Life of Wry

Who needs a stairmaster, right?

This is the humanities building, corner 3rd and A.  If one lives at 6th and A, it’s a short walk to an awesome place to stretch and do stairs.  Mostly stretch.

But stairs.  Wow.  Perfect if you ever need to train for mountain climbing.

 

In the end these things matter most: How well did you love? How fully did you live? How deeply did you let go?     -Siddhartha Gautama

 

So many wise people talk about this letting go thing.  They must know something.

Anyway.. fall, turning trees, dropping leaves.  Maybe it’s the season of letting go, too.

Three weeks ago, I sent an email to Peter Hillary, son of famed Mt. Everest climber Sir Edmond Hillary of New Zealand, inquiring about a trip he leads to Mt. Kilimanjaro.  I wrote about that here. 

I was getting a little discouraged, since I’d not heard back from him.  I tried again last night, forwarding my initial email and asking how best to get information on his various trips, but specifically Kili, since we’re looking to go in August of next year.

And…. he wrote back immediately.

My first email inquiry must have gotten overlooked..  and I guess that’s because he’s still on the road: he climbed Kili in August and is now in Tibet with a National Geographic group doing something. He didn’t go into detail, other than to say he’d be back home in three weeks and he’d contact me then with info.  And jovially sent greetings from the Tibet plateau, 12,500′.

The life of an adventure traveler…

Anyway, I’m very excited.

This isn’t like getting email from Barack Obama inviting me to dinner, which he did this past week. (And which I even fantasized about… going so far as to think I’d certainly have plenty to say, running down the list of potential topics in my head, including seeking his advice on how to deal with wackadoodles, and I’d just have to get over the shyness of sitting in the company of such bigness, because it’d only be a couple hours of awkwardness afterall, and would be the experience of a lifetime and I’d just have to do it. I did go that far in my thinking, even though this was an e-blast sent to gazillions of his supporters and is part of a fundraising campaign, etc etc.)

No, the exchange with Peter Hillary was real people sending real email back and forth exactly half-way around the world from one another.  If it goes nowhere, I’ll still be smiling at having had a human conversation with the guy. Smack dab in the middle of an adventure, no less**.

Last week, I bought his book, In the Ghost Country: A Lifetime Spent on the Edge.  This is what the jacket says:

“Peter Hillary’s harrowing account of his attempt with two companions to complete Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s doomed journey to the South Pole makes for powerful reading.  A masterful story of an expedition’s precipitous collapse and a study of a life lived on the brink, this is a vivid tale of physical endurance, heartbreaking loneliness, and ultimately the triumph of a man over the cruelty of the Antarctic wastelands and the ghosts of his own past.” 

Moving it up in the stack.

The picture above: That’s the Hillary family in 1962.. Ed, Louise, Peter and his sisters Sarah and Belinda.

This is Peter now, about 57:

I borrowed both from his website, here.

** I see on the website that in September and October (now) he is leading a trip from Lhasa (Tibet) to Kathmandu, “the best road journey in the world with stunning landscapes, rich culture, wonderful people and the greatest mountain range on earth.”   

So, there’s that.

Beat that, charming downtown coffee houses that serve expensive cafe au laits in durable glass vessels with ad-infused, corrugated cardboard sleeves.

Not that I don’t appreciate your (calculatedly) tasteful (yet appealing) ambiance, and savor your rich blends and baked goods, and breathe in (with such a smile) the Leonard Cohen that wafts over the clatter and hum of Davis’ young intellectuals and yoga moms.  Nothing finer than sitting in cafes, for sure..

..it’s just that I make a mean cuppa joe.

Here’s one now, in its favorite mug, in quiet surroundings, early on a Saturday morning.

Any guesses?

Ok, I’ll just tell you: It’s a wine glass sitting on a placemat (a placemat I bought in Kathmandu, nice?).  Further, for the wine people, it’s a 2009 Toad Hollow Pinot Noir, Goldie’s Vineyard in the Russian River Valley.

And it’s excellent.   Good job, Jim, who picks out most of the wine around here (by color and price, I believe).  Even though he doesn’t drink wine.

It’s actually the remains of last night’s glass of wine, but a sign of what’s to come in.. oh.. about 23 minutes.   (Yay Fridays.)

The highlight of this day, I must share, was sitting at Mishka’s this late, pre-fall afternoon, under an umbrella in the warm shade, with a very pleasing cafe au lait.  After weeks and weeks, I’d finally finished Louise Hillary’s book (High Time) so could at long last dive into The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen’s heavily-awarded 2001 novel.  Excited because he’s coming to Davis next month.  So, just sat there in the breezeway for an hour and read.  Heavenly or what?

What’s great is reading the first few pages of a new book and being blown away by an author’s mastery.. of words, images, and humans.  Kills me.  What was great this afternoon was how I was inspired, once again, to write.  I sat there just dying to take a crack at it myself.  Realized how rich the world is.. wherever you are.  I sat there and watched any number of dramas unfold and knew I wanted to get inside them and work them.. just for the fun of it.    I realized I need to go sit in a cafe more often (with a computer) and watch humans and observe settings and conjure stories, and how much better that will happen out in the world, and how it doesn’t happen at my desk.  Kind of random, I realize, a bit cart before the horse, not the way they might tell you to do it, but that’s what I want to do.

That was my excitement.  Makes me breathless.

Cannot wait for later to roll around so I can go to bed with my book, and breathe in all that razor sharp prose.  Love it.

But now: wine, dinner with some company..

..then.

Forgive me blog gods for I have taken yet another picture of food I ate today, and all indications are good that I’m going to go on and talk about it.  Right here.  In my blog.

I’m sorry if you come here thinking you’re going to find something more intelligent.

I will devote more time to writing.  I will.

It’s a time thing.  I’m not complaining, I just have a lot on my plate.  [NOTE: I actually spent the last thirty minutes listing it all, explaining everything.. then deleted it because, WOW, that would be insanely boring to read!  Jesus, what was I thinking?  (And double Jesus: like I had time to do that but not time to actually write something.)]

It sucks to be a blogger sometimes.

So, no commentary, even, on the salmon salad above.  Except to say the reason I took the picture (as if there is ever a legitimate reason to take a picture of one’s lunch), was the radish.  Fifty five and I’ve never eaten a radish.  Ever.  So I took that big step today, since this particular salad has a lot of them and I order this salad a lot and always eat everything but the radishes.  Which is dumb.

So, today, I ate one of those radish slivers.  It was a non-event.  Didn’t like it, didn’t dislike it.  It was unremarkable.

Like this photo, like this entry.

My humble apologies.

Okay.  If this is what passes for political debate in this country.. that’s it, I’m done.  Of course, I’ve been done many times, done for a long time, but I’m done yet again. This is just way, way too icky.

Wincingly embarrassing, bury-head-in-hand embarrassing.

I watched the intro, the preamble, to this week’s CNN-Tea Party sponsored republican debate and, like somebody else said, “I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry or throw up.”  I’m still thinking it’s a joke, that they didn’t really stage all this pageantry leading into a presidential debate.  But they actually did.

And this is what thoroughly disgusts me about today’s mainstream media: its stupiding-down and media-eventing of everything.  C’MON CNN!! I know, I know, you’re CNN, this is what your network does, but really?  You’ve turned a presidential debate into a tacky, tabloidal affair, and frankly, it’s just gross. The Blue Angels?

Uggh.

You’re laughing in the back room, right?  You can’t believe how stupid your audience is and what you have to do to keep its attention?  You must turn [what should be] serious programming into vapid entertainment because .. the audience is that thick?

Well. Okay.

Oh, and let me clarify, I didn’t watch the debate–I don’t have the stomach for it–I saw the preamble, just the preamble, on the Daily Show (forever grateful for Jon Stewart) a few minutes ago.

And you can, too, here (five minutes of barely watchable American reality)

(I can’t embed the video because it’s not a YouTube video or a Google Video… but just click on the above link and you can watch it at the Daily Show’s site… it’s worth it, but don’t be eating or drinking anything as you watch because you might spit up on your computer.)

Can I move now?

Really.. I’ve taken my deep breaths and filed this one away under moronic, inane shit the media does, and am moving on, going back to the refuge of sane, quiet, no frills media, like NPR and the Nation.

Cleaver, that is.

Been on a baking jag.  Inspired by The Big Green Bowl, have made all kinds of things in recent weeks– bars, scones, cakes, muffins. Getting my mom on, I suppose. Thought Peter might dig having some new kinds of treats to eat when he gets home from school.

That was the idea anyway.  But it’s been met with mixed reviews thus far.

Fortunately, baking’s pleasant and I’ve been really enjoying my time in the kitchen; will keep at it.

These blurry things are banana chocolate walnut muffins.  (And, “they’re alright.”)

When I’m scorekeeping, I often like to stand behind the plate in order to get as close to the umpire’s calls as I can.  Today, I spent a lot of time just to the right of home plate, but still right up against the fence.

Round about game three (yes, three games today, two yesterday, for a full weekend of baseball), standing at all was getting difficult..  my back was starting to ache in that way that makes you think we were never meant to be bipedal.. and after awhile, I was crouching down and watching the game from between slits in the backstop.   This was that view.

I really intended to write a little about the September 11 anniversary, which was on people’s minds (one of the parents put up a flag in our dugout).

However, it’s late and am way too sleepy to navigate that tricky territory well.  I will say I’ve been moved by the human stories, the personal losses.  NPR’s Storycorps, for example, has offered all week long a profound way to connect to people who were there. The human part of this story is hard to grasp and sad, the way all senseless loss of life is. Always. What this country has become since is also something profoundly sad.. but I really need to have my wits about me to write about that tragedy.

So for now, just another baseball shot, this one through the cracks.  That’s Alex pitching.  Some leg kick, huh?