcerned whether they are seen or unseen, unaware of perfection or flaw or achievement. The beauty of their unfurling petals lies only in the perception of others.

stars beyond reach
stars at our feet...



looking up is an act of discovery,
but so is looking down...