Sketchbook Writings

~ From my sketchbook writings, May 17th 2013 ~

Here is what I love about the sea, the Sound, the great swirl of salt and heaving life.  Here is the outpouring, unlocking, loosening of the throat, the bone striping wind, the olfactory discord of decay and bloom, the bewitching mortality of it all.

I stand at the edge.

I can love her tender, I can rage tempestuous, I can gather her bits of stone and shell, I can throw them back with unnecessary force.  She is not gentle, she is not kind.  Do not be fooled by fairy tales and sweet song.  But she is whole.  Birth and life and death incarnat.

* * *

Whenever I visit these so-called grey beaches of the northern pacific, all I see is color.  The subtle layering of mountain ranges shrouded in a watery reflection of sky and sea, the luminosity of big leaf maples in juvenile foliage - a glow that only comes with the mist.  The warm hues of slick driftwood, the iridescent flash of crows and the hot punch of red-winged blackbirds.  And then of course, the stones.
If you but call out a color, say, Mustard! then suddenly they appear as speckled pockets of glowing chroma.  Coral! and the beach comes alive with vermillion hues.  Teal! and my hand becomes greedy, my thighs gritty with sand as I wipe down stone after stone.
I am the magpie.
I am the wandering gypsy with pockets full of treasure.
Whisper me a salty tale and I'll share with you my trove.
* * *

Sketchbook Writings

~ From my sketchbook writings, December 10th ~

The fog makes times stand still.  There is no back, no forward, there is hardly even up or down.  I no longer remember when I woke or when I should bed.  There is only now and the ticking of dew rolling down curls.
Three bald eagles in two days.  This land has swallowed me in exchange for raptors.  I puff along like a bright red steam engine, collecting speed, collecting shapes, lines, curves, textures, like a greedy architect.  I'll use some later, and what ever else is left rattling in my mind and [too shallow] pockets will be tipped out of those checkered panes and given to the ravens.  They'll take it all.  They always do.
Up on the ridge the trees, not expecting company through the long winter, have slipped out of their summer finery and grown shaggy green coats.  We're all a little rough around the edges but this is how I know we're old friends.  There is no need for pretense here, just a swinging gait, green scent of rot, and mud caked on boots.
* * *

I spent yesterday on Rattlesnake Ridge.  Days like that give me few words, halting descriptions, like trying to explain the scent of freshly baked bread to a newborn.  So I use my hands to tell the story.  And as ever, they are far more eloquent than my tongue.

 

Land Tribute: A Mountain Narrative Necklace
(sterling silver and a small pebble plucked from the Eel River in Northern California)
* * *
Stay warm friends; I'm off to pick up a hot bowl of soup and run to the post; calendars are fluttering to homes across the globe and I can not thank you enough!

Sketchbook Writings

~ From my Sketchbook Writings, October 8th 2012 ~

It began like any other weekday morning.

7:15.  Cold black nose on my chin.  Sunlight in harsh vertical lines across the mirror.

And somewhere between slipping on dirty jeans and grinding coffee beans, that light turned sour.

Perhaps sour is too easy of a word.  Perhaps crushing existential crisis is more apt.

Shaking fingertips.  The taste of bile.

So naturally I did the dishes left over from last night.  Recklessly clanged vintage plates.  Angrily chopped a pear.  Beat the hell out of a pomegranate.

It's a lovely misguided logic, this belief that if the body spins in busyness, the mind will have no time to wander dark hallways.

So I poured almonds into a dry pan on medium heat.  Picked up dog food bowls.  Tidied the floor.

From outside BC called in a hash whisper.

Out front, in the tallest cedar, the one with ruddy bark that leaves bits of itself all over the cars, there was a dash.

A squawk.  A clammer of claws on limbs and feathers in evergreens.

Not more than twelve feet up, a young peregrine craned her neck back and forth looking for the squirrel she had cornered.  What ensued was a desperate dance for life, the squirrel spinning around the trunk, freezing under thick branches.  The peregrine plunging perilously through foliage, swinging tight to the cedar with a pivot off a single clawed foot.  They spun, danced, screeched, froze, crept, leapt up and down that tree for who knows how long.  Twice she sailed out close enough for me to brush a wingtip or feel that banded tail.  

I whispered to BC, 

"There are almonds burning on the stove,"

but I didn't move.

I was holding my breath for her, in her awkward juvenile attempts.  I wanted her strong, I wanted her well fed, but more than anything I wanted her to come back and visit me in this odd urban oasis of mine. 

* * *

Sketchbook Writings

~ From my Sketchbook Writings, June 14th 2012 ~

[after a long night of insomnia which transformed into the gift of a pre-dawn beach walk]

It's colder than I expected, a world of gray and sound and clear orbs of jelly washed up on the beach.  I can not walk a straight line here; the damp imprints I carelessly leave behind weave and warp in a pattern of crazy.
I pick up another feather, this one tinier than the last, and understand something instinctual about humanity's need to adore themselves.
I need to wear feathers.
I need communion.
I need to imbibe the feeling of flight, feel the tug of wind across my scalp and the yearning of gravity toward my airborne hips.
I need the solitude of fog to wash through my chest, spitting out those ten thousand grains of sand I managed to pick up along the way.
I need the fire of dawn to burn off these lies I forgot to disbelieve, to leave a hot core of truth in its wake.
And then I realize:
this is no longer about the walk.

* * *

Sketchbook Writings

~ From my sketchbook writings, Thursday April 5th, 2012 ~

I saw the first amethyst blooms of the lupines today.  I don't know why that flower holds such a potency in my heart.  Why it makes me feel hoary and timeworn, even as they spring up from the sandy earth in a flush of youth.
This brings me to the ancestors.  My own lineage is pockmarked with great holes of unknowing which leaves me free to wonder:
Have my people always needed water, great, dark rushing bodies and the physical sensation of tides?  Were they struck dumb, hearts cracked open at the permeating energy of ancient redwoods?  Did they always wear feathers in their hair, were they always the familiars of the red hawks?  Did they believe the white tailed deer understood them, and feel a sympathetic trembling in their tendons?  Did they scan the undergrowth for ferns before staking camp, did they run fingers along spore spines?  Did they whisper wishes for raven calls at sunrise and gray foxes in the night?  Did they leave a lock of hair for the cedar, offer the best blackberry to the birds, gift song to the sweet peas, and rock on their heels, breathing thanks for stone treasures, wood treasures, bone treasures?
I guess what I'm truly asking is this:
Did they realize, each Spring, just how much breath they held waiting for the lupines to bloom?

* * *