Books are here!

Home Turf, A Bestiary of Sonoma State

Those boxes of books I ordered for readings arrived a whole two weeks early!   So I thought I'd park myself at Aqus Cafe in Petaluma, 189 H Street (in The Foundry Wharf), for a few hours, (let's say 3 - 5 p.m.?)  on Tuesday afternoon (Dec 20th) for folks who'd be interested in picking them up from me. 

(I'm also happy to sign books you've already received, if you're so inclined.)

The cost is the same as online: $15 - and I can take Venmo (@ lakin-khan) or cash. This is really a nice little book for those who enjoy birds, creatures, walks in nature - or who have some connection to Sonoma State University - or any campus, really.  It's the perfect size, if I do say so myself, for the Icelandic (also Finnish and other Scandihoovian) tradition of Jolabokaflod (The Christmas Book Flood): that is, giving and reading books on Christmas Eve, everyone cozy with warm throws and slippers, a few hot drinks, perhaps a woodstove or fireplace, cranking it out. Oh yeah!

 It's a slim little book, with lovely illustrations by Shane Weare, Professor Emeritus from SSU - the book is made by these illustrations.

Here I am, goofing off on campus, wings provided by an installation artist as their end-of-the-year project, sometime in the early aughts. 

But -- also here's the Amazon link https://a.co/d/j02xgP2  , just in case. 

The Bestiary is now live on Amazon!

( cover of the proof copy)

 ... and available to you all!  Here's the link to the book on Amazon.....

Home Turf,  a Bestiary of Sonoma State 

I'm pretty darn excited, I will say.  What's a bestiary, you say? It's a compendium of beasts, a collection of tales about animals and what they mean to us. This book looks at the animals ( and a few other natural phenomenon) on the campus of Sonoma State University, up in the North Bay, in Northern California. 

 Medieval bestiaries were usually illustrated, sometimes with gold leaf.  I was so fortunate to have artist and print master Shane Weare illustrate this book with exquisite drawings. He really made the book a bestiary.

Feel free to share this link with any whom might be interested in a book that gently explores the varied animals finding a home on a suburban campus

Home Turf,  a Bestiary of Sonoma State

 

 https://a.co/d/j02xgP2

 

 

Whatever they say, we didn't .

No matter what they said, we didn’t. Nope, no way, Jose. 

It might have looked like we did. It was summer and you know, things get out of control in summer. Those wild songs were playing. Santana. You’ve got to change your wicked ways, baby. The infectious beat, you just had to dance, shimmy the hips, chop the beat with your feet, sun pouring through the car windows, the radio blaring. We always turned it up, beat on the outside of the car doors,  bare arms through the open windows, tee-shirt sleeves rolled up, hems tied tight around our midriffs,  or left loose over bathing suits.  

We bumped over the rutted farm road, unmarked but well-known, out to the swimming hole, along the west side of the Niagara River, parking in the heat of the meadow, grasses already bent with seeds, or flattened by cars, by cows, by us dancing over to the big rocks . We’d jump off into the deep dark pool, an eddy of the main pull of the river, the one that could drag you over the falls. Yes, those Falls.

A boombox turned up as high as it could go, we’d bump and shout, we’d want to hold hands, we’d change our evil ways, plunging into the cold, jumping to the bursts of the saxophones, the wail of the guitar licks plugged straight into our brains, the cold swirling water, the hot rocks, the whir of the grasshoppers, the rising song of the cicadas measuring out the heat, the beat of the timbales, Oye como ova, mi ritmo. We’d sashay, we’d prance, we’d shimmy and shake, we’d parade, do silly jumps, dive down as far as we could.

The water was dark and cold, mysterious, a black magic of its own. It set the table for all that happened later, all the things we didn’t do, all the things it was assumed we did.

(This is a small piece written to prompts from Jumpstart Writing Workshop, November, 2022. )

Almost Published! Home Turf!

Home Turf,  A Bestiary of Sonoma State, that little book I've been working on for years and years, is about to see the light of day! Here's the cover - and I'll be looking at the proof copy the day after Thanksgiving. Whoooieee mama!

The Wind Is Up - Sept 28, 2022

 

 The wind is up tonight, rattling everyone’s cages. We have all been cranky the past few days, un-nerved in some way.  Like the air is crackling and everything we say to each other is sparked with static and misunderstandings. Like the slip of paper in the fortune cookie says, We throw dirt at each other, but  it just means we are losing ground.

 

The cats are janky too; cross with each other and tussling at a moment’s notice. Oscar, the grouchy one, the boss, the patron, the don, who stalks around with the rolling gait of a sailor ready to prove his authority, is laid up with an infection along his jaw. Antibiotics are pretty much saving him, but he’s not 100 % yet, except for the grouchy part.  He sleeps a lot, but at least he’s eager for his food now. I’d like to think that flattery would improve his mood, but he isn’t having any of it. Kind of like the rest of the crew.

 

Perhaps we aren’t quite ready to give up on summer, as hot and vicious as it was at times. We sense the enclosings of winter, the cinching-up of the season, the tightening. 

 

This year, spider mites ate up most of the roses, ran amuck among the tomatoes, challenged the baby oak tree. We discovered the magic of neem oil, sprayed everything with a deep oily sheen, but the spiders attacks have  delayed the growth of plants, the blooming of flowers. The joys of the flowers, the blessings of the open sky and big clouds seemed to be snatched from us – the way we snatch the tiny snakes from the kittens, thwarting them of their fun and diversions. They look at us as if we are just about too stupid to be their gods and stalk off, tails switching.

 

The wind is up and chafing at the tie-downs of the umbrellas. The canopies ruffle and luff, ripple and snap under the gusts. We are folding ourselves over the fence-edge of the equinox, crossing the stile, to step into the soil of another season, and we’re not quite ready yet.

A letter on behalf of The Queen

Dear Ms Goddess in Charge of the Meadow of Royals in Heaven;

 

We implore you to accept our Best Friend with all the dignity and grace that she brought to our four-legged world.

 

We ask that you remember her as we do – a light touch to our head when we were confused or anxious, a long ramble in those grey-misted, great green vales when we could no longer make sense of the swirl of the world, when we needed to bury our noses in long swaths of grasses, drink long gullaps from the cold streams, wavery with fish-fry and pollywogs.

 

We want to say that she was required to think about the Big Issues and the Small Details all at once – that she had to preserve not only the dignity of Her Office but help those who came to her to do the same.  She never missed a beat, even when she herself was beat and tired and only wanted to saddle up and ride out and throw sticks, but instead had to gather her pearls and special hat, make sure the correct emblems were packed in those velvet bags and go out in a carriage or coach or special car to greet the people, to help the world feel a little bit better, even in the worst of times. You know as well as any of us that there were both worst times and grand times.

 

In this way she was a True Leader, a person set forward to do more than keep herself intact; she was obliged to keep everyone who looked at her intact and whole too. In this, some days, of course, were better than others.

 

But we, her best buddies, we knew her best and we send her to you with our hearts aching, our furry necks yearning for her touch - but knowing she will be the best you could ever wish for. 

 

Emma, Fell Pony and Muick and Sandy, Corgis.

It's been a minute....

I am so restless now; I can’t settle on much. We are starting to snap back into some semblance of the un-affected life. But somehow we are almost more isolated, as our small little Covid-covens break up, spinning into other streams of existence, work, school, exercise classes, leaving us between worlds, between what used to be and what used to be before that.

 

What I mean is, those relationships formed by the necessity of limited contact during Covid might not work so well as we get back into the flow of going places and doing things, while many of our previous connections have been broken or stretched way too thin to hook up again.

 

I am so restless and yet so stuck. Sitting on the tan sand yesterday afternoon, the grit of beach invading the seams of the swimsuit -- a new one because after two years of neglect, I can’t even find my old ones, which truth be told, probably won’t even fit any more. This beach has a touch of heaven to it, a small cove at the bottom of canyon eroded into the bluff, a canyon edged by tall pines and Douglas fir, full of butterflies and the calls of juncos and bushtits, chickadees, the echo of ravens. Over the narrow bay, the gulls  cry their funny, searing call, then strut along the edge of the wavelets, little martinets commanding your chip-crumbs or the ragged core of your consumed pear by their mere presence of their upright posture, their parade-ground bearing.  

 

The water – it is the water that makes the difference, that creates the spell, the transmutation  – cold, of course, but not so cold as to be impossible. The long narrow finger of this bay marks the San Andreas fault as it rips into the crust of the planet; it is a hinge, a meeting and a long leavetaking of plates, a matrix of tectonics. Here we can feel the fold of our lives, how that past can flip up and across the present like pleats. I may be in the kitchen, folding the batter for blueberry muffins, but I am also on the side of the road, hitch-hiking to Woodstock.

 

I run into the bay water, the same fold of water that serves as a nursery for white sharks. I float, looking up at the serrated edges of the sky, the tops of my world, but the bushy bottoms for the raven, the osprey, the lone bald eagle. 

 

From writing prompts on Wednesday night, August 31, 2022