small change

ear nest

The weather turned today. Suddenly and definitely. A mess of clouds, nascent gusts of wind, and the tentative entry of rain falling heavily at times made a pretty convincing argument about fall being here. I managed to make it to the Oakland airport before the weather came n to steal the show, which meant that my younger son, home from Boston for a surprise weekend visit, had a somewhat less neurotic mother gripping the wheels as we whizzed passed all those rumbling trucks on I 880.

On the way home, once we hit old familiar ground, the San Rafael-Richmond bridge, he shared the reason for his visit, and all was well, in spite of the rain, and change of season, and all manner of gusts sweeping through. Lucky for him, too, that in one of my latest yoga workshop, we have undertaken  the practice of NOT giving any advice to anyone for the next few weeks.

Most parents take the dispensation of advice as a "birth" right, but most children will hear a note of disapproval and the constant of criticism in what parents assume is meant to save their kids from grief. But we can't save our kids from grief. And we shouldn't want to; because that would be holding them back from life. In the end, all we can do is to listen -- to really listen.

So, this weekend, as the rain beats down on the resistant roof, as the wind fills the hollows, I will listen. I will try to really listen.

for marja-leena ...

... who has asked me if we really have much of a fall here in California. Indeed we do, though not as dramatic (or lengthy) as in the Northwest, leaves turn color. Some take on a deep, deep blush, before they let go of the last tether that had kept them above earthly matters all summer long. Others, like the maple, shrivel on the branches, sapped as they are of life-giving drink:

These are minor dramas, but they still pull a punch against the dominant greenery that languishes through all seasons, without so much as turning a shade. Unless, of course, fire comes -- which changes everything!

strange stirrings

Lorianne of hoarded ordinaries captured a couple of glaring alien eyes in Waban, so when I saw the floating eye of an otherworldly cyclops on the wall of my living room, as if this space were nothing bu a petrie dish, I thought there must be something afoot ...

... or rather, it is just getting closer to Halloween once again!

But, today it is still a gorgeous sunny day here in my corner of California, with the temperatures nearing 80, so I am off to soak it all in before darkness falls.

what i did on my blog vacation

So, it's been quiet here, but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy or having fun and adventures. Courtesy of the current state of the economy, I have been riding the rollercoaster, watching our savings diminish in the face of diminishing years we have left to recover whatever losses we will incur.

So, I have been worried about the economy, but also amused by the wealth of explanations of how we got here and who is to blame for the wild ride in the amusement park that is about to close down.  Inspired by a post on the Babyboomer Chronicles, I started to peruse the barter section of craigslist myself, as well as take stock of the skills I could barter for things I need. I am pretty good at organizing information and paperwork. I am also a decent cook, one who knows how to make healthy and tasty meals. I amnot a gardener, though. I knit fairly, but can't sew....

Apropos of knitting: I have taken up the needles again, having been asked by my son to knit him some warm socks in which he could watch the Green Bay Packers with his buddies in his sub-heated house in Wisconisn. So, I am obliging, and throwing in a chullu-inspired hat, with a generous earflap that extends to the back of the head:

Well, the hat is in progress and almost finished, since this picture was taken.  At this speed of knitting, I think I will have my gift-giving dilemma solved for this season. Between my dehydrator (and my friend's persimon tree) and my knitting needles and stash of yarn, there is a bounty of goodies to come.

in the light of the moon

[Warning: confessions from the dark side of motherhood!]

Last night, when I went to my Spanish class, I caught a glimpse of the harvest moon in all its magnificent glory, swathed as it was in the darkening blue of skies sutured with bruised pink where the horizon met the bay. I didn't have my camera with me, but even if I would have had it, I doubt that it could have captured what I truly saw. By the time class was over, the moon was diminished, as if the night sky had closed in on it and was pushing it away into the abyss of space.

By that time, I was also preoccupied with my own growing night sky, a pressing awareness of loss. It would be easy to blame this sense on the times, being what they are, but this waning inside has been rising on the horizon of my consciousness ever since I left the younger son in Boston, waving good-bye to him and his brand new life, as the spouse and I drove off to go home to the empty nest.

It's not as if this was the first time we waved good-bye to our children, or even to this child in particular. It's not as if we haven't had a full taste of a house abandoned by children. But here I am still, like the harvest moon, all puffed up with light to make a stand against the coming long night of winter.

The mother in me in the shadow of my children's glowing independence finds herself a little wild with greed for the past, even as the bounty of the harvest should be obvious and an occasion for much joy and celebration. Like that moon, I am still hanging around in the proverbial morning of my children's adult life, refusing to slide gracefully or gently into the oblivion of night or the harsh light of day:

this and that

I was going to write a post about the economy, but then, as I started to think back to other lean times, what came back was the riches of an inner life that has been buried by a heady mix of unmeasurable and immeasurable experiences and those pesky quotidian concerns and such over the years of living to this day. For some reason, I kept flashing back to a time in those leaner years, when, as I was trying to finish writing my thesis in communications studies at Simon Fraser University, I spent the nights reading the novels of  Iris Murdoch.

During the day, I lived in a world of measured in numbers, such the number of pages I had to write each day, the number of slices of toast and cups of coffee I could afford on what was left over in my budget after paying for my rent and gas for my car, which I needed to commute to the university, and so forth. But at night, I traveled first class in a metaphysical universe where the concepts of the "nice" and the "good," where love and duty, where ethics and politics, drew me in like graceful hosts. How far these worlds seem now, even though I still have all those books Murdoch wrote and can easily flip through them at will and at any time. But like their slightly musty smell, my enthusiasm for "embodied" metaphysics has staled, or stalled....

Back in those days, I also dreamed of writing novels, because telling stories, to me, seemed like gateways between people so that they could, thorough a common image, help each other build better worlds. Naive of me, indeed, but I truly believed in the redemptive force of art! I believed, I suppose, in the magic of images and was in a spellbound state, for a lack of, well, a life lived outside the ivory tower. And to think that my chosen field, back then, was communication! Ha!

And, talking of communication and the power of images, seems to me that this California quail (spied through the reflective window, unfortunately) has something to share with the Buddha:

in the light of it

I have been poor in my life before, at least as far as finances are concerned. But I was also young when I was poor, and though enjoying my life greatly in the company of friends and books and the outdoors, I was still hoping for more worldly goods to come my way, as some kind of birthright. Back then, poverty seemed like a temporary state and even fun,like school, like vacation, like waiting for a ride to an exotic destination.

The prospect of poverty, now that I have had the “worldly goods” is daunting at this age and stage in my life, when friends are harder to come by, wordy books seem less the gateway to possible worlds, and exploring the great outdoors has become a lot more challenging on account of the wear-and-tear on my body.

And yet there is something liberating in the thought that as the stock market keeps taking whatever I saved through investments lower on the scale, I’ll have to dig deeper into the resources I had when I was young to weather the lack of resources that have fueled this life I have been living.

Then again, it is good to know I am not alone in my worries. Recent polls have found that the economy is stressing older women, as well as Hispanics, more than other groups in general. I am hardly the only one of my generation who has had reoccurring nightmares of becoming a “bag lady” even during better times. Some of the stress symptoms the article mentions, such as the muscle tension, is becoming very familiar to me, as , perversely, I find myself doing less yoga, just when I should be doing more…. I should start by taking the the advice given here!

after rain

Fall has been making itself felt around here with growing force. The leaves have turned, at least those that have it in themselves to change color, have gone about their business in earnest.

Last night, after a week of escalating insanity in the world of finance and politics and such concerns, the winds whipped up the clouds, which in turn released a generous amount of rain on us. The world this morning was a new place, washed of the old dust and smelling of well-hydrated oak bark and leaves mingled with wet earth. Which is what might have coaxed these little creatures from the compost bin at the back of the house -- unless, of course, they were making a run on a grub bank...

Meanwhile, in the front of the house, with the door thrown open, there was this to greet me:

After yoga class, the spouse and I ran some errands and then took the long way to Fairfax, via Lucas Valley Road. What a great idea that was, as we drove through redwood groves and past farms, all the while, inhaling the air that, to me, spoke of frankincense, cedar, oak, and walnuts. Better than aromatherapy or a session at the spa!

In Fairfax, we loaded up on our supply of nuts, honey, and grains from the Good Earth, the local health food store, where it is as much fun to shop as to people watch. I picked up a bunch of fresh dandelions for a salad for dinner tonight, even as tomorrow’s agenda has an outing to the farmers’ market.

At times like these – and in spite of the economy – I so appreciate life in my small corner of California!

no translation needed

I take Spanish classes at night at my local high school through the community adult education program. Our class is a motley crew of people who have decided to learn Spanish not out of necessity, but the recognition that we live in an area that is, for all practical purposes, bilingual.

At the same time as we struggle with elementary Spanish grammar rules and our meager (but growing) vocabulary, not to mention pronunciation, down the hall from us, much larger groups of people, mostly from Latin America, are struggling the same way with English. For them, though, this is less a choice than a necessity.

Tuesday night, as we stood around in the hallway correcting each other over a simple sentence in Spanish, a young man came out of his English class and walked past us and without even so much as a glance at us and in a gorgeous tone delivered the correct Spanish version. When we all burst out laughing, including the young man, there was but one language, and no struggle with grammar or pronunciation...