Green Girl

This morning we built an AM radio. Not from scratch exactly, and I still can’t tell you how the amplifier or the resistors work, but we finished it and Charlie switched it on, leaned in close to listen.  It had an on-off switch, a volume slide and a wheel tuner that works a short segment of airway band so as to receive two stations.  We passed over KSCO talk radio - broadcasting from the three towers high overhead on nearby Moran lake - and opted for a scratchy memories show, perfect somehow for a tinny snap circuit AM radio speaker with old songstresses swooning and old jiversters snapping swinging tunes.  Charlie experimented to see if the radio got better reception outside than inside, and it did, so we pulled patio chairs around the slide out back, leaned back and stacked our legs matchsticklike on each other using the slide as an ottoman.  Ben slid down the slide till his bare feet met mine bottom to bottom and laid there too, the sun shining on us in our spring green outdoor living room, quiet, listening, to the crackly then clear “At Last.”

Got the holiday decorations down before February.  We had left them up for cheer at our January Poetry Party. Poets got a little rowdy on our knock off of 515’s Bo Diddley, an old fashioned whiskey sour with egg white whipped up by Pam.  I am beginning to feel like a character on Cheers, or at least that I should take out some stock in 515.  We have spent a lot of time there lately, including one evening where we girls bogarted the Miles Davis room and wrote and shared our words about our word for the year.  (More on that later).  I am excited for 2009 - I turn 40, have many travel plans, feel so happily abundant in friends, am discovering a delicious growing softness within myself about myself, and am uncovering wellsprings of energy for work and creativity. Its been a sweet time where an easy happiness is just there, and most of the time too.  As I said to a friend this week  - “keep it coming!”

Inspired by Dona B I will be embarking on a year of self portraits. This is my first one I will post!

I am generally waiting on getting a digital SLR to make a daily portrait but until then may post a few from my iPhone if they come out at all well. They will live on my Flickr photostream. The project causes me some anxiety, so I know it pushes my boundaries in some ways and thus will be a worthwhile commitment.  Wish me true seeing and self appreciation!

Mom came out for her birthday and we toured Elkhorn Slough on a pontoon boat.  The captain knew much and still shared excitement about the tremendous flocks of gulls, just in off their migration, and the daily changes of that nature place. Mom loved it. On the way back the fog rolled in mystifying everything except us - ensconced in life jackets, sipping hot chocolate and conversing to keep our bubble of civilized strong around the boat, even yet feeling the weight of the wildness seeping in, quiet and gray.

Kings Canyon Rae Lakes Loop journal excerpt:

29 September 2008

I met fall today.

Her still moments, her cold winds, her banks of day glow aspen marching up the hill. Her high cloud skies and her brilliant azures too.  How her mountain bluebirds chase through the meadow when one gets a fat bug.  How in these last few days before snow she puts out all her berries and seeds.  The preciousness of her few sunny hours.  Her long nights.

She offers a different kind of end of season harvest here in the high country. Concert of birdsong in the migratory throats of the passers through, the bears moving toward lower ground foraging for winter’s extra warmth, the color pouring out of the plants in the culmination of their year’s effort before drawing their sap deep down in.  Even the flowers, so summer and spring, are transformed to seedy pods blown open everywhere and quiet.

But mostly, the berries.  Juniper trees pulling down half the big sky into the hard blue berries they hold in tight bunches basketed on their limbs.  The elderberry bowing over its ripe canopy of river blue.  The thimble and gooseberries, hard to find and eat respectively.  The hillsides of manzanita, each berry tanning to amber after a fiery red start.  Chokecherries too, their darkest black red hiding smooth oval seed centers.  Everywhere, everywhere the plants have their year’s work out in offering. We taste each one along the way.

Listen now, too, to the tall fir, its many cones impossibly bunched on its highest branches as it lets go its seed in the hot sun or cool of evening.  See the winged seeds spiral out over the stream.  Hear them showering down in a singsong tinkle through her simple and clean heavenward raised branches.

[More photos and words from Rae Lakes trip]

These drinks were truly light-filled. As I visited with Ondrea at the Roxy Cafe in Encinitas, the time stretched to hold abundant conversation, laughter, all of the reflections and refractions of an authentic life.  Magic.  Gratitude.

Spring has me pulling out all my colors, just to keep up with the tulips.

I have waited to start this website until I get organized, have something more polished to say publicly, get a camera and take good photos. That could be awhile. Meanwhile, here I am starting anyway.

My Haiku Year page is what I’m workin on most, inspired by Tracy Grubbs who was inspired by this book The Haiku Year.  Try it for yourself!