not native fruit

 
Me, with our friend Leo, waiting for the shuttle bus and trying to keep warm on our way to one of Amma's programs in San Ramon in November.  One of the things I like about Amma's programs is that there's always a certain element of 'roughing it' - it's never an experience of pure comfort and luxury!  The November visit this year was exceptionally cold, so if it were to be put to a vote, I would vote to hold the November retreat and Devi Bhava in a hotel - thus eliminating the 'roughing it' element perhaps, but we would still have that during her summer visits.

In this photo, I can most definitely see how I'm aging.  It's okay, it's a natural part of life.  I don't take any hormone replacement because I am sensitive to estrogen - so it would not be a good idea.  I'm feeling healthy and that's the main thing, right?  Isn't our friend Leo a positive soul?  He is visiting from Mexico, and was great fun to host in our home.

farewell to summer 2010, bay area

how soft and moist
your breath
against my skin -
sixty-five days of fog and
rolling clouds touching
the tree-tops, silvering
the air
- and I breathe you in,
a summer's mild winter
clinging close
as a lover.

magnificent magnolia

 
We drove past this magnolia just a few blocks from our home at just a little after noon day before yesterday, and it was magically alight and looked as if it were about to lift off to the sky!  well, surely it embodied the true connection between earth and sky.  i didn't have my camera, however, and had to come back a few hours later when the light was not the same - but still - I love the way it looks with its beautiful load of blossoms circled underneath it, not cleaned up, reminding me of the robert frost poem, 'unharvested':

a scent of ripeness from over a wall,
and come to leave the routine road
and look for what had made me stall,
there sure enough was an apple tree
that had eased itself of its summer load,
and of all but its trivial foliage free,
now breathed as light as a lady's fan.
for there there had been an apple fall
as complete as the apple had given man.
the ground was one circle of solid red.

may something go always unharvested!
may much stay out of our stated plan,
apples or something forgotten and left,
so smelling their sweetness would be no theft.

only in this case it is magnolia blossoms.  it used to more usual around berkeley to see plants that had been allowed to run riot, that were unmaintained and therefore somewhat wild.  i enjoyed the city when it was in that phase.  things are more manicured now. 

this photo does not do justice to the ecstatic excess expressed by this plant.  i love it!  i chose to settle for this pale replica / photo, because only yesterday was there the requisite sunshine to lend this tree lift-off, the days before and the days since have been overcast and often rainy.  day before yesterday was the chance, so i took it.

crimson christmas

We've had an unusually colorful Christmas season this year due to the combination of drought and a couple of cold snaps.  Normally rain and wind would have denuded all the trees on our streets that aren't evergreen, but this year almost every neighborhood was decked out in crimson.

 

 

 

 

clean sweep

Here's to the start of a fresh year!

January First here in Berkeley by the Bay, was a day of bright sunshine and clear cool air that had a winey lightness to it like champagne.  I can't really recall a quality of air here that was quite so light and weightlessly transparent.  It was neither moisture-laden nor dry, and we speculate that its utter felt-cleanness may be due to decreased auto traffic on the holiday.  In any case, it was delightful and euphoria-producing.

In the evening, we walked down near the high school's playing field and encountered a flock of black-capped night herons making mysterious musical trillings and calls, bravely walking quite close to us.  We counted six.

I look forward to another year of simple pleasures, such as the sight of clean, beautiful, favorite dishes fresh from the kitchen sink.  It doesn't take much to make beauty, just a loving, enchanted eye.  Here's to the moments of noticing to come.

winter weather

Steam from the tea kettle jets into the space of the night-clad kitchen.  Outside trillions of tiny water-droplets permeate the air, softening the glow of lamp light in the windows of the neighborhood, and drip with the softest of sounds from the frondy branches of the camphor trees.  The lonesome wail of the north-south pacific coast train pulls towards itself my thoughts of people far-distant in time and place. I feel comfortable and intimate in my small wooden house, a bungalow built in the 1920's.  The cat brushes my ankles in a bid for food and attention.

The next day everything is different.  The temperature has dropped and now cold magnifies and emphasizes everything.  Colors glow distinct, air snaps with freshness and an oxygen load, blood picks up its pace, and movement hastens.  For a few days we are in a different world, a world of cold and clarity, of wide-awakeness and an acute awareness of distances.

grey skies

grey skies,
the world
all around
awash
in cool
moisture-laden
air
circulating
in
from the Ocean,
daily
washing
clean
my mind.

*     *     *      *      *
we've had unusually marine weather in the last few days, at a time of year usually characterized by dry heat.  I've enjoyed the sensation of floating in this silvery atmosphere.  It seems to stop thoughts.

machado poem & labor day

I Have Walked Down Many Roads

by Antonio Machado

I have walked down many roads
and cleared many paths;
I have navigated a hundred oceans
and anchored off a hundred shores.

All over, I have seen
caravans of sadness,
pompous and melancholy men
drunk with black shadows,

and defrocked pedants
who stare, keep quiet, and think
they know, because they don’t
drink wine in the neighborhood bars.

Bad people who go around
polluting the earth . . .

And all over, I have seen
people who dance or play,
when they can, and work
their four handfuls of land.

If they turn up someplace,
they never ask where they are.

When they travel, they ride
on the backs of old mules,

and don’t know how to hurry,
not even on holidays.

When there’s wine, they drink wine;
when there’s no wine, they drink cool water.

These are good people, who live,
work, get by, and dream;
and on a day like all the others
they lie down under the earth.

—Translated from the Spanish by Don Share

(from AGNI 27 & 56)

Antonio Machado is one of Spain’s most highly esteemed poets. He lived from 1876–1939. (1988)

Don Share is translating the poems of Miguel Hernandez. He has work forthcoming in The Paris Review. (1988)

*    *     *     *     *

This is the poem I considered giving to George's widow at the memorial service yesterday.  I decided it didn't really fit George, because I believe this is a poem about the workers of the world, the factotums, the day laborers.  I heard it, rather than read it, first.  The man who recited the poem gave it a nuanced, dramatic reading, and even then all of us Berkeley liberals in the audience cringed a little upon hearing verses two and three, probably because there were some actual 'pedants' in the audience, translated as 'academicians' just in case they might not recognize themselves, but possibly simply because, as liberals, we don't believe there are any 'bad' people in the world.  Just kidding.  I have to thank Dave the Bontasaurus over at Via Negativa for finding this poem in an English translation.  He gave me the title.

Anyway, it seems appropriate to publish this poem on Labor Day.

And now, a word about our weather.  It is bitingly cold outside today, the first day of the Labor Day Weekend.  It's always amazing to me how slowly winter plods along, while the summer just zips by.  Maybe it's because we don't get much true summer weather in the San Francisco Bay Area.  So many days are dominated by cold grey fog off the ocean, it makes it seem as if our summers are sharply curtailed.  No wonder they always seem so short. 

lughnasa

August 4th was the Feast of the Descending Sun, an old Celtic festival called Lughnasa.  This marks the turning of the corner from Summer to Autumn, and i usually notice it as a shift in the quantity and quality of the light.

This year, even without being aware of the date, I noticed a distinct feeling of Autumn in the air around my house that day.  it was a bright, clear and jovial feeling, edged just ever so slightly in bittersweet.

last week we had warm weather and i could spend more time outside at night just absorbing the dazzling brilliance of the high summer night.  Night is falling earlier, it's true, but the darkness of the high summer night is ardent in color and vibrant in reflected light of moon and stars.  the world shimmers in solar energy cloaked in the darkness of the night.  this convergence of opposites makes us feel that all is possible, and dreams may come true.

perhaps this is what our dear friend shakespeare had in mind when he wrote a play called 'a midsummer's night dream.'

For a modern treatment of this festival, see the film (on video or DVD)  'Dancing at Lughnasa,' starring Meryl Streep. 

fresh air

I went out for my usual walk around the neighborhood yesterday and encountered a bike race.  Bona fide, with orange cones, safety guards, timers and everything. 

I stood near them at the corner as they whizzed past.  It was a curious experience of sound, color and energy.  I felt quite a marvelous draught of health, speed, movement, and intent, all couched in a setting of simple yet sophisticated technology.

It seemed quite wondrous to me, and when I shared my impressions with my husband, I said that I could feel tremendous power, but it was clear and light, unlike the sensation of power I feel when I'm taking off in a jet, or powering on at high speed along a crowded freeway.  Gary said, "that's human power.  What you felt was human power." 

For me, this discovery is bittersweet at this particular time, just after Patrick Courant, a popular high-school math and science teacher at a local Catholic school, lost his life while training  for just such a race, in a tragic accident on  a low-traveled country road in our vicinity.  In photographs of Patrick racing, I can see his utter zest for the sport.  But the bicyclists are so vulnerable.