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How can it be 1997? It seems like only yesterday that I made the decision to take time off from the computer/telecomm industry - a psychosocial moratorium as it were. But it was 2 years ago! And I feel like I'm just now getting started on some of the things I intended to do like take courses, travel, WRITE!
Quincy bit me. Charlie got returned from his adoptive home so now we have two cats named Charlie. The sick room is full! No more room. URI. Cats are sneezing up a storm all over the place. If any more start sneezing we'll just have to leave them in the main room and hope it doesn't spread too much ha ha ha.
Went for a walk with Rita after the cat shelter. We saw a red-tailed hawk perched on a tree about halfway up the hill. It took off after something so we got a good look at its magnificent red tail. Back at Rita's condo we had grilled cheese sandwiches and espresso in the kitchen with the drapes open so we could look out at the woods. A northern flicker and a downy woodpecker were hammering away at the birch tree that broke in "the big storm". I couldn't wait to come home and put the flicker on my every growing life list.
Plate tectonics. Asthenosphere. Lithosphere. Divergent, convergent, and transform boundaries. Gotta finish my home work before I go to class. Maybe I'll write more after class. Meanwhile, set the way back machine to 1996 then 1995...
[ed. note: this was written in '96 looking back at the previous summer]
That was the summer of early tomatoes, forest fires, beach erosion and green headed flies.
That was the summer of deer ticks and hunger.
That was the summer we lost what held us together and found what drove us apart. We scattered like milkweed over the wetlands and forests choked with weeds eating the earth for breakfast like giant yellow back hoes and bulldozers.
That was the summer they finally finished the beach house. That was the summer of our discontent. The summer of triumph.
The summer of love was not 1967, it was last year long past hippiedom long past length and the sweat of our brows no garlands from Chinatown bright paper garlands. I picture them fading in the sun of a dusty kitchen where the sadness is palpable the grief so thick it feels like you're walking in quicksand. Lord help us. Lord deliver us from the virus, the frantic DNA.
The medical establishment tells you you're gonna die so you do. No miracles here. I prayed for the wrong miracle at Chimayo and I got the one I asked for not the one I wanted. Who said we should not ask God for the impossible? We must only pray for God's will to be done not for a miracle to come forth. Why don't we flat out ask God for a cure? Why do we give up? If you believe the New Age crap then nobody need ever die. All you need to do is focus the mind the right way. What crap! The Buddha asked a woman whose child had died to bring him a mustard seed from a home where no one had ever died. Needless to say, she was unable to find one.
Gotta find the house where nobody has died. The house where prayer unfailingly works. If we all had perfect faith no one would ever die. But the truth is we are all impermanent. Not one of us can escape death.
I had a hard time picking one of the writing practice essays from today because they're all fairly weird . Since the topic of the course was writing and walking, I picked one on walking.
All the walks I remember. Walking home from St. Bernard's school over the newly extended Massachusetts Turnpike on a brand new bridge with the tempting shortcut down the cement steps to Border Street and out to Elm Street then through the parking lot of the police station to Cherry Street. This shortcut was forbidden by the nuns. Every day before we said our closing prayers they made an announcement over the PA system reminding us not to go down Border Street. It wasn't safe.
Walking with Joan at Big Sur when the wildflowers blossomed so powerfully it took us all day to walk a two mile trail past mountains alive with blue blossom making their prayer gesture to the sky.
Walking on Hearst State Beach on rocks so curved and sensual they felt erotic. Each one a miniature [illegible] of a woman's essence. Walking among the tide pools and stopping transfixed as a half a dozen hermit crabs walked single file slowly across the tide pool like monks in walking meditation.
Walking among the redwoods and noticing the tiny mushrooms growing among some patches of moss so exquisite they overwhelmed the redwoods.
Walking to the boulder above Joan's cabin in Boulder Creek constantly slipping on wet leaves finally falling flat in a ditch on the way down emerging like a sea monster covered in mud and leaves laughing like a maniac.
Walking at the moss place every time I go to Silicon Valley loving that oasis of thick green moss so damp I can smell it. Right there in the driest brownest stretch of the Santa Cruz mountains.
Walking up Mount Monadnock in the rain and fog and cold and savoring the hardship because it made me feel like I belonged in New England.
Walking on a moon less night in the desert near Dixon [New Mexico] using peripheral vision. A magpie took off from a piñon tree in a burst of light so bright I thought I was hallucinating.
Walking in Canyon de Chelly at dusk down a sheep trail to a huge cave of petroglyphs after having persuaded our guide Tex that we could see in the dark better without flashlights.
Walking in the Logan Airport parking garage with Thomas stoned out of his mind forgetting where he'd' parked and my not remembering what his car looked like that night he told me Steven had AIDS.
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