small change

to cleave the light

I’ve started this post a dozen times or so, each time with a different notion, but with this picture as a constant. Something about the cleaving of light and shadow through this narrow alley in the town of Sonoma keeps me oscillating between topics, unable to stay within the clear boundary of one.

Most people who go to Sonoma, both the wine country and the city itself, will take pictures of wineries, of buildings gilded with a hint of that gold-specked charm of history, or better yet, of each other raising a glass of wine. Not me, it seems. I took this one picture, then a couple of the lunch we had in LaSalette, a restaurant we happened on in our search to celebrate a special occasion, and finally a “selfie” of sorts (a reflection in a mirrored surface, actually) in the after-haze of my three-port tasting dessert.

We live in the hinterlands of the wine country here in Marin, and yet we haven’t been up there proper in a couple of years. Hard to believe, but it seems the longer we keep on living here, the fewer places we go to these days.

Habit might be one reason for no longer venturing far, or, come to think of it, even out so much. The habitual comforts of home, along with the habitual chores to keep that comfort going that chews up a lot of time, that is. Another reason for staying put, and a reason that’s a little scarier than the idea of sloth, might be that we are getting old. And becoming old in ways I thought wouldn’t happen to us. Not us, surely. Aging in place suddenly looks like getting stuck in place.

Surely there must be some other territory between the blindingly sunny side of youth and the dulled and seemingly depthless side in the shadows thrown by the accumulation of years.

Maybe the trick is to not get caught in the alleys of preconceived notions in the city of stereotypes where the angle of shadows is thrown by the unforgiving slant of buildings that were designed by a rigid construction code. Maybe the trick is to lose the map, but not the compass. To ditch the grid of avenues and set out on a path twisted by hope and wrested from the wilderness with the honed edge of experience in all kinds of light.

my own private bicycle dreams

One of the horoscopes I glanced over for my astrological sign said something about my gift of gab shining brighter than even that of a rap star or auctioneer today. Well, some other cosmic forces have been mucking around in the heavenly configuration of my days, because the only thing that I feel these days is a tight grip on my imagination and my tongue. Hence the silence for weeks. In the good old days of the blog era dawn, I wrote plenty about writers’ block, so much in fact that I think I bored my readers and myself right out of even paying the slightest attention when the subject rises, like the tides, bringing the same old stirred-up mud into the estuary where muses sometimes go to get away from their nagging charges.

For the same amount of time that my imagination and tongue have been missing in action, I have been staring at this photo I took one on of my biking outings along the Corte Madera Creek some time ago. The statue of Sir Francis Drake, looking more like Don Quixote in this rendition by Dennis Patton, makes me think of rusty dreams and hammered dreamers. My bike, so bright and lean, seems to mock the dreamer and the dreams, showing the absurdity of saddling up the hollow hunks of metal shaped in the form of an adventurer.

So there you have it. Not what I planned to write as I kept looking at the picture on my monitor. The again, “I,” didn’t have a chance to write, given that it’s the badly cobbled and rather hollowed inner critic who got to sit here and post today. Yea, she’s got the gift of gab, that auctioneer of fear…. Anyway, make of the picture what you will. Sir Francis Drake may be moored in mud for as long as his feet of steel will hold him up, but my bike is ready to roll, ready for wherever my old legs can pedal it, and ready to pose for picturing dreams that take one from the humdrum of here to the riotous drumming hums of somewhere there, where life looks so much faster and brighter, and, well, lived….

scattered

Corte Madera Creek at Greenbrae, under US 101

Nearly 30 minutes have gone by and I wrote nothing. Checked Twitter twice. Facebook once. Read a couple of entries from blogs on my list of links. Thought about the list of things I need to get from the store so visiting family can enjoy an afternoon of watching basketball games with enough food to nosh on. Toyed with various ideas for making matzo pizza. Worried about the strained muscle in my back that’s keeping me from riding the bike. The bike that probably caused my backache when I walked up the stairs with it after having fetched it from the bike shop, where it got serviced so that I can start some more challenging rides.

In between splitting my already divided attention, I thought about starting the blog move from TypePad to WordPress. A daunting task, which, so far I managed by starting another blog on WordPress: Marin Bytes. Not much there yet, but the idea is to explore the place I live in, rather than just the twists and turns of moods inside my head, that space my writing chose to inhabit as of late.

In another 30 minutes, I hope to be out, walking along the same old path by the creek, perhaps even stopping at the same spot from which I took the photo featured in this post, wondering if I could resist the urge to capture the light on the water or the shadows on the ground shifting as they do, unfolding their own rich narrative for which no language is required. So often lately, I find the words I cull from a language gone slightly stale, lacking in breadth and breath to bring forth the world of which I want to speak.

tuesday, but it may as well be monday

… that is, if rainy days and Monday get you down – which they do me at times.

Another day slipped through in an instant, it seems. It was hard to mark its moments, as the skies were flat with the same dulled light illuminating nothing in particular until darkness fell. All at once, it also seems.

But I did get outside, on a meandering walk this afternoon. Out of habit, I took some pictures. Perhaps I was hoping that the camera had a sharper sense for color today than what I could discern. A spot of red, that boat on the dock and the deep black of crows that didn’t quite make it into the frame. Just as well.

spinning wheels

The old cliché goes something like this: “On the Internet, nobody knows you are a dog.”

I am going to borrow that and adapt it to this: On Instagram, when you post those photos of your cyclocross bike on various trails or propped nicely against some railing beyond which there is an exciting territory to explore, no one knows that you are an old woman.

Old and at least 100 in the eyes of all those young men who suddenly “heart” your photo of your bike as soon as you post it on Instagram and tag it “cycling” or “cyclocross.”

And it gets worse.

Yesterday, when I was riding the bike up the trail on Shaver Grade, I was wearing a small leather purse on my back. Yes, riding the cyclocross with a purse with a little gold thingamajig on one of the zippers.

*

OK, just for fun, I'll play along and put in one of the "Related Links" recommended by TypePad. Looks like it's something I should read too. Maybe I'll get inspired to form the first ever senior citizen women's cyclocross team.... now I am just spinning my wheels in the mud of whisful thinking.

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How to Train for Cyclocross

not so easy rider

This last weekend I finally took the cyclocross bike on a dirt trail up around Mt. Tam. Picked the flattest path through the slopes, though not without a good deal of rocks along the way. Sure, it was fun … but I couldn’t help feeling as if I had been some 40 years too late for the ride.

writeout

Hugh Howey has made it big. Big time. Big money. He did so in part thanks to Amazon flooding the parched country of opportunities for publishing the traditional way for writers bent on launching their words into the world, tradition be damned. With his hugely successful self-published novel, Wool, Mr. Howey found himself in a position to negotiate on his own terms with those traditional publishing houses when they came calling to share int he spoils. He was able to broker a deal with Simon & Schuster tat not only gave him a six-figure deal for print publication rights, but also ensured that he kept the digital rights to his book. I am not even going to mention the film rights he has acquired so far.

Mr. Howey has worked very hard, from what I gather in that article from The Wall Street Journal that chronicles his rise to fame and fortune. But I cant’ help feeling that he was also very lucky. I have yet to read the book, so I can’t comment on the nature of the prose or the spellbinding features of the story.

But the story of his success is spellbinding plenty to me. A fairy tale, and an American fairy tale at that, with Amazon as Aladdin’s lamp rubbed just the right way to bring the wished-for fame and fortune in this case. Not that in these American fairy tales there aren’t hardships and trials along the road to the cave of riches, but in the genie’s eerie light, all these take on an aura of causality. You know the iron grip of that chain link: your hard work will bring you sweet rewards. 

There are millions of us, laboring away alone in our “writers’ rooms” with each word bled on the page marking the struggle that we are led to believe will bring a reward from out there in the world. Surely if you sit there long enough, if you work the sentences hard enough, if you keep telling the story that is making its way trough you, surely you will find success, and maybe even a fortune, as Mr. Howey has. And, if you read enough “how to books,” then, maybe you can also get the right technique for rubbing that lamp to release the genie who will deliver you the golden goods.

Am I envious? Yes, of course I am. I published a small poetry book once on Amazon and I think I sold a total of 24 copies … actually 23, since one was returned. Not enough to even get a single royalty payment. Do I begrudge Mr. Howey the fame and fortune? No. I say more power to him, even I know that the fact that this has happened to him, doesn’t mean that I have more chances of making it as a writer who can make a living at it.

I’ve been honing my craft for decades. Some of my prose is so sharp these days that I constantly cut myself on it. Every wordy project I start that is longer than a blog post ends up a bloody mess. As if my skill with the cleaver of language had hacked away the flesh of story, without which the bones of literature make for hollow chimes in the wind.

Need I say more? You do see my problem here….

OK.

Rant over.

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The extraordinary rise of Wool

Silicon Alley Insider: How Hugh Howey Wrote A Bestseller And Sold The Movie Rights With Nothing More Than A Laptop

Wool, Gathering

wired

 

Cheetah - wire & copper sculpture by Benjamin Benet

It perplexes me how as I keep getting older, the faster things go by. And the more things there seem to be coming from every which way, too. Caught in the blur, my dreams for clarity are the only thing to linger these days.

Wired at times, like this cheetah. And without the innards -- the heart and the other muscles -- to run with the horde, too, like this cheetah, with any thought of flight securely caged.

It’s been a week of long lists and rollercoaster learning curves. Projects started in tandem. Meanwhile, the sun has been out every day, getting warmer, teasing blossoms out of magnolias and cherry trees. We are awash in things that are budding. Spring in winter, probably to be followed by winter in spring. Who knows?

Meanwhile, my efforts to move the blog are grinding to a halt. Even as I am busy “decorating” the new blog space, which hasn’t gone public yet. In the grand scheme of things it makes no difference if this blog, like some of my other ones, also gets eaten up by the wayback machine. Nothing that precious here, nothing that engaging that deserves a claim to perpetuity, however fleeting the definitions of perpetuity these days may be.

a movable type

I’ve been trying to get out of here … I mean from my current blog space. For some time now, I’ve had dreams for a slicker site. Something less dusty and dated. Something shinier, more contemporary, more with it, whatever the moment’s with it is. The thought of moving hundreds of posts, along with nearly as many images from TypePad to a self-hosted site with sophisticated bells and whistles has been scurrying around in the back of my web brain like a rodent getting fatter every time someone threw me a morsel of hope of how easy this process can be. 

Well yes, I remember how easy it was to set up my own sites – including my own blogging platform back in the early days of such undertakings when enthusiasm was the high-grade fuel that kept me devouring new developments in technology. Easy, but come to think of it, in a way that is mostly so in retrospect.

So far, I have spent the better part of the last few days trying to set up a new site with a new domain. As I navigate through the back alleys of the hosting site’s file structures, trying to remember old stuff through the overlay of the more user-friendly panels and ftp utilities and easy-as-pie installers and plugins and … well, I am feeling overwhelmed. And I already "broke" my setup a few times. So now I am feeling very old, as if my brain had been drained of the capacity to geek out on the first few rounds of the last two decades of the next new thing that came along.

I just want to write. It’s what I like to do and it’s what I can still do, regardless of what next new thing sweeps in on the wings of progress with the promise of altering my future beyond the wildest imagination – and usually for only the good. Of course.

But TypePad, with its origins older than WordPress, makes this blogging business difficult these days. These days, this platform seems a little creaky and haunted by the ghosts of what was. Getting out of here is a huge hassle, as TypePad holds the images I upload hostage somewhere inaccessible to me and renamed in a crazy random fashion. It’s a bit like the Hotel California of The Eagles, you know, the place where you can check out any time, but never leave….

Anyway, move I will, even if I have to leave behind the content and the pictures. I’ve already lost my original blog to the wayback machine. In this, the story of my blog life will mirror the periodic erasures in my life brought on by the habits of emigration.

Oh well….

in vino veritas

She sat by herself at one of the largest tables in the café. Her walker was within arm’s reach, but she looked as if she tried hard to put an unbridgeable distance between it and herself. In front of her on the empty table, a glass of red wine. It was around 10:30 or so in the morning. The café had just started food service, or so it seemed to me. She took a few serious sips from the glass of wine while she sat there, staring at nothing in particular.  She had to be close to 80 or so. it was hard to tell. All sorts of scenarios ran through my mind as I watched her. She has always had a glass of red wine in the morning. She had just lost her husband, a man who had never touched alcohol, and so she is drinking out of desperation and anger. She misses him and wants to die, but she wants to live a life that couldn’t be any different form the one she had for what seems like centuries with him. Maybe she’s in the early stages of Alzheimer’s and thinks it’s happy hour. She likes the feeling of lightness, a feeling that's harder to conjure each day. Maybe she has a bucket list and wine for breakfast is just one of those things that’s as daring for her as jumping out of airplanes is for others…. Well, you get the picture. It's full of maybes, like that glass is full of wine before 11 am in the morning....

In one big gulp, she drains the glass and hoists herself up from the table. She grabs her walker and pushing ahead she shuffles toward the exit, perhaps now ready to face another day that took her by surprise when she opened her eyes and realized that here she was, old, nearly crippled, with hopes for any of those conditions to change for the better as distant as the outcomes of all those fairy tales her mother read to her back when days and nights were patterned from the same cloth of time and not frayed and rent apart from the sharp-edged fear that unravels the stitch of reason that youth had strung so tight.