The Daily is the most tremendously relaxing place in my life. No matter what “angst, nausee, and all the bag of tricks” (as Iris Murdoch put it so eloquently) I’ve suffered in my day, I walk into this big, open hall and it all falls away.
Here, I work and worry and struggle over my articles, yet somehow, as I while away the hours, I feel more and more energized rather than more dejected and frustrated. Sometimes I leave exhausted, with a headache, yet I invariably leave content.
I listen to the chatter of the reporters around me; someone’s hip-hop or jazz always seems to be tinkling away in the background. There’s no such thing as “quiet” here. Why doesn’t it annoy me? I can’t say. I just know that the sounds float up toward the big ceiling and seem both small and important simultaneously; multiple and organic and busy and fitting.
Sometimes the television’s on, with a small knot of people gathered round it to watch a sports event or take notes on a presidential speech. I detest televisions. But here, its blaring tones just make me feel connected to the big, wide world. The reporters make acerbic comments and dirty jokes and I always feel part of it all.
Tomorrow I’ll spend the day here, tangle with the complex organization of a difficult article. I feel like I’m wrestling an octopus; it’s got multiple unwieldy tentacles, only wants to get away, and keeps squirting ink in my face to keep me in a great big fog. Am I not octopus enough to out-octopus you? I think wryly, trying yet another organizational scheme for its barrage of information. I’ll tame it tomorrow.
The light will pour in through the huge windows; an editor or two will bustle past and say hello.
I love this place.
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
Monday, November 01, 2004
Ultimate Club Nationals: Sarasota, Florida
Travel
Skin glowing with heat under fading fall skies,
Bringing memories with me, I burn with sun
From inside, a conflagration from my eyes.
This is the hope from journeying beyond one place:
The warmth of knowing there are seasons, elsewhere,
That differ, keeping their own slow clockpulse.
Within me I can hold six suns, hold worlds.
Meteor, I race from soul to soul, a free traveler
In the wide space that is the inner universe.
How large I find myself, in these rare moments!
Under a gray sky I burst into sudden flower
From a thousand buds, each a center of summer,
But secret, held within; the soul's constellation.
This is the self, they murmur:
This is how we survive winter.
~
Nationals amazed me. All night last night, and while I slept on the plane yesterday, I dreamed of frisbees, sideline calls and full-field runs. I still can't believe the height of the jumps I saw in the men's finals game between Sockeye and JAM. I'll never forget the lean, long, tanned profiles of the women on Riot and Prime, their faces gaunt with strength, their bodies lengthened by our sport, which favors height and legginess. They stood on the line with their hair in double braids and ponytails and their cleats black and bright blue and their shorts hanging around their narrow hips. Joy and perfection. I darted up and down the line as the play proceeded, trying to catch every layout, every defensive play, every score. I chatted with the random ultimate players next to whom I stood, and we "talked shop," analyzing game details and deciding who we thought would win.
At the national level, ultimate differs from the casual, free-and-easy sport I've learned to love in pick-up games and summer league. Tension and focus reign in highly competitive ultimate. Everyone takes the matter so seriously and discusses strategy as though deciding federal policy. Yet many qualities remain -- like the friendly faces everywhere, the intelligence of many of those who play (I've met an uncanny number of graduate students, assistant professors, lawyers and writers -- to name just a few brainy professions -- in ultimate), and the sense that we're all together in the same endeavor. And it's inspiring to know exactly how far our bodies -- just us, little ordinary people who play a sport for joy -- can take us.
My team tired me out more than the playing did this weekend, and I'm glad our season is over. It's hard to struggle together with 17 women, each of us with our own motivations and personal envies and little problems and internal conflicts. We've had moments of camaraderie and others where we drove each other to passionate outbursts of tears. My advisor calls some women "guy's girls" and overall, I guess that's me; I'll always prefer playing with the boys. But I'd not have missed this for the world.
Results can be found here, if you're interested:
Ultimate Club Nationals Results
Autumn field work
from 10/21/04.
Today, in the field with Lixin and a Slovenian student, Tiasha, I stood a little apart, gazing out over the late October fields, their grass a patchwork of brown and fading green, here tilled soil, there long grass, and farther on, the straight golden stalks of aged corn. I walked toward a stand of pine to relieve myself, feeling my boots crunch on the good earth below them, under a heavy gray sky that lit the changing sugar maples with a faded glow. Flocks of unidentifiable little birds blew over the fields, searching for seed. Two sandhill cranes walked haltingly past us, one pausing to scratch its head in a momentary display of trust. I stood among the pines, breathing in their dim green, and gazed out over the empty fields beyond. A large flock of starlings, somewhere in far-off trees, chattered in great multiplicity.
I felt free again, breathing in the cold, damp air. I felt so calm and solitary; so internal and self-possessed, and yet also entirely outside myself, a part of the empty, wild surroundings.
In the square chamber dug into the earth, walled by metal and accessed by a heavy metal door in the ground, Lixin stood, pulling gas samples into a syringe from flexible rubber tubes that protruded from the walls. She smiled up at Tiasha and me as we sat cross-legged above her at the opening, chatting with her. In her red turtleneck and lined brown pants that accentuated her little form, she looked practical and sturdy, friendly and capable. Tiasha and I took bottles of water from her back to the van, and stood at its several doors, filling sample bottles and measuring pH. We felt, I think, able and female together, the three of us. Tiasha, with her untidy blonde hair and her narrow, not unhandsome face, gave off an aura of sharp capability. We two self-possessed souls approached each other in utter surety, found the other equally sure, and fell into a comfortable mutual reliance, each giving up tasks to the other quickly and easily as we found them ably performed. The tasks were simple, to be sure, but I felt she and I could have worked effectively under many circumstances. I liked the way our joint dominance vied temporarily, then found, rather than a competitor, an equal.
On returning to the Kellogg Biostation central building, Tiasha walked down to Gull Lake to take photographs and wander around the lake, in her hiking boots and with her wool, hooded jacket tucked round her form. The maples stood ponderous and glowing in pink and orange and coral, their trunks girded with the rumpled wood of many years' growth. Lixin and I returned a bit of equipment inside.
At lunch, we had sat with S and his wife, Susanne. They told us stories of their research in Brazil and Peru and Michigan. Both tall and spare, with quiet eyes, they pleased me. Susanne had short, salt and pepper hair and a straight nose, and though she looked so athletic and competent she followed her husband with a look of deep, intertwined and almost submissive love in her body language and her face. He, wearing glasses and an ever so slightly scattered demeanor, nontheless inspired trust somehow as he helped us load soil cores into our van. On our drive home, we passed Susanne on her bicycle, the long lines of her leggings further accentuating her height, her legs pumping as she sped up the road and vanished along the straight avenue of trees.
Rural Michigan contains a calm beauty unlike the startling richness of New Hampshire. In New Hampshire, one senses a hardness, a spareness, a reluctance to give fruit underneath the glittering gorgeousness. The soil lies brittle and thin atop great, jutting rocks whose presence can always be felt. Michigan exudes a sense of abundance and fertility. Birds wash past in the autumn and spring, journeying along the migration belt, and the chatter of their search for autumn's fruit can always be heard.
Today, in the field with Lixin and a Slovenian student, Tiasha, I stood a little apart, gazing out over the late October fields, their grass a patchwork of brown and fading green, here tilled soil, there long grass, and farther on, the straight golden stalks of aged corn. I walked toward a stand of pine to relieve myself, feeling my boots crunch on the good earth below them, under a heavy gray sky that lit the changing sugar maples with a faded glow. Flocks of unidentifiable little birds blew over the fields, searching for seed. Two sandhill cranes walked haltingly past us, one pausing to scratch its head in a momentary display of trust. I stood among the pines, breathing in their dim green, and gazed out over the empty fields beyond. A large flock of starlings, somewhere in far-off trees, chattered in great multiplicity.
I felt free again, breathing in the cold, damp air. I felt so calm and solitary; so internal and self-possessed, and yet also entirely outside myself, a part of the empty, wild surroundings.
In the square chamber dug into the earth, walled by metal and accessed by a heavy metal door in the ground, Lixin stood, pulling gas samples into a syringe from flexible rubber tubes that protruded from the walls. She smiled up at Tiasha and me as we sat cross-legged above her at the opening, chatting with her. In her red turtleneck and lined brown pants that accentuated her little form, she looked practical and sturdy, friendly and capable. Tiasha and I took bottles of water from her back to the van, and stood at its several doors, filling sample bottles and measuring pH. We felt, I think, able and female together, the three of us. Tiasha, with her untidy blonde hair and her narrow, not unhandsome face, gave off an aura of sharp capability. We two self-possessed souls approached each other in utter surety, found the other equally sure, and fell into a comfortable mutual reliance, each giving up tasks to the other quickly and easily as we found them ably performed. The tasks were simple, to be sure, but I felt she and I could have worked effectively under many circumstances. I liked the way our joint dominance vied temporarily, then found, rather than a competitor, an equal.
On returning to the Kellogg Biostation central building, Tiasha walked down to Gull Lake to take photographs and wander around the lake, in her hiking boots and with her wool, hooded jacket tucked round her form. The maples stood ponderous and glowing in pink and orange and coral, their trunks girded with the rumpled wood of many years' growth. Lixin and I returned a bit of equipment inside.
At lunch, we had sat with S and his wife, Susanne. They told us stories of their research in Brazil and Peru and Michigan. Both tall and spare, with quiet eyes, they pleased me. Susanne had short, salt and pepper hair and a straight nose, and though she looked so athletic and competent she followed her husband with a look of deep, intertwined and almost submissive love in her body language and her face. He, wearing glasses and an ever so slightly scattered demeanor, nontheless inspired trust somehow as he helped us load soil cores into our van. On our drive home, we passed Susanne on her bicycle, the long lines of her leggings further accentuating her height, her legs pumping as she sped up the road and vanished along the straight avenue of trees.
Rural Michigan contains a calm beauty unlike the startling richness of New Hampshire. In New Hampshire, one senses a hardness, a spareness, a reluctance to give fruit underneath the glittering gorgeousness. The soil lies brittle and thin atop great, jutting rocks whose presence can always be felt. Michigan exudes a sense of abundance and fertility. Birds wash past in the autumn and spring, journeying along the migration belt, and the chatter of their search for autumn's fruit can always be heard.
Tuesday, October 05, 2004
Paris
I remember France, and the pale, looming city where I spent four months. I always felt that if all its people were somehow erased, Paris would continue on, unchanged, still as aloof and stately and substantial as before. There's a feeling of history lurking along the walls of its white buildings, as though the city belonged as much to ghosts as to the living.
At night on the weekends, Amanda and I would meet in her tiny apartment. She lived on the first floor in a comfy, carpeted, maroon-colored mousehole, with a sagging couch and one window that overlooked a tiny interior courtyard. We used to peer out the bars while we ate cheese, bread and a pink, mousse-like Greek caviar whose name I can't remember. We'd watch people hang their white laundry out their windows; sometimes we'd hear snatches of conversation or strains of maudlin French music exuding from other apartments.
Anyway, we'd change our clothes, put on make-up, clip silver barrettes in our hair, and sally out into Paris the night city. I always thought we made a striking duo: I, small and brown, beside Amanda, blond and tall; my short spikey hair to her lissome long locks. We liked to walk in St. Germain des Pres, where the narrow ways pour out their pedestrians and the Greek shops are lined one alongside the next, selling greasy gyros with fries. Paris thrums with activity at night, when the city, cloaked by darkness, looks less white and majesterial. Even in the darkest hours, people stir. I still remember the bicyclist that teetered drunkenly by us late one night, singly, alone in the at last abandoned street, careering from one sidewalk to the other with a clatter on the cobbles.
One night, Amanda and I decided we'd visit a jazz bar. Inside its cavernous limestone depths, the denizens were quite literally at full swing. We joined the dancing, but eventually began to feel it necessary to peel a couple of amorous older male dancers off our skin. We withdrew to a side wall, trying to avoid them. Amanda had noticed a young man about our age in a corner writing in a notebook.
"Let's go talk to him," she said. "If he's writing in his journal at 1:00 a.m. in a bar, how bad can he be?" She'd heard him talking in English, and thought him an American. We interrupted him without compunction.
He turned out to be a pilot, passing through with the U.S. military. Stationed in the area for only one night, he'd taken the train in from Charles de Gaulle airport to explore the town. The subway stops running at 1:00 a.m. in Paris, so he couldn't return to the airport until dawn; he'd settled in at the jazz club for a long wait, and was writing a letter when we spotted him. He chatted with us with his whole face open and friendly and his sandy brown hair neatly flat along his head. Now that I've lived in the Midwest, I know him better, that pilot. Clean-shaven, straightforward, without pretense, he reminded me not only of many Midwesterners I've met, but also of whole atmosphere here.
Let's get out of here, we decided, at last. Amanda and I would show him Paris. We lit out into the quietening streets, heading for the Seine. Notre Dame loomed beside us; he gazed up at its arches and gargoyles in awe. We crossed a bridge over the river, and sat to talk for awhile on the steps that led down to the concrete banks. The river rolled on in front of us; a gang of Parisian boys blasted by on their bicycles; then the city was left to stillness and the lapping of water and our quiet conversation once again.
Three a.m., then four. We made for the south of the city, walking down the Boulevard St. Michel toward the Jardin de Luxembourg. The long city stretched out under our tired feet. We passed a janitor at the curb washing the sidewalk, who looked up at us indifferently.
Our pilot addressed a loud, jovial word or two in English to the streetsweeper, as he'd done to other passers-by that night. "Nice night out here!" I remember thinking it strange that he'd venture to speak as though expecting the whole world to know English. I thought people would find him insufferably arrogant, a typical ignorant American. But the janitor - indeed, everyone to whom our pilot spoke - lit up at his open demeanor and his easy, natural smile. He smiled toothily in return; good-natured words in rapid French ensued. Our American friend grinned and replied in nonsequitor. On we went.
In the slowly pinkening dawn, as 5:00 a.m. and the re-opening of le metro approached, we straggled tiredly south toward the nearest metro station. The cafes began to stir; their owners emerged like aproned mice, threw open the doors, swept the mat and put out their little metal tables on the sidewalk. We gravitated toward the warm steaming smell of rolls and coffee, and took our few last minutes together to share a meal. Over hot chocolate and croissants, our pilot snapped a few photos of us, and asked the waiter to take a couple more. Amanda gave him her email address, but I'm not sure he ever mailed the pictures to her.
Then we bustled him onto the subway, and he was gone from our lives, and we were gone from his. I wonder how he remembers us. Imagine it -- you're a young man, arriving in a strange city, and two young women emerge like sprites from the depths of the roiling, indifferent night to shepherd you around town. I like the romance of it. Perhaps, for him, the memory has been subsumed in a long series of equally unusual encounters in strange lands. But I remember it clearly, and feel I can still smell the warmth and comfort of that cafe after our long ramble in the chill night air.
At night on the weekends, Amanda and I would meet in her tiny apartment. She lived on the first floor in a comfy, carpeted, maroon-colored mousehole, with a sagging couch and one window that overlooked a tiny interior courtyard. We used to peer out the bars while we ate cheese, bread and a pink, mousse-like Greek caviar whose name I can't remember. We'd watch people hang their white laundry out their windows; sometimes we'd hear snatches of conversation or strains of maudlin French music exuding from other apartments.
Anyway, we'd change our clothes, put on make-up, clip silver barrettes in our hair, and sally out into Paris the night city. I always thought we made a striking duo: I, small and brown, beside Amanda, blond and tall; my short spikey hair to her lissome long locks. We liked to walk in St. Germain des Pres, where the narrow ways pour out their pedestrians and the Greek shops are lined one alongside the next, selling greasy gyros with fries. Paris thrums with activity at night, when the city, cloaked by darkness, looks less white and majesterial. Even in the darkest hours, people stir. I still remember the bicyclist that teetered drunkenly by us late one night, singly, alone in the at last abandoned street, careering from one sidewalk to the other with a clatter on the cobbles.
One night, Amanda and I decided we'd visit a jazz bar. Inside its cavernous limestone depths, the denizens were quite literally at full swing. We joined the dancing, but eventually began to feel it necessary to peel a couple of amorous older male dancers off our skin. We withdrew to a side wall, trying to avoid them. Amanda had noticed a young man about our age in a corner writing in a notebook.
"Let's go talk to him," she said. "If he's writing in his journal at 1:00 a.m. in a bar, how bad can he be?" She'd heard him talking in English, and thought him an American. We interrupted him without compunction.
He turned out to be a pilot, passing through with the U.S. military. Stationed in the area for only one night, he'd taken the train in from Charles de Gaulle airport to explore the town. The subway stops running at 1:00 a.m. in Paris, so he couldn't return to the airport until dawn; he'd settled in at the jazz club for a long wait, and was writing a letter when we spotted him. He chatted with us with his whole face open and friendly and his sandy brown hair neatly flat along his head. Now that I've lived in the Midwest, I know him better, that pilot. Clean-shaven, straightforward, without pretense, he reminded me not only of many Midwesterners I've met, but also of whole atmosphere here.
Let's get out of here, we decided, at last. Amanda and I would show him Paris. We lit out into the quietening streets, heading for the Seine. Notre Dame loomed beside us; he gazed up at its arches and gargoyles in awe. We crossed a bridge over the river, and sat to talk for awhile on the steps that led down to the concrete banks. The river rolled on in front of us; a gang of Parisian boys blasted by on their bicycles; then the city was left to stillness and the lapping of water and our quiet conversation once again.
Three a.m., then four. We made for the south of the city, walking down the Boulevard St. Michel toward the Jardin de Luxembourg. The long city stretched out under our tired feet. We passed a janitor at the curb washing the sidewalk, who looked up at us indifferently.
Our pilot addressed a loud, jovial word or two in English to the streetsweeper, as he'd done to other passers-by that night. "Nice night out here!" I remember thinking it strange that he'd venture to speak as though expecting the whole world to know English. I thought people would find him insufferably arrogant, a typical ignorant American. But the janitor - indeed, everyone to whom our pilot spoke - lit up at his open demeanor and his easy, natural smile. He smiled toothily in return; good-natured words in rapid French ensued. Our American friend grinned and replied in nonsequitor. On we went.
In the slowly pinkening dawn, as 5:00 a.m. and the re-opening of le metro approached, we straggled tiredly south toward the nearest metro station. The cafes began to stir; their owners emerged like aproned mice, threw open the doors, swept the mat and put out their little metal tables on the sidewalk. We gravitated toward the warm steaming smell of rolls and coffee, and took our few last minutes together to share a meal. Over hot chocolate and croissants, our pilot snapped a few photos of us, and asked the waiter to take a couple more. Amanda gave him her email address, but I'm not sure he ever mailed the pictures to her.
Then we bustled him onto the subway, and he was gone from our lives, and we were gone from his. I wonder how he remembers us. Imagine it -- you're a young man, arriving in a strange city, and two young women emerge like sprites from the depths of the roiling, indifferent night to shepherd you around town. I like the romance of it. Perhaps, for him, the memory has been subsumed in a long series of equally unusual encounters in strange lands. But I remember it clearly, and feel I can still smell the warmth and comfort of that cafe after our long ramble in the chill night air.
Friday, September 24, 2004
Highway 1, California
When Paul woke - or rather, when I woke him, bounding eagerly onto his bed - we marched downstairs to a gigantic breakfast in the cafeteria. We ate cereal and yoghurt and prunes and hashbrowns and pancakes, and rice and beans and salad, which I, hungry from jetlag, tacked on to the end of my breakfast. Then we walked downtown to rent a car, and set off north along the California coast.
Highway 1 winds narrowly and sinuously along the coastal hills, whose cliffs and precipitous slopes drop hundreds of feet to the sea. Great rocks, pounded by millenia of waves from the open Pacific, jut from the water in spires and jagged lumps. Beyond lies the imposing ocean, far vaster than the north-east's Atlantic, which encounters the shore in the quiet coves, bays and barrier island systems of New England. No gentle shaping protects the coast of California from the huge expanse of the open sea. The sea wind drives endlessly inland, like a perpetual message of strength and desolation.
I felt that desolation most keenly when Paul and I stood at the lighthouse on the tip of Point Reyes. Only a metal railing separated us from the sea. Behind us, the rocky headland hulked, battered by ocean wind. We'd arrived at dusk, and in the failing light I sensed a great, pitiless solitude - and felt my own insignificance, as though the ocean could simply have reached up a thumb and rubbed me out, snuffed me casually from the earth. What a terrible loneliness! The other visitors had gone inside the lighthouse for a tour, leaving us utterly alone. What in broad daylight might have seemed only an ordinary vista of ocean became, to me, the emptiness that sailors centuries ago must have known in the face of the great and indifferent sea.
On the walk back to our car, we looked down the cliffs to a winding beach at the base of the hills. The shapes of seagulls and pelicans passed far below, like nomads. I felt alone and awed, gazing out over the slowly dimming surf, and passing beneath an avenue of gnarled pine trees that were flung away from the sea in leaning pose, shaped by wind. I clung to Paul and prattled nervously, watching the wind sweep over the wide, silent hills.
Driving to our campsite through the ugly and broken cow country, we saw deer - does and antlered bucks - two barn owls, and a rabbit. One owl paused on a fence post, and suffered us to gaze at him for a moment in our headlights before he swept silently on again. Earlier, we'd seen harriers flitting over the brush; the next day we spotted a coyote among the cows. Throughout our trip, I felt astonished at how rich in wildlife such empty country could be.
~
Paul and I woke to rain. We'd heard it in the night, in steady thick drops on our tent roof. I'd cuddled close to him and fallen asleep again with a great sense of safety, warmth and well-being in our little tented sphere. We emerged in the morning to an absolute downpour, which drenched Paul even in his short trips between our tent and the car ten feet away.
Worrying about the fate of our day, we left our tent and drove from Olema to Point Reyes Station for a breakfast of eggs, bacon and hashbrowns in a friendly little diner. The interior, warm and flowery, sported the Hispanic touches both in decorations and menu that characterize the San Francisco area. While we ate, the clouds slipped away and left shining sunlight, so abruptly that I squeaked, "Oh look! Sunlight!" in the middle of the restaurant. People at the tables nearest us turned their heads and stared at me. I must have sounded as though I hadn't seen the sun in years.
We came back to our tent among the other tents encircling the small field (hardly a field - more a muddy lawn) where we'd camped. In the glisten of sunlight, we threw a frisbee back and forth over the badminton net, while the other campers goggled politely at the distance of our throws. Then we drew together again, admired our mud-encrusted toes and hands, hugged each other, and packed up our tent.
Back through the cow country. The cattle ranches, considered "historical," have existed since the 1850's, and great swaths of Point Reyes National Park have been devastated by their lowing herds. Although the federal government has purchased the land, the ranchers are allowed stay for as long as their farms remain within the family.
At last, though, we arrived at Tomales Reserve and McClure's beach at the northern tip of the park. We walked down a long path between hill slopes covered in tangled bushes and dry-weather plants. No trees dot the landscape that juts out into the sea. Only dry, brown coastal scrub, specked with the occasional stiff green of coyote bushes, covers the long ridge and the sloping hills. Point Reyes is very dry, an arid environment where it rains only in winter. The downpour we'd received that morning, a park ranger told us, had been the first rain in four or five months.
"That brings home how unlucky we'd have been if it had rained all day," said Paul. No wonder the folks at the restaurant had looked at me so oddly.
The rangers showed us elk herds through spotting scopes, where the animals lounged among the scrub, chewing their cud, their 40-pound antlers majestic atop their heads. Ordinarily, in fall, each male accompanies a herd of 20 or so cows. The most readily visible group, though, was a "bachelor pad," in the ranger's words, of unsuccessful bucks. They lounged disconsolately together, while further off, a small herd of cows could be seen on a ridge alongside their buck. His head, covered in the thick ruff of fur that mantles male elks' heads and necks, rose proudly from the brush beside them.
The simplest things bring such great pleasure. After leaving the rangers and walking up the road to our car, we sat with the doors wide open and our feet out, passing a floury hard salami, a wedge of brie, two tomatoes and slices of wheat bread between us. We watched the sparrows flitting among the scrub and the elk as they rose to graze and then sank heavily down again to rest some more. The hot day spread all around us. In complete ease, we chatted contentedly, and planned our upcoming itinerary as well as dreamed about future forays.
Close in our memories lay the image of McClure's beach under the cliffs, our scramble up the rocks, the foamy wash of waves around our feet. I've held off writing about it, since the deep, glittering blue of the ocean, the red cliffs carved by wind, and the stained black quartzite rocks, jutting from the water and pounded by white surf, defy description. We played for hours on the sand; I sketched the birds, Paul waded in the surf, and we swung 15-foot seaweed whips we found on the beach, that lay there as though Poseidon had discarded his chariot-whip.
All while we walked, fragments of Plath's poem, "Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Real Sea," kept returning to my mind:
We are not what we might be; what we are
Outlaws all extrapolation
Beyond the interval of now and here:
White whales are gone with the white ocean.
No sea-change decks the sunken shank of bone
That chucks in backtrack of the wave;
Though the mind like an oyster labors on and on,
A grain of sand is all we have.
...Blue views are boarded up; our sweet vacation
Dwindles in the hour-glass.
And, by the time we'd eaten our salami and cheese and bread, we only had a little time for our return journey. We managed to stop at Muir Woods on the way home to see the towering redwoods in the dusk, and also stopped to take a few photos of the cliffs by the sea with our bright orange disposable camera. But how soon, it seemed, we were back at IHouse, fatigued and hungry, with only the energy to gulp down dinner at a bright, loud, warehouse-like Indian restaurant, then to struggle home to Paul's room and sleep.
Now, as though it was all a dream - or perhaps but a moment's wakefulness - I'm in Ann Arbor again, and the week has rushed by with the force of a train. Last night, in a moment of quiet, I stood with my kitten in my bedroom when I got home, late at night. I told him that if he purred any louder, he'd vibrate himself to bits in my arms.
There are compensations to returning.
Highway 1 winds narrowly and sinuously along the coastal hills, whose cliffs and precipitous slopes drop hundreds of feet to the sea. Great rocks, pounded by millenia of waves from the open Pacific, jut from the water in spires and jagged lumps. Beyond lies the imposing ocean, far vaster than the north-east's Atlantic, which encounters the shore in the quiet coves, bays and barrier island systems of New England. No gentle shaping protects the coast of California from the huge expanse of the open sea. The sea wind drives endlessly inland, like a perpetual message of strength and desolation.
I felt that desolation most keenly when Paul and I stood at the lighthouse on the tip of Point Reyes. Only a metal railing separated us from the sea. Behind us, the rocky headland hulked, battered by ocean wind. We'd arrived at dusk, and in the failing light I sensed a great, pitiless solitude - and felt my own insignificance, as though the ocean could simply have reached up a thumb and rubbed me out, snuffed me casually from the earth. What a terrible loneliness! The other visitors had gone inside the lighthouse for a tour, leaving us utterly alone. What in broad daylight might have seemed only an ordinary vista of ocean became, to me, the emptiness that sailors centuries ago must have known in the face of the great and indifferent sea.
On the walk back to our car, we looked down the cliffs to a winding beach at the base of the hills. The shapes of seagulls and pelicans passed far below, like nomads. I felt alone and awed, gazing out over the slowly dimming surf, and passing beneath an avenue of gnarled pine trees that were flung away from the sea in leaning pose, shaped by wind. I clung to Paul and prattled nervously, watching the wind sweep over the wide, silent hills.
Driving to our campsite through the ugly and broken cow country, we saw deer - does and antlered bucks - two barn owls, and a rabbit. One owl paused on a fence post, and suffered us to gaze at him for a moment in our headlights before he swept silently on again. Earlier, we'd seen harriers flitting over the brush; the next day we spotted a coyote among the cows. Throughout our trip, I felt astonished at how rich in wildlife such empty country could be.
Paul and I woke to rain. We'd heard it in the night, in steady thick drops on our tent roof. I'd cuddled close to him and fallen asleep again with a great sense of safety, warmth and well-being in our little tented sphere. We emerged in the morning to an absolute downpour, which drenched Paul even in his short trips between our tent and the car ten feet away.
Worrying about the fate of our day, we left our tent and drove from Olema to Point Reyes Station for a breakfast of eggs, bacon and hashbrowns in a friendly little diner. The interior, warm and flowery, sported the Hispanic touches both in decorations and menu that characterize the San Francisco area. While we ate, the clouds slipped away and left shining sunlight, so abruptly that I squeaked, "Oh look! Sunlight!" in the middle of the restaurant. People at the tables nearest us turned their heads and stared at me. I must have sounded as though I hadn't seen the sun in years.
We came back to our tent among the other tents encircling the small field (hardly a field - more a muddy lawn) where we'd camped. In the glisten of sunlight, we threw a frisbee back and forth over the badminton net, while the other campers goggled politely at the distance of our throws. Then we drew together again, admired our mud-encrusted toes and hands, hugged each other, and packed up our tent.
Back through the cow country. The cattle ranches, considered "historical," have existed since the 1850's, and great swaths of Point Reyes National Park have been devastated by their lowing herds. Although the federal government has purchased the land, the ranchers are allowed stay for as long as their farms remain within the family.
At last, though, we arrived at Tomales Reserve and McClure's beach at the northern tip of the park. We walked down a long path between hill slopes covered in tangled bushes and dry-weather plants. No trees dot the landscape that juts out into the sea. Only dry, brown coastal scrub, specked with the occasional stiff green of coyote bushes, covers the long ridge and the sloping hills. Point Reyes is very dry, an arid environment where it rains only in winter. The downpour we'd received that morning, a park ranger told us, had been the first rain in four or five months.
"That brings home how unlucky we'd have been if it had rained all day," said Paul. No wonder the folks at the restaurant had looked at me so oddly.
The rangers showed us elk herds through spotting scopes, where the animals lounged among the scrub, chewing their cud, their 40-pound antlers majestic atop their heads. Ordinarily, in fall, each male accompanies a herd of 20 or so cows. The most readily visible group, though, was a "bachelor pad," in the ranger's words, of unsuccessful bucks. They lounged disconsolately together, while further off, a small herd of cows could be seen on a ridge alongside their buck. His head, covered in the thick ruff of fur that mantles male elks' heads and necks, rose proudly from the brush beside them.
The simplest things bring such great pleasure. After leaving the rangers and walking up the road to our car, we sat with the doors wide open and our feet out, passing a floury hard salami, a wedge of brie, two tomatoes and slices of wheat bread between us. We watched the sparrows flitting among the scrub and the elk as they rose to graze and then sank heavily down again to rest some more. The hot day spread all around us. In complete ease, we chatted contentedly, and planned our upcoming itinerary as well as dreamed about future forays.
Close in our memories lay the image of McClure's beach under the cliffs, our scramble up the rocks, the foamy wash of waves around our feet. I've held off writing about it, since the deep, glittering blue of the ocean, the red cliffs carved by wind, and the stained black quartzite rocks, jutting from the water and pounded by white surf, defy description. We played for hours on the sand; I sketched the birds, Paul waded in the surf, and we swung 15-foot seaweed whips we found on the beach, that lay there as though Poseidon had discarded his chariot-whip.
All while we walked, fragments of Plath's poem, "Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Real Sea," kept returning to my mind:
We are not what we might be; what we are
Outlaws all extrapolation
Beyond the interval of now and here:
White whales are gone with the white ocean.
No sea-change decks the sunken shank of bone
That chucks in backtrack of the wave;
Though the mind like an oyster labors on and on,
A grain of sand is all we have.
...Blue views are boarded up; our sweet vacation
Dwindles in the hour-glass.
And, by the time we'd eaten our salami and cheese and bread, we only had a little time for our return journey. We managed to stop at Muir Woods on the way home to see the towering redwoods in the dusk, and also stopped to take a few photos of the cliffs by the sea with our bright orange disposable camera. But how soon, it seemed, we were back at IHouse, fatigued and hungry, with only the energy to gulp down dinner at a bright, loud, warehouse-like Indian restaurant, then to struggle home to Paul's room and sleep.
Now, as though it was all a dream - or perhaps but a moment's wakefulness - I'm in Ann Arbor again, and the week has rushed by with the force of a train. Last night, in a moment of quiet, I stood with my kitten in my bedroom when I got home, late at night. I told him that if he purred any louder, he'd vibrate himself to bits in my arms.
There are compensations to returning.
Thursday, September 23, 2004
Berserkely
\Ber"serk\, Berserker \Ber"serk*er\, n. [Icel. berserkr.] 1. (Scand. Myth.) One of a class of legendary heroes, who fought frenzied by intoxicating liquors, and naked, regardless of wounds. --Longfellow.
That's what my friend Ward calls Berkeley, California, where I visited Paul this past weekend. Late Friday night, arriving from the airport on the train, we ascended the subterranean stairs and stepped out onto Shattuck Ave. We hadn't gone ten steps before a wild yell rang out into the air, emanating from some window on a side street nearby. "Welcome to Berserkely," commented Paul, and on we went.
Paul's room in International House sits squeezed onto the end of a long hall of equally tiny dorm rooms. We slept squashed together on his single bed, despite spending at least 45 minutes acquiring a cot so I could comfortably sleep alongside. Other than sleeping, we spent little time in that spare, practical cell, preferring instead to walk IHouse's wide halls and drink in its activity. I arrived to Friday night's "Skirt Party," for which Paul and I donned two of my skirts - one each - and wandered downstairs to join a vista of hairy-legged, broad-chested young men in ruffled, hot pink, flared or patterned skirts and sarongs.
On the elevator, descending, we encountered a friend of Paul's, a mild-faced and chubby Hispanic-looking fellow.
"Nice skirt," said Paul.
"Thanks," he said. "It's from Guatemala."
"Oh, I don't know where mine's from," laughed Paul, at which point I chipped in: "Yours is from Brazil."
"Ah, see?" said Paul, and "Nice," said his friend; then the elevator doors opened and he strode out, the fronds of his patterned sarong swinging cheerfully around his burly calves.
We danced on the beer-slickened dance floor, watching the couples wriggle and jive in front of the strobe lights. The intermittent white light, capturing their movements in a thousand instant snapshots, rendered them glamorous even in their preposterous outfits. We joined a great big mosh circle that swayed and swung drunkenly around the room, arm linked to waist linked to arm. I struggled not to get squashed, kicked my feet joyfully, pulled Paul in with me. Earlier, we'd stood on the steps outside of IHouse, talking to several of Paul's friends among a milling crowd of beskirted party-goers. Disdainful of the skirt theme, these friends had dressed as Ninjas. When challenged by passers-by on their attire, they brandished their plastic scimitars threateningly, and explained drunkenly and irrefutably that they were Ninjas and didn't need any kind of silly skirt.
IHouse teems with life and irreverency, much like Berkeley itself. Its walls seem to breathe an acceptance of oddity. Residents smile readily; the elevator walls are papered with posters such as one advertising the loss of a giant bubble wand shaped like a sword, and offering a reward for news of its whereabouts. "Don't let the young whippersnappers get away with it!" it admonishes. In the basement laundry room, four or five IMacs are arranged on the tables alongside the laundry machines, offering internet access while your shirts dry. There's a sense of tradition, time, and hilarity reverberating through the whole building.
~
From the women's bathroom on the 6th floor of IHouse, where Paul's room is located, a large window opens out onto a beautiful view of Berkeley, of the shining skyscrapers of Oakland to the south, and of sailboat-speckled San Francisco Bay straight ahead. Berkeley is built of wood and brick and limestone and plaster, topped by shingle roofs that descend the hill from IHouse towards the bay. Directly below the window, one of IHouse's long stucco wings stretches forward, covered by red, rounded tiles. To one side, framing the view, a church steeple rises upward alongside a tall pine.
In the morning, all is misty and grey; a cool breeze slips damply in, and one brushes one's teeth alongside the panorama of the delicate California coast. Waking early on Saturday, I put both hands on the sill and thrust my head out the window, half-tempted to lower myself from the sill to the crisply-tiled red roof below. Sucking in draught after draught of high, clean morning air, I woke, or so it felt to me, from a deep languor.
That's what my friend Ward calls Berkeley, California, where I visited Paul this past weekend. Late Friday night, arriving from the airport on the train, we ascended the subterranean stairs and stepped out onto Shattuck Ave. We hadn't gone ten steps before a wild yell rang out into the air, emanating from some window on a side street nearby. "Welcome to Berserkely," commented Paul, and on we went.
Paul's room in International House sits squeezed onto the end of a long hall of equally tiny dorm rooms. We slept squashed together on his single bed, despite spending at least 45 minutes acquiring a cot so I could comfortably sleep alongside. Other than sleeping, we spent little time in that spare, practical cell, preferring instead to walk IHouse's wide halls and drink in its activity. I arrived to Friday night's "Skirt Party," for which Paul and I donned two of my skirts - one each - and wandered downstairs to join a vista of hairy-legged, broad-chested young men in ruffled, hot pink, flared or patterned skirts and sarongs.
On the elevator, descending, we encountered a friend of Paul's, a mild-faced and chubby Hispanic-looking fellow.
"Nice skirt," said Paul.
"Thanks," he said. "It's from Guatemala."
"Oh, I don't know where mine's from," laughed Paul, at which point I chipped in: "Yours is from Brazil."
"Ah, see?" said Paul, and "Nice," said his friend; then the elevator doors opened and he strode out, the fronds of his patterned sarong swinging cheerfully around his burly calves.
We danced on the beer-slickened dance floor, watching the couples wriggle and jive in front of the strobe lights. The intermittent white light, capturing their movements in a thousand instant snapshots, rendered them glamorous even in their preposterous outfits. We joined a great big mosh circle that swayed and swung drunkenly around the room, arm linked to waist linked to arm. I struggled not to get squashed, kicked my feet joyfully, pulled Paul in with me. Earlier, we'd stood on the steps outside of IHouse, talking to several of Paul's friends among a milling crowd of beskirted party-goers. Disdainful of the skirt theme, these friends had dressed as Ninjas. When challenged by passers-by on their attire, they brandished their plastic scimitars threateningly, and explained drunkenly and irrefutably that they were Ninjas and didn't need any kind of silly skirt.
IHouse teems with life and irreverency, much like Berkeley itself. Its walls seem to breathe an acceptance of oddity. Residents smile readily; the elevator walls are papered with posters such as one advertising the loss of a giant bubble wand shaped like a sword, and offering a reward for news of its whereabouts. "Don't let the young whippersnappers get away with it!" it admonishes. In the basement laundry room, four or five IMacs are arranged on the tables alongside the laundry machines, offering internet access while your shirts dry. There's a sense of tradition, time, and hilarity reverberating through the whole building.
From the women's bathroom on the 6th floor of IHouse, where Paul's room is located, a large window opens out onto a beautiful view of Berkeley, of the shining skyscrapers of Oakland to the south, and of sailboat-speckled San Francisco Bay straight ahead. Berkeley is built of wood and brick and limestone and plaster, topped by shingle roofs that descend the hill from IHouse towards the bay. Directly below the window, one of IHouse's long stucco wings stretches forward, covered by red, rounded tiles. To one side, framing the view, a church steeple rises upward alongside a tall pine.
In the morning, all is misty and grey; a cool breeze slips damply in, and one brushes one's teeth alongside the panorama of the delicate California coast. Waking early on Saturday, I put both hands on the sill and thrust my head out the window, half-tempted to lower myself from the sill to the crisply-tiled red roof below. Sucking in draught after draught of high, clean morning air, I woke, or so it felt to me, from a deep languor.
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
from August 20, 2004
I just came into the big, wood and tile-paneled hall that is the Daily. It looks and smells just the same - scattered with papers, the computers sitting stockily in their practical lines across the tables, and the slightly musty, paper-and-wood smell that I only now realize is a fundamental part of the Daily experience. I've avoided this building all summer, burnt out by the pace I kept last year. But coming in, I realize I'm ready for this year to start. I'm ready for the hours I'll spend in here; I'm ready for the typing and the bustle and the telephone calls. I'm ready to argue with the editors about typos and grammar mistakes; I'm ready to stay here late at night if necessary, to drum out an article or check its layout on the page. I'm scared, too - this is going to be one of the busiest semesters I've ever had, with Clutch practice and constant traveling over the weekends and my dissertation and everything else. But coming in here makes me feel like maybe I can handle it. There's a sort of timeless competence ingrained in the walls of this place.
It reminds me of Andy's Summer Playhouse, in that the building itself is so deeply integrated with the experience. It's like Andy's, too, in that it's an endeavor almost completely created by the students involved in it. It doesn't have the sense of freedom and summer and creative abandon that Andy's had, nor can it possibly produce the kind of camaraderie that theater creates - especially for me, since I'm not, like the editors, here 24-7 and pouring my soul and sweat into making the Daily happen. But even the smell is reminiscent of Andy's - a smell of dust, wood, paper, a sawdusty smell, flavored with hard work.
It's still quiet in here; summer hasn't quite ended. The business staff is present on the other side of the room, and I hear their soft conversations and the taptap of computer keys. But my side of the room is empty, and the chairs lie in various abandoned poses near the computer screens. Soon this room will be teeming with people and the sounds of the phone ringing and of people talking and of tape recorders returning the tinny voices of prior interviews. It's such a more alive and rich place than my quiet, dead office; than the sullen lab; than the cold, flourescent-lighted halls of the geology department where the best smile you can expect is usually a strained one.
I hope this year goes well. Really, looking at it as it slowly picks up momentum, rolling towards its start, it's quite petrifying. But maybe it's time for a bit more activity and stress in my life. I'm ready not to be bored; I'm ready for a challenge. I want this year to be rich and packed and productive. I want to exceed the expectations of my fears.
Anyway... there it is. The inspiration of the Daily, alongside the memories of other places in my life. Time for me to go back to work - but I'll be back here, maybe Monday or Tuesday, to start in on the several writing projects I've got for the beginning of the year.
It reminds me of Andy's Summer Playhouse, in that the building itself is so deeply integrated with the experience. It's like Andy's, too, in that it's an endeavor almost completely created by the students involved in it. It doesn't have the sense of freedom and summer and creative abandon that Andy's had, nor can it possibly produce the kind of camaraderie that theater creates - especially for me, since I'm not, like the editors, here 24-7 and pouring my soul and sweat into making the Daily happen. But even the smell is reminiscent of Andy's - a smell of dust, wood, paper, a sawdusty smell, flavored with hard work.
It's still quiet in here; summer hasn't quite ended. The business staff is present on the other side of the room, and I hear their soft conversations and the taptap of computer keys. But my side of the room is empty, and the chairs lie in various abandoned poses near the computer screens. Soon this room will be teeming with people and the sounds of the phone ringing and of people talking and of tape recorders returning the tinny voices of prior interviews. It's such a more alive and rich place than my quiet, dead office; than the sullen lab; than the cold, flourescent-lighted halls of the geology department where the best smile you can expect is usually a strained one.
I hope this year goes well. Really, looking at it as it slowly picks up momentum, rolling towards its start, it's quite petrifying. But maybe it's time for a bit more activity and stress in my life. I'm ready not to be bored; I'm ready for a challenge. I want this year to be rich and packed and productive. I want to exceed the expectations of my fears.
Anyway... there it is. The inspiration of the Daily, alongside the memories of other places in my life. Time for me to go back to work - but I'll be back here, maybe Monday or Tuesday, to start in on the several writing projects I've got for the beginning of the year.
Adventurers - from May 21, 2004
I've decided I'm insufficiently brave.
I emerged, or tried to, from University Health Services this afternoon with my prescription and the newspaper clamped under my arm. Arriving at the glass door, I thought to myself, "Why is it so dark outside? I don't remember these windows being tinted." I opened the first door, entered the glassed-in lobby, and thought, "The sky is green."
Earlier, as I'd walked down the street towards UHS, I'd glanced up at a heavy, brooding sky. Last night, too, the tornado warning sirens had sounded in Ann Arbor, eerie, intense and urgent, rising and falling in their terrifying wail. Paul and I had run down from my apartment - after I fidgeted near the door, heart clenching, while he looked for his shoes - to the laundry room in the next building's basement. When the sirens silenced, we returned, and I paced about my apartment for awhile, trying to get better reception on the radio, while lightning flickered and flashed every moment, outside. When we turned out the lights, I lay awake in bed, watching the room illuminate, illuminate, illuminate, while thunder muttered and roared at intervals all around us. At last I fell asleep.
The green sky outside the door of the medical building, then, didn't surprise me; but I felt the same sudden jolt of fear, and turned round instantly to cross the waiting room and descend the stairs to the basement. And so I caught only a glimpse of sky; saw only a moment of the sheeting rain as someone opened a large utility door to allow a frightened, drenched passerby to run inside. A remarkable scene: pale, sickly green air, rain and hail falling in white, angled sheets, nurses calling urgently out into the rain as the individual, framed by the door and silhouetted by the weather, ran in, eyes wide with alarm. Slowly, the patients from other floors in the hospital trickled downstairs: Prof. Verhoogt, his foot in a cast, who looked at me curiously but seemed not to recognize me with my newly short hair; a friend from ultimate; secretaries and pharmacists who bustled about, ensuring everyone's safety and expressing their laughing surprise at the intensity of the storm.
After a few minutes, one man went upstairs to see how things were progressing, and I followed him, chastising myself for my caution. I'd been one of the first to dive downstairs at the merest hint of trouble. But by the time I looked outside again the storm had mostly passed - I had missed the bulk of its intensity. And I found myself suddenly sorry, for that. I missed the experience; I missed its vigor, its unusualness, its lurid green sky, the wild and whipping winds. I don't want to be reckless, but I don't want to be timid, either. Life is too strong, too insistent, too present for timidity.
Now, I'm back in the geology building, and the trees outside are dancing a wild dance, still wind-whipped. When I returned I looked into B.W.'s office, who sat calmly working at his computer, hunched there like he always sits, spreadsheets open in front of him. My own office was empty and dark, my officemates gone, and I asked him where people had hidden themselves to escape the storm.
"Oh, I don't know," said he in his usual loud, jovial tone. "Most of them went out to the lobby to watch through the window" - here he imitated them - " 'Wow, the sky's about to fall!' "
That's geologists for you, at least from my own aquaintance: unafraid, full of their own particular bravado, an attitude that says, "I am a geologist, and an adventurer. I know this natural world, I study it, I have, in my way, conquered it. I'm not afraid of it and intend to show you so - to show you how cavalier and bold, how careless and experience-seeking, I can be." These are the geologists and student geologists I know from B.'s picnic each year at his farmhouse, throwing one log after another onto the yearly bonfire in the rain, carelessly pushing the logs deeper into the flame with their boots, standing closer to its heat than I dare, telling stories of drinking, stories of field camp, stories, probably embellished, of their their adventures, hiking, exploring, mountain-climbing, drinking. Casually needling one another, smoking cigarettes, coolly adding the bench-logs to the fire.
Then B. showed me a weather map of the storm on Weather Underground, and pointed out the long front of red, followed by oranges and yellows in a vast swath behind it, already leaving town, already gone, continuing on, on, on. And dismissed me, in his usual sudden, peremptory way, that is always as abrupt and as startling as his friendliness.
I emerged, or tried to, from University Health Services this afternoon with my prescription and the newspaper clamped under my arm. Arriving at the glass door, I thought to myself, "Why is it so dark outside? I don't remember these windows being tinted." I opened the first door, entered the glassed-in lobby, and thought, "The sky is green."
Earlier, as I'd walked down the street towards UHS, I'd glanced up at a heavy, brooding sky. Last night, too, the tornado warning sirens had sounded in Ann Arbor, eerie, intense and urgent, rising and falling in their terrifying wail. Paul and I had run down from my apartment - after I fidgeted near the door, heart clenching, while he looked for his shoes - to the laundry room in the next building's basement. When the sirens silenced, we returned, and I paced about my apartment for awhile, trying to get better reception on the radio, while lightning flickered and flashed every moment, outside. When we turned out the lights, I lay awake in bed, watching the room illuminate, illuminate, illuminate, while thunder muttered and roared at intervals all around us. At last I fell asleep.
The green sky outside the door of the medical building, then, didn't surprise me; but I felt the same sudden jolt of fear, and turned round instantly to cross the waiting room and descend the stairs to the basement. And so I caught only a glimpse of sky; saw only a moment of the sheeting rain as someone opened a large utility door to allow a frightened, drenched passerby to run inside. A remarkable scene: pale, sickly green air, rain and hail falling in white, angled sheets, nurses calling urgently out into the rain as the individual, framed by the door and silhouetted by the weather, ran in, eyes wide with alarm. Slowly, the patients from other floors in the hospital trickled downstairs: Prof. Verhoogt, his foot in a cast, who looked at me curiously but seemed not to recognize me with my newly short hair; a friend from ultimate; secretaries and pharmacists who bustled about, ensuring everyone's safety and expressing their laughing surprise at the intensity of the storm.
After a few minutes, one man went upstairs to see how things were progressing, and I followed him, chastising myself for my caution. I'd been one of the first to dive downstairs at the merest hint of trouble. But by the time I looked outside again the storm had mostly passed - I had missed the bulk of its intensity. And I found myself suddenly sorry, for that. I missed the experience; I missed its vigor, its unusualness, its lurid green sky, the wild and whipping winds. I don't want to be reckless, but I don't want to be timid, either. Life is too strong, too insistent, too present for timidity.
Now, I'm back in the geology building, and the trees outside are dancing a wild dance, still wind-whipped. When I returned I looked into B.W.'s office, who sat calmly working at his computer, hunched there like he always sits, spreadsheets open in front of him. My own office was empty and dark, my officemates gone, and I asked him where people had hidden themselves to escape the storm.
"Oh, I don't know," said he in his usual loud, jovial tone. "Most of them went out to the lobby to watch through the window" - here he imitated them - " 'Wow, the sky's about to fall!' "
That's geologists for you, at least from my own aquaintance: unafraid, full of their own particular bravado, an attitude that says, "I am a geologist, and an adventurer. I know this natural world, I study it, I have, in my way, conquered it. I'm not afraid of it and intend to show you so - to show you how cavalier and bold, how careless and experience-seeking, I can be." These are the geologists and student geologists I know from B.'s picnic each year at his farmhouse, throwing one log after another onto the yearly bonfire in the rain, carelessly pushing the logs deeper into the flame with their boots, standing closer to its heat than I dare, telling stories of drinking, stories of field camp, stories, probably embellished, of their their adventures, hiking, exploring, mountain-climbing, drinking. Casually needling one another, smoking cigarettes, coolly adding the bench-logs to the fire.
Then B. showed me a weather map of the storm on Weather Underground, and pointed out the long front of red, followed by oranges and yellows in a vast swath behind it, already leaving town, already gone, continuing on, on, on. And dismissed me, in his usual sudden, peremptory way, that is always as abrupt and as startling as his friendliness.
Ferrying - from May 11, 2004
Vancouver. We drove up the coast, flanked by mountains. Arriving at the first ferry, we waited in a long line of parked cars, and Paul and I ran down to the park to throw a frisbee back and forth and, a few minutes later, to stare down from the dock into the dark water, where fish and jellyfish swam just under the surface. We ran hand in hand from the park to a corner shop to buy me a journal, harried because we knew the ferry would arrive any moment, and picked through the available options until we found a beautiful little black one, spiral-bound, its cover shiny, just the right size. Then we heard the ferry toot its resounding note over the water, and tore back along the streets to the ferry station, where my mother had already come partway down to look for us.
The ferry rides, every one during our four days of driving, took us past spectacular scenery. On either side, snow-capped mountains reared above the green hills that sloped down to the sea. To our right, sailing north, the mountains of the continent; to the left, and further away, the mountains of Vancouver Island. We wove around the green islands rising from the sea, and trained binoculars on the birds that even a casual eye couldn't help but notice everywhere. Sometimes we'd see seals, their round heads lifting from the water to gaze our way; they'd disappear in a sinuous, shining curve in the sunlight. Rain is common in the area around Vancouver, but soon after we left Whistler (where we'd spent the first part of our trip), the clouds cleared and we spent days in the sunlight.
One ferry trip I remember particularly, and did not have time to write about in the nature journal where I kept notes all trip. We spent our last two days in and around Victoria, at the southernmost tip of Vancouver Island, and in the evening of our final day boarded the ferry to the mainland. We'd traveled around the western side of the island that day, near Sooke, exploring tidepools and a long barrier island-like spit, and Paul and I had rented bicycles and gone on a ride through the cedar woodlands. We'd planned to catch the nine o'clock ferry, but through a mixture of luck and my parents' worrying that we'd miss the ferry altogether, we arrived in Victoria just in the nick of time for the 7:00 ferry. It turned out to be wonderful that we had. As we departed, the sun sank slowly toward the mountains behind us, and around us the low green hills rose from the water. A diaphanous haze filled the air; all turned pink and gold, and the sun crept among the clouds. High snowcapped peaks stood proudly on the island, remote and inaccessible. My father and Paul and I stood gaping at the forward edge of the boat; my mother, frightened off by the cold sea wind, flitted back and forth from inside to our side. Valinor, I thought.
As the boat maneuvered patiently through the water, the light failed, and my binoculars became increasingly insufficient to identify the tiny black birds that rested on the water. They looked so solitary down there: one tiny pelagic bird at a time, or sometimes a small raft of six or seven, sometimes littler even than the crests of the waves. It grew colder, and we swung slowly past the last of the green islands, leaving the protected passageways between them. On the open sea between Vancouver Island and the mainland, we could see sheets of rain falling far off over the water. Vancouver glittered faintly on the continent ahead. The few people that had lingered on the deck went inside, leaving me sitting on a big tacklebox, my back against the wall and knees drawn up, huddled into my jacket. I didn't want to lose even a moment of that air, that solitary, salty, independent air, the sea blowing it mercilessly into my face, the water and sky one great single grayness.
The ferry rides, every one during our four days of driving, took us past spectacular scenery. On either side, snow-capped mountains reared above the green hills that sloped down to the sea. To our right, sailing north, the mountains of the continent; to the left, and further away, the mountains of Vancouver Island. We wove around the green islands rising from the sea, and trained binoculars on the birds that even a casual eye couldn't help but notice everywhere. Sometimes we'd see seals, their round heads lifting from the water to gaze our way; they'd disappear in a sinuous, shining curve in the sunlight. Rain is common in the area around Vancouver, but soon after we left Whistler (where we'd spent the first part of our trip), the clouds cleared and we spent days in the sunlight.
One ferry trip I remember particularly, and did not have time to write about in the nature journal where I kept notes all trip. We spent our last two days in and around Victoria, at the southernmost tip of Vancouver Island, and in the evening of our final day boarded the ferry to the mainland. We'd traveled around the western side of the island that day, near Sooke, exploring tidepools and a long barrier island-like spit, and Paul and I had rented bicycles and gone on a ride through the cedar woodlands. We'd planned to catch the nine o'clock ferry, but through a mixture of luck and my parents' worrying that we'd miss the ferry altogether, we arrived in Victoria just in the nick of time for the 7:00 ferry. It turned out to be wonderful that we had. As we departed, the sun sank slowly toward the mountains behind us, and around us the low green hills rose from the water. A diaphanous haze filled the air; all turned pink and gold, and the sun crept among the clouds. High snowcapped peaks stood proudly on the island, remote and inaccessible. My father and Paul and I stood gaping at the forward edge of the boat; my mother, frightened off by the cold sea wind, flitted back and forth from inside to our side. Valinor, I thought.
As the boat maneuvered patiently through the water, the light failed, and my binoculars became increasingly insufficient to identify the tiny black birds that rested on the water. They looked so solitary down there: one tiny pelagic bird at a time, or sometimes a small raft of six or seven, sometimes littler even than the crests of the waves. It grew colder, and we swung slowly past the last of the green islands, leaving the protected passageways between them. On the open sea between Vancouver Island and the mainland, we could see sheets of rain falling far off over the water. Vancouver glittered faintly on the continent ahead. The few people that had lingered on the deck went inside, leaving me sitting on a big tacklebox, my back against the wall and knees drawn up, huddled into my jacket. I didn't want to lose even a moment of that air, that solitary, salty, independent air, the sea blowing it mercilessly into my face, the water and sky one great single grayness.
Introduction
Welcome to my blog! This is my place to share my thoughts and adventures with my friends. The following three posts are old entries from my previous blog; I've been homeless on the web for awhile and am looking for a comfortable harbor.
This will be it for at least awhile.
This will be it for at least awhile.
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