Than that first airport beer as you embark on a child-free weekend . . .
Unless it is the two glasses of wine you've drank at home in anticipation of that airport beer.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Mammoth
Every time I plan a trip to the Sierras, I begin to feel I'll finally get to be me. Not that I'm not me at sea level, it just seems that at altitude in the range of light, the non-essential me, the me that gets wrapped up in the petty stresses of life maintenance will burn away in the crystal thin light and all that will be left will be the me of pure joy who can just be.
Because really, I struggle the most with just being. I am constantly five steps (if not five years) ahead of where I am, uncertain how I will maintain this pace forever (because, of course, if you are constantly looking ahead, then you will project the fatigue and anxiousness of the now onto the future while exponentially increasing its intensity).
But in the Sierra Nevadas, I can't do anything about anything, so I let it go. For a few glorious days, I wake up with the sun and let the day have its way. I make time to sit in the hot tub before going to bed to look at the deep black sky that is peppered with more stars than my eyes can make sense of. I can actually take the time to wait for my eyes to adjust to the utter darkness of night so that more and more and even more pinpoints of starlight become visible framed in the silhouettes of pine tree shapes as the milky way dusts across west.
I am fully aware that I can CHOOSE to do the same in Monterey (though the stars would be hard to see through the perpetual marine layer). So when I say "I can" do something in the Sierras, it is not that I am not physically unable to do that here . . . yet it sort of is. Somehow, I am conditioned in the Sierras to turn off the incessant patter of "you should's" that pepper my waking (and sometime sleeping) mind in other places. I can't seem to stop that patter anywhere else. So while I have a choice other places, actually enacting that choice is not as easy as knowing that I have one.
But I guess that knowing is a start of sorts. And also choosing to go to places that offer respite is another start.
If you want to put a positive spin on it.
One of the things I love about the Sierras is that the light there is completely clear, causing everything to fall into sharp relief. It's as if you could, if you could focus your eyes right, see clearly to infinity. There is very little to no blue of distance there--the jagged peak that is 5,000 feet above you seems close enough to cut your finger on.
Maybe that's one of the reasons I find peace there: in the true light, the future doesn't seem so convoluted and tedious. In the thin air, the marine layer of uncertainty can't sustain its clawing scrabble over the ridge to smother joy. Though I love the fading blue of distance, sometimes having perfect perspective can offer a bit more hope that is sorely needed.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Hiking Essentials
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| Random wrecked car about 4 miles in at Portola Redwoods S.P. |
Mid-August, I will be doing a long-ish hike in Mammoth with some friends. Initially (over a few beers), we envisioned doing 28 miles of the John Muir trail in one day. One of our party, who is from that area, mentioned that she had done that stretch in 4.5 hours when she was in her twenties, and that comment set all of us off on visions of doing the same with small allowances for 15+ years of aging, living at sea level, not currently in training for marathon-length distances, etc . . . Because I really don't have a realistic idea of how long it takes to hike specific distances on rough terrain (I know my marathon and half times, but running in a city is very very different than hiking trails), I started hiking the areas around Monterey to get an idea of time needed as well as how much water, food, and other sundries I will need to carry.
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| Touriga for stamina |
~I can do almost any hike on a well-maintained trail in flip flops if the distance is under ten miles
~I cannot do 28 miles in a day and enjoy it
~I live in close proximity to some absolutely gorgeous places
~I love redwoods and cypress trees
~banana slugs look like scary, skinny penises
~I tend to over pack and gravitate towards non-hike friendly foods
~arm-warmers are utter miracles of clothing science
~packing in a Klean Kanteen of beer or a bottle of wine makes even a 14-mile hike well worth it
Saturday, July 16, 2011
No Focus
I woke up this morning and it was still winter (in Monterey, it is always winter and never Christmas). But then about halfway through today, it became-if not summer-an absolutely lovely late spring day. Clear, warm, slight breeze, all sun and varying shades of blue.
It is so clear right now that you can actually see all the way across the bay to Santa Cruz--the first time I've been able to do that in the year that I've lived here. Of course all this clarity of air and sparkle of sun will be short lived. Even as I was marveling at how giant this bay is and how beautiful Santa Cruz looked in the blue of distance, the marine layer started lapping at that city's coastal boundaries. Soon they will be shrouded in cloud while I still have sun (pleased smirk).
Since it is so gorgeous, I got all sorts of motivated. I started sorting and organizing the multitude of bags and boxes I keep in my room to drop random stuff. Started being the operative word here. I am very very good at beginning projects for organization and not so good at seeing them through to completion. Often I live surrounded by piles of half completed projects. Piles that I just shift around as guests come and go before finally dumping them into one of those bags or boxes in my bedroom.
I don't like that I do this. I wish I could just focus on one task at hand before moving to another, but that is not how my brain works. As I begin to pile all my already read books to got back to the shelves, one of them invariably triggers a memory or a thought about something else I have to do. Like in Mourning Diary (Roland Barthes) there was a slip about the care of guinea pigs which reminded me that I need to feed them this morning. When I get to the refrigerator to get their lettuce, I see how a bottle of sparkly wine sitting in the door. I then turn and look at my east-facing porch that is in full sun right now but will lose it soon and decided that I should do my sketch for the day right now while I have the light. So I open the sparkly and the patio door and see my plants which reminds me that I should water the plants. I set down the glass, my pencil and paper, and turn to get my watering pitcher and my eyes light upon a New Yorker which reminds me of the pile of them in my bedroom that I am organizing, so I return to my bedroom but then I hear an angry "WEEP!" from the direction of the guinea pig cage and . . . .
You get my point. The lack of focus isn't limited to household chores. Once I was organizing and deep cleaning my son's room while he and his dad were out playing baseball. They returned hours later to find me surrounded by a colossal mess (I had taken literally everything--everything, books, toys, blocks, stuffed animals--off the shelves and dumped them on the floor so that I could more easily determine where they would go once organized), reading A Wrinkle in Time (Madeleine L'Engle). But actually, I didn't start with that book. I started by reading The The Wolves in the Walls (Neil Gaiman) then that made me want to read The Sandman (ibid.) then I saw Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Jeff Kinney)--which my son hasn't read yet--and started reading that (since I was cleaning his room, I thought I should read a graphic novel that he could actually read--Sandman, while awesome, is a bit old for a seven-year-old). Then I decided I would rather introduce my son to a classic I loved when I was a kid so I started The Indian in the Cupboard (Lynne Reid Banks) which then made me want to read A Wrinkle in Time.
See.
Today, I didn't want to go down my rabbit hole of infinite connections and no productivity because I have a week of house guests planned starting today and didn't think it would be that fun for them to have to vacation around my mess. I kept pulling myself back to the original task at hand: organizing my room mess. And I did it. With lots of aborted sidetracking where I physically jerked myself away from another activity to return to the one at hand.
So right now, my room looks clean (all the mess are in bags and boxes down in my studio). The guinea pigs are not fed. My plants are not watered. My sketch is not done. But I do have a glass of sparkly to my left as I finish this blog. And my guests have just arrived.
WEEP!
It is so clear right now that you can actually see all the way across the bay to Santa Cruz--the first time I've been able to do that in the year that I've lived here. Of course all this clarity of air and sparkle of sun will be short lived. Even as I was marveling at how giant this bay is and how beautiful Santa Cruz looked in the blue of distance, the marine layer started lapping at that city's coastal boundaries. Soon they will be shrouded in cloud while I still have sun (pleased smirk).
Since it is so gorgeous, I got all sorts of motivated. I started sorting and organizing the multitude of bags and boxes I keep in my room to drop random stuff. Started being the operative word here. I am very very good at beginning projects for organization and not so good at seeing them through to completion. Often I live surrounded by piles of half completed projects. Piles that I just shift around as guests come and go before finally dumping them into one of those bags or boxes in my bedroom.
I don't like that I do this. I wish I could just focus on one task at hand before moving to another, but that is not how my brain works. As I begin to pile all my already read books to got back to the shelves, one of them invariably triggers a memory or a thought about something else I have to do. Like in Mourning Diary (Roland Barthes) there was a slip about the care of guinea pigs which reminded me that I need to feed them this morning. When I get to the refrigerator to get their lettuce, I see how a bottle of sparkly wine sitting in the door. I then turn and look at my east-facing porch that is in full sun right now but will lose it soon and decided that I should do my sketch for the day right now while I have the light. So I open the sparkly and the patio door and see my plants which reminds me that I should water the plants. I set down the glass, my pencil and paper, and turn to get my watering pitcher and my eyes light upon a New Yorker which reminds me of the pile of them in my bedroom that I am organizing, so I return to my bedroom but then I hear an angry "WEEP!" from the direction of the guinea pig cage and . . . .
You get my point. The lack of focus isn't limited to household chores. Once I was organizing and deep cleaning my son's room while he and his dad were out playing baseball. They returned hours later to find me surrounded by a colossal mess (I had taken literally everything--everything, books, toys, blocks, stuffed animals--off the shelves and dumped them on the floor so that I could more easily determine where they would go once organized), reading A Wrinkle in Time (Madeleine L'Engle). But actually, I didn't start with that book. I started by reading The The Wolves in the Walls (Neil Gaiman) then that made me want to read The Sandman (ibid.) then I saw Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Jeff Kinney)--which my son hasn't read yet--and started reading that (since I was cleaning his room, I thought I should read a graphic novel that he could actually read--Sandman, while awesome, is a bit old for a seven-year-old). Then I decided I would rather introduce my son to a classic I loved when I was a kid so I started The Indian in the Cupboard (Lynne Reid Banks) which then made me want to read A Wrinkle in Time.
See.
Today, I didn't want to go down my rabbit hole of infinite connections and no productivity because I have a week of house guests planned starting today and didn't think it would be that fun for them to have to vacation around my mess. I kept pulling myself back to the original task at hand: organizing my room mess. And I did it. With lots of aborted sidetracking where I physically jerked myself away from another activity to return to the one at hand.
So right now, my room looks clean (all the mess are in bags and boxes down in my studio). The guinea pigs are not fed. My plants are not watered. My sketch is not done. But I do have a glass of sparkly to my left as I finish this blog. And my guests have just arrived.
WEEP!
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Technology Amazes Me
I can now email myself blogs?
It's like magic invisible sprites are taking my very unedited thoughts and whisking them into computers everywhere.
It's like magic invisible sprites are taking my very unedited thoughts and whisking them into computers everywhere.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Sex in the City Syndrome
I've just realized something . . . that no matter how inane your blog might be, if you end it with a series of questions, you sound smart and introspective. I think of this as the Sex in the City syndrome: Carrie Bradshaw pecks away at her computer after some life crisis, and what does she come up with? A series of rhetorical questions for her audience. She never actually asserts anything. Yet we are all stuck with our hands on our chins going "Hmmmm, this show is amazing. It is funny, sexy, and wise. I must watch more of it."
Boy have I been fucking this up.
My inane blog could be so much cooler. With a few well-place rhetorical questions, I could even rate a bucket list or at least some readers.
I've decided to battle everything that was taught to me (and that I taught for four years) in rhetoric and composition: namely, don't EVER use a question. Express yourself ONLY in statements because questions allow the reader to intrude into YOUR argument.
But now I ask myself, why fear the reader intrusion? (see look at me go--a question already--sort of) If my reader is hella smart, then he or she is going to project his or her hella smartness on my writing as long as I don't ever state an actual opinion.
However, something in me wants to rebel against this trend (more in another post on how if you disagree with everything that is mainstreaming, you will seem that much cooler . . . and then another post on how if you are disagreeing ironically with all that is mainstream then you are so cool that you kick way ass). Relegating my writing and opinions to a series of questions is like only following the prefabricated, safe PS book club guide at the end of a trade paperback without adding any analysis and synthesis and relevance to your life. You won't own anything you read unless you mentally do the work to engage with it. Prefab questions are a cop-out, used to assuage the latent sense of intellectual inferiority that runs through our culture.
Should I have phrased that last bit in the form of a question?
I don't want to be too perverse. Deep breath. I am going to do it. Or am I going to it? Lots of questions. Lots of questions?
Why is it that we engage more readily if invited to intrude into a conversation via a series of questions (no matter how scripted and shallow they may be)?
Why don't we recognize that all writing is predicated on dialogue and needs it to thrive?
Why can't we see that we are fools to forget the above and allow an author free reign in influencing our thoughts?
Why don't we work anymore as readers to claim the text as ours?
Are we too fearful of asserting our own opinion when another is speaking with confidence?
Or is it like Taylor Mali says, it is now just uncool to actually have a real opinion?
Why did the convenience store fail to stock Cheez-Its today?
Why do I always buy the bad coffee there?
Will I ever finish The Interrogative Mood?
Why didn't Padgett Powell at least incorporate some sort of narrative into the question(able) story?
Why don't we think back at authors? Why do we need a question to make us understand that we already contain the answer?
Wait.
Let me rephrase.
We do not need prefabricated PS questions. We can think on our own.
Any questions?
Boy have I been fucking this up.
My inane blog could be so much cooler. With a few well-place rhetorical questions, I could even rate a bucket list or at least some readers.
I've decided to battle everything that was taught to me (and that I taught for four years) in rhetoric and composition: namely, don't EVER use a question. Express yourself ONLY in statements because questions allow the reader to intrude into YOUR argument.
But now I ask myself, why fear the reader intrusion? (see look at me go--a question already--sort of) If my reader is hella smart, then he or she is going to project his or her hella smartness on my writing as long as I don't ever state an actual opinion.
However, something in me wants to rebel against this trend (more in another post on how if you disagree with everything that is mainstreaming, you will seem that much cooler . . . and then another post on how if you are disagreeing ironically with all that is mainstream then you are so cool that you kick way ass). Relegating my writing and opinions to a series of questions is like only following the prefabricated, safe PS book club guide at the end of a trade paperback without adding any analysis and synthesis and relevance to your life. You won't own anything you read unless you mentally do the work to engage with it. Prefab questions are a cop-out, used to assuage the latent sense of intellectual inferiority that runs through our culture.
Should I have phrased that last bit in the form of a question?
I don't want to be too perverse. Deep breath. I am going to do it. Or am I going to it? Lots of questions. Lots of questions?
Why is it that we engage more readily if invited to intrude into a conversation via a series of questions (no matter how scripted and shallow they may be)?
Why don't we recognize that all writing is predicated on dialogue and needs it to thrive?
Why can't we see that we are fools to forget the above and allow an author free reign in influencing our thoughts?
Why don't we work anymore as readers to claim the text as ours?
Are we too fearful of asserting our own opinion when another is speaking with confidence?
Or is it like Taylor Mali says, it is now just uncool to actually have a real opinion?
Why did the convenience store fail to stock Cheez-Its today?
Why do I always buy the bad coffee there?
Will I ever finish The Interrogative Mood?
Why didn't Padgett Powell at least incorporate some sort of narrative into the question(able) story?
Why don't we think back at authors? Why do we need a question to make us understand that we already contain the answer?
Wait.
Let me rephrase.
We do not need prefabricated PS questions. We can think on our own.
Any questions?
My weekend (in a list)
a girl and her goatDrank beer and ate free popcorn at the Lucky 13 (discovered that they had a back patio and a black and white photo booth)
Bought a waffle maker
Drove to Oakland to retrieve and drop off my cooking club ladies (the Divas)
Received a stuffed goat
Got up between 5am and 530am every morning because we couldn't figure out how to turn off the alarm clock
Watched the sunrise over the hills of Napa
Had coffee by 6am
Had champagne and/or (but mostly and) a bloody mary by 7am
Made caramelized onion and jalapeno waffles
Rode around Napa in a limo with the Divas and previously gifted stuffed goat
Took said goat to every winery we visited
Drank wine at chichi Napa wineries for free because "I'm in the industry"
Spent $250 on two (2) bottles of wine at one of the above wineries
Watched more TV than I've ever seen in my life which included but was not limited to Bring it On Again and three (3) hours of "Yes to the Dress"
Macerated strawberries
Laughed so hard that I peed my pants (in public)
Cried
Watched Bridesmaids
Ate about a zillion pounds of buttered popcorn even though I was completely and painfully stuffed from the above waffles
Ate brie baked with caramelized onion jam
Ate a pasta dinner followed by macerated strawberries with basil
Never stopped drinking
Found a water glass from Tyler Florence's Rotisserie & Wine restaurant in my purse on Saturday morning (one of the Diva's also found a jalapeno from Florence's store in hers--Sorry Tyler)
Went to a scary train and dollhouse store
Drove over the Bay Bridge for the first time
Attempted to park my giant-ass truck for an hour in San Francisco
Purchased Invisible by Paul Auster at City Lights Books
Read the above at Vesuvio's
Walked to the Ferry Building because I really wanted a samosa from the farmers' market there
Found out the market was closed
Bought a coffee at Starbucks even though I wanted a coffee at Blue Bottle or Caffe Trieste more because I needed the free wifi to find a place that sold samosas.
Walked to an Irish bar that sold Indian food
Ate Samosas back in my car while frustrated people waited for me to pull out so that they could take my parking spot
Drove south from San Francisco to Monterey on the 1
On my way out of San Francisco, drove by the Blue Bottle coffee shop on Jessie street and cried a little because there was no parking
Made regular waffles for a hungry small child as soon as I got home
Made a fava bean soup for the hell of it
It's amazing what you can get done in a day if you get up at 5am.
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