Life of Wry

I had this thought today as I was riding my bike through town:

So….

Soon, Peter will move out of Davis. Maybe not permanently, but as he’s not likely to choose UCD or any college nearby, he will be relocating. We know this. But what I flashed on today was the realization that his 0-18 year narrative is coming to a wrap, that all-important “when I was growing up” narrative, full of:

We used to hang out at this park (Baja), or

This is where the sandwich place was (Subway), or

I played baseball here (Davis Little League Complex), or

This is where I went to nursery school (DPNS), or

There was a cool rope swing here (Putah Creek), or

My bike was stolen from here (Nugget), or

… whatever comprises his growing up memory box.

That box is almost full. He’s got about 3/4 of a year left for adding whatever else might be going in there, then that’s it. That’s the growing up phase. The part lived in the family home, the part when he went to grade school, the part when he met his earliest pals. It’s the phase that contains all the major developmental milestones… infancy, toddlerhood, learning to walk, learning to ride a bike, starting school, being an adolescent, being a teenager, getting braces, getting acne, learning to drive, turning into a young adult, registering to vote.

THAT box. It’s almost full.

He’s done almost all the stuff he’s going to do while a kid in Davis, the stuff he’ll look back on as his growing up years.

I knew this on most levels. But I hadn’t thought about the lid almost coming down. It is truly a finite period of time. Every experience he’s ever going to have as a kid growing up in Davis has almost been had.

This will be his narrative.

It seemed rather significant as I was riding around. I was reflecting on my own childhood narrative, thinking about how that period is so entirely defining. How those memories–the home, the town, the friends–are such touchstones. How they are the reference points of our lives. How 0-18 is such a massively huge universe compared to every other phase that follows. Even as I know super big stuff is coming for him. It’s just not all packaged so densely as the 0 to 18 years.

I thought about the Palos Verdes 1960s-1970s Facebook page and the kinds of things we share there (Remember that place at the Malaga Cove plaza where that guy with red hair worked…? or, Who was at that giant bonfire the time…. ? or Who used to wear bell-bottoms with patches on the ….?).  I thought, too, of the You Know You’re From Davis When… Facebook page and all the memories the former Davis kids share there, same kind of stuff about clothing, teachers, places, gossip. Peter will be one of those guys with a history in this town before too long. His little swath of Davis time.

It’s also funny what a time warp life is. How huge and interminable that time felt while in it, and even when looking back on it, it seems huge. My 0-18 was a lifetime. Or so it seemed.

Peter’s has, of course, gone by in a flash.

I’ll bet you dollars to donuts, my 0-18 was no longer than Peter’s.

Now THAT is weird.

Guess I better post a quintessential picture of Peter’s Davis youth.  This being fall, how about a shot of us picking pumpkins out at Impossible Acres?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

After my trippy little bike ride, I went with Darlene to the annual Madrigal Wine Pour fundraiser out at Village Homes. Standing in line to get in, I told her about my startling and somewhat sad revelations. The conversation continued under a shaded arbor on the patio of Osteria Fasulo, and was made tripier by a steady flow of wine.

But it was fun to have that conversation while drinking wine amongst a couple hundred other mostly-parents-of-Davis-High-School-kids. One mom I’d known since we were in a new moms group together (Audra), yet another from another new moms group (Cheryl), a couple from pre-school days (Alice and Jim ), and another from kindergarten days (Carole and Neil), a baseball mom (Frances), Peter’s current pitching coach (Kenner) … you get the idea. Our little village is about to launch a whole bunch of eighteen-year-olds into the non-Davis world.

So yeah, it was a lovely setting for wine, warm weather and the shifting of generational sands.

And some very pretty music sung by these guys:

What is this, you may wonder? It’s the data entry screen for my iScore program, used on my iPad at baseball games. What does this tell you? Not much, really… since I didn’t think to stage a better shot. It tells you that Peter is up, for one thing, which is rare these days, since he’s a pitcher-only. It tells you he’s right handed and the count is one ball and one strike. It doesn’t tell you the names of the Jesuit players, because it’s fall ball and very relaxed, so we don’t even get line-ups from the opposing teams. That’s all.

Today was the last game of the fall ball season. We strung two games together, one a nine-inning game and one an eleven-inning game. Yup. It was a twenty-inning day!  That was even long for some of us die hards. Most of us were at the field for seven hours. The kids and coaches longer.

Peter opened, and pitched three innings, waaaaaay back around 10:00am. Not his best outing… not horrible either. He threw a lot of balls, but gave up only one hit, and thanks to some terrible base running on their part, no runs. Jesuit! They looked a little sloppy.

On the other hand, Davis continued looking sharp and fierce; we won the first game 13-7 and the second game 15-7.

Total record for the season was 10 wins, 1 loss. Our nine starters had a combined, overall season batting average of .402! They hit like crazy people. If they keep it up, DHS should have a pretty strong team in the spring. Plus we’ll get our two football playing starters back, and our two strongest pitchers will be back in the rotation (both injured during the fall season). No matter what, they’ll be competitive, the level of play should be high, and it will be fun.

I know… lotta baseball. But I shall now be hanging up my iPad and iScore for about five forlorn months, so that’s it for a while!

Last fall season. In the can.

Oh… and you’re probably wondering what happened to Peter’s at-bat above? He got to first after getting hit by a pitch.

I’m having a bit of a shit-or-get-off-the-pot moment as the result of something that happened today.

Of all things, I sort of had a job interview this afternoon. Which is weird because I’m not looking for a job. But I learned, through a friend, of a small company in town that provides editing, proofing and language translation services. I expressed genuine interest in the work they do, and presto, she arranged for me to visit.

That visit was today.

I was truly impressed. I liked the vibe of the place so much, I was ready to move right in. All women, smart women.  It was both modern/professional/progressive/kick-ass AND homey/comfy/arty/cool. It’s been around for a couple of decades. The work suits me perfectly. Tedious, detailed, fussy, requires laser focus and attention to detail. Helps if you’re on the obsessive-compulsive spectrum. You know, which I am.

After a couple hours of meeting people, looking around, and learning about their work, I was given a document in tagalog and asked to proofread it. I don’t speak tagalog, nobody there does, but proofing it had to do with making sure the translated document matched the original english version: fonts, numbers, bullets, spaces, caps, bolds, itals, size, color, margins, layout, consistency, punctuation… stuff like that. Heaven.

I want to work there in the worst way. (As I said, being on the OCD spectrum helps.)

And yet…I don’t really want a job that consumes valuable hours in my very flexible days. For one, I have a kiddo who’s in his last year of high school… which means two things: it’s our last year to have him at home AND he’s a senior which means final year of baseball, applications for college, graduation stuff… and I want to be fully present for all of that.

For most of the last seven years since closing the doors on KAP Media, my time’s been pretty free form, and filled with the priorities of a non-working person. I’ve adjusted quite comfortably to being a free agent–able to do all kinds of things with all kinds of people, or by myself, or whatever I’ve wanted, whenever I’ve wanted.

So there’s that.

And I don’t need a job.

Plus I’m coming up on 60. Who starts punching a clock at 60?

But there’s an even bigger reason, and this is the shitting in the pot moment: I keep thinking I want to write. Maybe that’s a book, maybe it’s short stories, maybe it’s fiction, maybe it’s writing somebody else’s story, maybe it’s something else entirely, I just don’t know. If I take a job proofreading, I may never get to my writing. If I think I want to write, I may have to actually invest in that process, whatever that means…. join a writers group; attend a writers workshop; actually draft something, re-work it, re-work it again, submit it somewhere… start down that road.

I don’t know. But it may be shit or get off the pot time. Anything else is just a delay, a distraction.

Since leaving DCTV ten years ago, I’ve served as an associate editor on a national journal; have written and edited countless articles–both for that journal, as well as our local newspaper; I’ve edited/proofed two fiction novels, three non-fiction books, numerous short stories, a few websites; I’ve written a daily blog for years, and have written several travel blogs.

I’ve enjoyed all that. And…. I just wonder if I have real writing in me.

Is this job that? Or does this job preclude that? Is this job a distraction from that? (Mind you, I haven’t been offered a job yet! I only talked with them today–for 2 1/2 hours, but it was only talk.)

I find the prospect of real writing daunting…

First, the logistics of being a successful writer? Most of it is completely impossible–publishing, finding agents, marketing. I think it’s easier to make it into Major League Baseball or win an Oscar. Those dreams are right up there with writing the great american novel.

Secondly, I have not a clue what I’d write about. I’m actually not a very imaginative person. I don’t have a story burning a hole through my soul. So… what’s writing about for me? I really don’t know. I might guess a person should write if they are driven by an idea, or inspired by a story, or something. It may not be enough to think you have a talent for the written word, or to enjoy the process of writing… if you don’t really have anything to say. It seems sort of cart before the horse. Or heading down a path without a destination.

Maybe I’m just scared.

Or… maybe I get my jollies with technical writing. This company does provide technical writing services to its clients … maybe I could move into that realm.

Or maybe it’s enough to do exactly what I’m doing: edit other people’s stuff, do the occasional article, continue blogging as the spirit moves, maybe dabble in something fictional if anything were to ever bubble up… AND take a job proofreading for pay. That’s actually a lot of writing, don’t you think? Easy peasy. Cruise control. Done.

It’s just not, you know… the other writing. Real writing.

Sooooo, time for a pro-con analysis.. a decision tree.. some venn diagrams… a few sleepless nights…

Here’s a picture I took the other day, crossing Fifth Street by our house. It says: path, opportunity, the unknown.. a lovelier metaphor than shit/pot.

After driving about fifty miles due North of Davis, through farms and orchards, one rolls into Yuba City. Tonight, Yuba City was warm, humid, windless and a bit sweaty… until the sun started to go down. Not only did it cool off substantially, we were witness to a show off of a light show.

Here’s how the drama played out:

6:11…

6:20…

6:47…

6:52…

6:54…

6:55…

6:58…

Then we went out for ice cream at Brock’s, something of a Yuba City institution…

Can ya guess my two flavors?

(Peppermint Candy and Thin Mint. With a side of hot fudge.)

I am in a seriously fatalistic place tonight. I’ve concluded our country is doomed: that the great capitalist democracy experiment, so eagerly and thoughtfully launched nearly 250 years ago, has been a colossal failure thanks to drunken greed, and power in the hands of fewer and fewer self-interested people; that our deeply polarized government has all but ceased to function; that political campaigning has become nothing but a moronic, embarrassing side show of freaks and clowns; that the NRA, in arming a critical mass of non-critically thinking gun nuts with a quarter billion guns, is preparing for a revolution and could just pull it off; that compassion, integrity, intelligence, tolerance and common sense have left the room…. and I’ve been assuaging my despair with Wheat Thins–too, too many Wheat Thins.

Only barely exaggerating.

I could go on. I’m really, really unhappy about it all. I just want Peter to have a good life. And his kids. And my greats, whom I’ll not meet. But oh dear.. what have we wrought?

I thought maybe some quotes would help. Here are some favorites… one that inspires me to make my own peace, one that inspires me to find my own joy, and one that gives me a wee bit of hope. In that order.

“Peace. It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.” -unknown

“Every morning when I wake up, I experience an exquisite joy — the joy of being Salvador Dali — and I ask myself in rapture: What wonderful things is this Salvador Dali going to accomplish today?” -Salvador Dali

“A hundred years from now? All new people.” –Anne Lamott

Picture taken of the big fancy super moon a couple weeks ago, the day after the fancy total eclipse, from our driveway. With my good camera, but without a tripod.

I don’t know what to write about. I really don’t. I’m still thinking about guns.

This morning on NPR, there was commentary about Hillary’s just-announced position on gun violence and a set of measures she would propose as president designed to safeguard gun access, enforce certain kinds of common-sense regulations, yadda yad. All no brainers. All needed. The political analyst and the morning show host agreed that the only productive path to any gun law will be through executive action, because nothing is going to happen in congress… congress is just never going to pass any gun law. Executive action isn’t going to work either they agreed; congress will stop it.

I’m like what?!  Why?

I’m not being naive and stupid. I am really asking. The NRA just cannot be THAT powerful. If some huge majority of the people want to see some action, and there really are some logical, limited measures we could implement that are utterly non controversial, how is it that congress really, really cannot do anything. 

Like since the beginning of time they haven’t been able to do anything.  I read an excerpt from a speech Robert Kennedy gave, in Roseburg, Oregon, of all places, just weeks or months before he was shot, nearly a half century ago, about the need to pass common sense gun laws. It literally sounded like any number of speeches given today. Seriously. Same stuff.

What is going on?

I get people and their sacred blippin’ second amendment. I get the strategy of slippery slope and not giving an inch. I get why the gun industry has no interest. I get why the NRA has no interest. But congress? I get the campaign finance realities, of course. You gotta dance with the industry lobbyist that brung ya. I understand all of this. Agree with none of it. But understand it.

But congress. A majority of people not able to influence their elected representatives? There has to be more to this.

What am I missing?  Because I really do not get it. Especially NOW with the statistics so staggering, so heartbreaking, so embarrassing. So incontrovertible.

I’m prepared to give all kinds of money. Desperate to be a part of a never-before-seen groundswell of people who have just had it (again), who will finally wield their numbers, throw the bums out, influence and affect some movement on this.

But the NPR congressional correspondent dismissed congressional action out of hand. Like that’s never gonna happen.

What is that?

Here to tell you, guns are a shitty idea. They do very little to protect people. It’s a false security.

Adding untrained gun owners/carriers to a chaotic gun-violent scene will do nothing to help anybody. Teachers do not want to arm themselves. Priests and theater ticket takers do not want to arm themselves. I do not want to be in the same room where macho young men with fragile egos are drinking and carrying guns. I do not want to live in a gun state. This is beyond stupid.

I do not want to live in a society where everybody is carrying a gun. That makes me feel unsafe. It’s violent. It’s ugly. It’s all macho stupid insecure bravado. Does that not make you sick?

We have a quarter of a billion guns here. And the answer is more guns?

[I have a new theory, one that may explain why the NRA threats are so effective: the NRA is arming its revolutionary army. They are preparing to mount a political coup. Right? Make sense now? They threaten not only to pull campaign support if gun laws are tightened, but they threaten to overtake the government, the government they perceive as tyrannous. Whatta ya think?]

We are killing each other. More than anybody else is killing us. More than anywhere else in the modern, developed world.

People with mental illness are responsible for a lot of the mass shootings.. okay. But they AREN’T responsible for most of the gun deaths, however–those are just garden variety dangerous, angry, vindictive, impulsive, negligent people. Yes, we absolutely need to provide support and services for people with mental illness. But other countries who have the same percentage of people with mental illness don’t have the gun deaths we do. Guns are the root of the problem; not the mental illness.

More than anything we need to raise children in loving homes. Our money should go to supporting families and fellow humans who are suffering. We will be better off as a humane and compassionate society if we care for our people. Not take money out of social programs. Not give everybody more guns.

We have our priorities completely wrong. People have lost perspective.

…….gack!!!

How’d I do this again?

I’m going to bed.

Here is a nice, sweet picture to remind you of our priorities on this earth. We’re only here a little while. How about let’s just get peace and be in love with our kids?

They need us. They really do. It starts with the kids. And making sure they have peaceful, safe lives where they can love, be loved and do wonderful things is all that matters. They aren’t going to go off and kill anyone if we take proper care of them.

Sure am grateful for all the creative people who add beauty and wonder and pleasure to our world.

Just a couple examples from yesterday:

Went to a baby shower for my friend and fellow compassionista Margaret (we worked together on David’s Compassion Tour). Not only did she fill the room with people I loved talking to (she is surrounded on her baby journey by friends and family thrilled somebody so loving and kind is going to be raising a child in this crazy, complicated world), but she filled a table with fantastic food.  Especially her signature homemade french-style macarons.

My favorite was the pecan, goat cheese, fig one. The label you cannot see is for the chocolate prune macaron on the backside. Those were great, too–dense, chewy, chocolaty. She’s a master at blending flavors, and an artist in her careful preparation.

I only ate maybe four of these.

Which made the day’s second event–a wine tasting and pig roast–a bit of a gastro-digestive challenge.  No pictures from the Sender’s Wine Release party, but it was plenty artful, viticulturally, enologically speaking.

Then, it was a photo gallery exhibit slash fundraiser for the Putah Creek Council, which featured the stunning, STUNNING photography of Andrea and Rob Stone (their F Street gallery is open by appointment).

Andrea’s art is like this…

About four years ago, she discovered a subject she really loved–reflections of urban life. Literally reflections. And then honed what is now her signature perspective. What she does is take pictures of urban landscapes and architecture mostly through window reflections. “Conventional cityscapes melt away as buildings of steel and glass morph into canvases, reflections become paint…and the camera becomes the brush.” 

It’s very eye popping!

Her husband Rob is a landscape photographer, whose current project, “Hidden Treasure: Restoring Putah Creek,” was on exhibit in the gallery. This is truly gorgeous work.

His brochure has an Edward Abbey quote I loved and fits his work well:

“Our job is to record, each in his own way, this world of light and shodow and time that will never come again exactly as it is today.” 

If you’re interested in a broader view of each of their bodies of work, go to their website, here. 

(I just have to say, he’s got a couple of the North Davis pond that really knocked my socks off.)

Anyway, take a bow artists! Your work inspires!

It’s midnight and the rumbling thunder is STILL going on, mixed with great flashes of lightning covering the sky in all directions. And RAIN! Lots and lots of rain!

This has been going on for hours!

Giddy beyond giddy.

It started earlier tonight when we were at Janet’s. The flashing of lightning was so spectacular we had to leave dessert and head out to the North Davis pond to get a better view.  Here is a shot of Jim and Janet, looking east, trying to get a shot of the lightning…

And, after shooting dark sky after dark sky after dark sky, also pointed east, but a little higher, I finally got a shot off at just the right millisecond, catching the lightning-lit sky:

A little while later, we were on the front porch watching an intense downpour illuminated by the street light.  Same drill: it was a dark and stormy night…

And then it was a bright and stormy night!

Snapped this one at just the right moment (and trashed about 30 misses). And I promise, these pictures are not touched up.

I tell ya, we Californians are a little beside ourselves with this wetness. I can’t wait to walk through my hopefully dust-free garden in the morning–hoping all this rain has cleaned the cobwebs and pollen and dirt from everything. Can’t wait to see about a year’s worth of brittle leaves and twigs transformed by the rain, all dark and soggy and tamped down.  I hope that there are still water driplets everywhere, and that the plants are all shiny and perky.

Excited with this real, REAL rain! Can you tell?

What this is? It’s a [pretty terrible] picture of the giant beefwood tree across the street from our house (aka sheoak or, more properly, casuarina).

And what this is, is an even worse close up of one of its branches.

We were walking home from the Farmer’s Market this morning and Jim paused beneath it because there was this very loud buzzing sound coming, seemingly, from within the branches of the tree. Upon closer inspection, we noticed it was absolutely, densely, fully, impressively abuzz with bees! Like, gajillions of them, all feasting on the beefwood’s yellow pollen… also hard to see (this is when a good camera really comes in handy).

Can’t see a single bee in this picture. [Frowny face.] But believe me…  ga-jillions.

Something else of note on my way to grabbing an au lait this morning …

This is the Compassion Bench… rain-bowed sun rays shining through the giant elm:

The pile on the ground in front is a memorial to a long time resident of Davis, Steve Inness, who I think they have concluded killed himself a few days ago by stepping in front of a train.

I was moved by a flood of Facebook comments about him in the days that followed, particularly former mayor Joe Kravoza’s statement about him:

Steven Inness. Brilliant, insightful, kind. Interested and interesting. I loved him, and this town still more because of him. He will be missed by me forever. RIP, Steve. Take good care and know you touched so many. Davis couldn’t ask for a more conscientions and generous citizen. The bike community won’t be the same without you, nor campus lectures, nor council meetings needing perspective and progressive thought, nor the HS robotics team. Your rest has been earned. Now I say to you, what you once said to me, from Walt Whitman: O Captain, My Captain. I am devastated. 

I didn’t know him, but felt like memorializing him here was appropriate to do. Thanks for reading.

I am also moved that Compassion Corner has become a place for such spontaneous shows of love and community.

The mass shooting of yesterday continues to weigh on me. Life feels heavy today. I’ve never been in a boxing ring, but I imagine one feels slammed, battered and worn down the next day. That’s how it feels today.

And this from someone far away with no direct connection to Umpqua Community College! But I am a citizen of a gun happy country, the day after the latest in an unending stream of murderous gun violence.  And a very dispirited one at that. Just feeling depressed about the reality of life in the US–the powerlessness of knowing this is insanity and watching as our politicians lack the balls to stand up and do the right thing. About living in a country of people with whom I so profoundly disagree and for whom I have so little respect.

The state of our political system. Good lord. The hypocrisy and ugliness that is nationalism.  Just a big fat ugh.

I expected to be a bit knocked upside the head when reading Mark Morford’s day-after column in the Chronicle, and was. Here’s the last half of it… he pulls no punches:

“….religious and spiritual traditions the world over agree: Guns are for cowards. They provide only the thinnest illusion of authority, the ugliest veneer of control, the most artificial aspect of authentic manhood.

Proof? Simple: Just remove any gun fetishist’s (or terrorist’s, or mass shooter’s) stockpile of weapons, and watch what happens. They are instantly deflated, lost, rendered vulgar and human. All illusions of power and machismo vaporize, leaving only the base energies of hate and fear they often don’t understand, much less know how to transmute into something like kindness and love.

Do you wish to pretend otherwise? To claim that guns are effective for safety, or self defense, or a warped sense of patriotism? This is not merely laughable, it’s the opposite of the truth, of established fact.

Put it this way: If guns really conferred stability and protection, we’d be the safest, most peaceful nation on Earth. We are, instead, the most violent and deadly. We are viewed the world over as the most dazzling of bullies, and of hypocrites: We pretend to promote the values of democracy, peace and freedom the world over, and yet we kill one another – and anyone who disagrees with us – more horrifically, and more consistently, than any terrorist cult could ever imagine.

The bottom line is simple enough: America is, by every metric you can name, a far worse place for all our guns. They bring nothing of positive, uplifting value: no kindness, no strength, no peace, no divinity, no sense of community or human connection. Quite the opposite. Guns are the antithesis of love and compassion; they advance the human experiment not at all, and in fact, shatter and humiliate it with every pull of the trigger.”

It is so.

Well… the day was okay otherwise, due largely to a wonderful morning spent talking to David regarding the editing of his next book. It was certainly a welcome antidote, if momentary. We talked a lot about what he wants a reader to be left with after reading the book, what I, as a reader, would want to experience and know… things like that. I actually think, as the book documents a year on the road talking with people all over the country about compassion, that it could be quite an instructive and even hopeful book, especially as he spent time in some of the most conservative regions of the US, and spoke, generally, to people of all stripes. The binder, which he is giving to me this weekend to look through, contains the deepest thoughts and feelings of people from Texas, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Oklahoma on the subject of compassion. Not that I think for a second people from these areas are without compassion! I don’t at all. But I think it will make for a healing process to realize there are common threads that run between us, even as we hold our guns, money and bibles close. (Well, they.)

Between an acupuncture appointment and a massage (it’s hard work healing an inflamed arthritic hip), I took myself to lunch at Symposium.

Retsina and spanakopita on the patio. Warm breeze blowing.