Tuesday, November 30, 2010


Some months back, the martial arts stick teacher offered the following instruction. I thought it funny at the time, but the child-like experience breaks up tension, buried grief, anger.

‘When you raise your boh, imagine you are a superhero. As your stick comes down, lightning bolts rain into the earth. BAM! Imagine the Grand Canyon cracking open, spreading outward before you. BAM!

BAM! BAM! BAM!’

Monday, November 29, 2010


Is there freedom?
Is there choice?
Like babies in a birth canal
we are pushed forward.

Saturday, November 27, 2010


I said, 'I am not free' and was freed.

passing a test
we are freed
only to face another,
and another -
in being tested
we grow

Friday, November 26, 2010


I took the right way this morning, but it was the wrong way. I circled around, tried again, and yes, it was the right way but again it didn’t work.

I took the wrong way, and it was the right way, and I reached my destination.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010


She sat as though she had no thoughts, a single stone beneath the shimmering water of a lake.





An odd urgency to get out of pjs and onto the street got me taking pics tonight.

Monday, November 22, 2010

A painting in a gallery window on Telegraph in Oakland:


Not sure but I think the painter's first name is Dennis.

I met a retired physics prof in the copy shop the other day. He was preparing materials for a meeting with a former colleague. The two of the them get together regularly to study topics they missed out on over the years. I was in the copy shop to print up similar materials for an aunt who was formerly a math teacher, and who is curious about ancient number systems. She just turned 79.

Sunday, November 21, 2010













It feels like it’s all been done before, the flowers, the palm trees, the windows, the cars with hands painted on them, the fall leaves like colorful stars strewn across the grayed sidewalks. I've taken my camera outside the last few days, but I can see nothing new.

Yesterday, I spent time before bed, and then in the middle of the night, searching, searching. None of the pics in my file were worthy of posting. Nothing calling!

Often the photos act as a key. They trigger something waiting to be expressed. With no pictures catching my eye, everything felt locked up, unconscious, unwritten.

Plateaus. They can be restful like an oasis, or nervewracking like a forced trip to the mechanic. There's no progress here. Is something wrong? Will the car be ok? Will I ever take a decent photo again?

Friday, November 19, 2010


November rain
tiny lights flicker in the dark
she feeds the children

A scene from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes story, ‘The Red-Headed League’ keeps coming to mind. In the story, an ad has been placed in the paper offering work for a red-headed man. Later, we read of the long line of men curling down a London cobblestone street, waiting to be interviewed, their hair a marvelous range of hues from orange to auburn.

When I travel on the Bay Area Rapid transit, I sometimes see clusters of people who could create their own special leagues. The spike-heeled women. The bald men. People in fedoras. The young women carefully applying mascara, looking in the compact mirror. The league of the earbuds. The folks with one pant leg rolled up. The bare-legged. The krewe of the gray hair roots. The blondies. The men with hair combed straight back. The dreadlocked. The tattooed. The society of facial hardware. The sisterhood of the thin-haired. The men with the waistband of their underwear showing above their jeans.

Some people seem able to broadcast their identities through a single aspect of their appearances.

A couple of years ago when I was living in Louisiana, a town banned people from having any part of their underwear visible. So, if you were walking down the street, and a strip of your plaid boxers was visible above the waistband, however fully covered and cleanly dressed you were, you could be stopped and given a fine.

Last night in Berkeley, a lean young man standing on a skateboard was towed by a dog on a leash down a dark sidewalk.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010


In the mystery
of where we come to land,
the imagined safety of the past
clings to our ankles.
But it’s the same moon wherever we go.
We find peace
in the small details of this new life.
The crumpled lines of an old corduroy shirt
warm the inside of an elbow.
Light shoots across the bruised wood table -
it spills onto your lap like bright honey.
Each moment in this foreign space
invites us to feel the grace of home.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010



Nancy Gibbs shares a story about Buckminster Fuller in the November 22 issue of TIME. He was impressed by a very small feature called the trimtab on the rudders of great steamships. By moving the tiny trimtab, the whole heavy ship could be turned around.

On his gravestone, it reads: CALL ME TRIMTAB - Bucky

Monday, November 15, 2010


A blue and gray scrub jay
tucks morsels of food
beneath a roof shingle.
Browning leaves from a sycamore
tumble beneath an unrestricted sky.
Engines from the street
rev anxiously.
Sometimes it seems
they speak to me.
The train horn blows:
Oh – ohhhhh. Oh – ohhhhh.
A finch, a tiny downy woodpecker, a towhee
mind their business in the
skeletal twigs of a tree branch,
so focused on what’s right before them
I wonder how I even think about tomorrow.
A crow scolds: how can you be so freaking slow?
One smooth-backed seagull
sails back and forth
across the school yard.
Kids sprint back and forth
like the leaves skittered by the wind.
Why walk if you can run?
This is love,
its arched unfolding,
fragile and big
untouchable as sky.
This is love
warm and solid as earth.

Sunday, November 14, 2010





Migrating birds, eels, sea mammals can travel thousands of miles, without a boat or plane, each mile accomplished by the efforts of their own bodies. Here’s what happens. When migrating, you are in continuous motion. All of your organs work together on the same rhythm. Your heart beats without your worrying about it. Your lungs expand and contract, expand and contract, and you don’t think about that. Breathing comes naturally. When your arms and legs, or wings or flippers are fully integrated with the heart and lungs, the motion of the limbs becomes as rhythmic and unconscious as breathing. You no longer are aware of the effort. Kinda like standing still, but with more scenery. And in groups, like migrating cranes or stingrays, it’s possible there is a shared pulse, a cohesiveness. So you have your lungs in synch with your limbs in synch with the creatures traveling with you.

That’s my view of the story of the long distance runner, the long distance swimmer, the long distance flyer, the long distance walker. The story of the sprinter is totally another thing.

A very bundled up human
at the street corner
was making music with drumsticks
against a newspaper dispenser.
I wish you could hear
the sweet piercing song
of the chickadee at the lake.

Friday, November 12, 2010

New Orleans, April 2008


Telegraph Avenue around the UC Berkeley campus today was vibrating with vendors and students and workers and visitors and transients. I stood awhile near a man – he may have been Vietnamese – playing a simple hand-crafted string instrument. The music curled about the legs and shoulders of the people as they walked by, the unfamiliar melody like the soundtrack to a movie scene of a brilliant fall day, the stars imbedded within the crowds of extras. Nothing felt ordinary.

Thursday, November 11, 2010


The rippling rhythms of a drum corps drifted over Dolores Park from the direction of Mission High School around 8:20 this morning. In the background, voices shouted in unison in what sounded like a military exercise. The serious drums played on. Then came the contrasting magical flow of something like a xylophone or celesta. The voices shouted now and then while the drums and lyrical melody weaved continuously, and the distant performance became extraordinary and moving.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010


The smell of food does not appeal. We move more slowly. We find safe hiding spaces where we can curl into fetal position.

It's a natural preparation for transformation.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010


It was a beautiful fall morning in the park, cold and pretty, light glinting off the scattered leaves. I have a cold and my head is fogged. I saw I was wearing mismatched shoes. A young man walked by with his bike, his shoulders drooping as though in defeat.

You have planted a seed. It will bloom on its own timing.

I repeated this to myself so my fuzzy brain wouldn’t forget.

Monday, November 8, 2010








dark nights
three years ago
a kitten called me
out out out
to look up
to stars flying
to know no aloneness
to feel the unrandom impulse,
the cats and stars
and murmured songs
of your inexplicable love
your deep well
your soft peace

Sunday, November 7, 2010





I was walking, mumbling to myself, and ended with ‘Can you hear me?’

A minute later, there was a man talking to a woman on the other side of San Pablo. Speaking to her, he responded specifically to what I’d been saying, then looked at me joyfully and yelled, ‘I hear you, baby. I hear you just fine!’

Saturday, November 6, 2010


Another no moon night -
brilliant colors
of a flat screen tv
flash from a third story window.
A hacking cough -
the smell of litter and secrets
grinded into each city block.
No stories are ever told,
only hinted at and sung off key.
Love is written on the pavement
and posted on the bumper
of a 12-year-old car.

Friday, November 5, 2010


I see it.
My brain doesn't believe it.
It returns to the everyday concerns and fascinations, running from the inexplicable.

Thursday, November 4, 2010


In grade school, we learned 'swing your partner', 'do-si-do', 'promenade'. Watching internet videos and diagramming of more complex square dance calls, there’s a sense of 8 people as a sort of kaleidoscopic force of nature, connected, gliding not so much in synchrony as in tight geometric harmony.

Monday, November 1, 2010





When we’re young, our lives go forward with structured beginnings and endings. Middle school finishes, and high school starts. Chances are, the changes we experience are with a crowd of friends and classmates who are our age and in the same boat. The transitions may be rugged and scary, but we’re not alone. We're all freshmen in the new school together.

Later in life, we may have friends and family nearby, perhaps not. But sometimes our choices are a one-person leap. Sometimes we lack the courage to make the changes we need to make. Sometimes we lack the courage to stick out the situations we wish to stick out. Sometimes we have trouble telling the difference between the two!

A friend recently called me about chaotic situations in her life, looking for feedback. I shared with her something that once had been shared with me. 'Look far to that larger vision that calls you. Take a step in that direction. Focus on step one, don’t worry about step twelve, or one hundred and twelve. The details and people situations around you will fall into place.’ She said she liked that.

Live in the present with a sense of greater purpose. Take one step.

I told her exactly what I needed to hear.
The market was crowded, so I kept walking...




reflections on Lake Temescal