July 2nd - a book of great beauty.

Just finished listening to and reading Foster by Claire Keegan. (yes, I did both; it's that kind of a story). It is as beautiful a book as you'll ever find. The language, the story, the people; I know them so well, they are not characters to me. This is a novella just published as a stand-alone book. I was handed it by Michael of Books & Letters in Guerneville ( more about that bookstore in another post), who I think is one of the best book-sellers I've met, in terms of his ability to suss out what might interest a reader (that is, me - or you or whoever drops by) and hand them something they might love. I had mentioned I was enthralled with This Is Happiness by Niall Williams; then he moseyed over to a shelf and handed me Foster and I knew it was mine. And yes, it was the perfect book. I am not going to offer spoilers, just an encouragement to check it out. Especially at your local indy bookstore.

Putting yourself in the way of beauty

 Lately I've been finding myself in need of putting myself in the way of beauty, per the advice Cheryl  Strayed's mom gave her. And so here it is for today.

Article in Press Democrat -- and an introduction to Adlai the Stevenson Owl.....

 Super nice article by Meg McConahey in the Press Democrat today  about Home Turf! She really captured the feel of the book and its context with the campus.

 

https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/lifestyle/more-than-meets-the-eye/

 

February, when we welcomed the rain.

Feb 4 2023

 We take the opportunity before too much more rain develops to fit in a quick walk out at China Camp – it is, after all, practically in our back yard.  With enough rain gear, it’s not a bad walk under trees and along streams. It’s not pouring rain, just a pretty steady drizzle – I mean, in Portland, it wouldn’t even rate a mention. We’re the only car in this particular lot – most folks park out on North San Pedro Road. But we’re not confident about the weather and want to have a quick  getaway if we get drenched.

 

A quick flutter off to the right , a piercing whistled cry,  white rump just above the tail – a northern flicker greets us as we tackle the three switchbacks that get us up the low hill, tree boles swathed in brilliant green mosses – we are moving through a green universe, dotted with mushrooms, and the tiny white bells of manzanitas and wildflowers, the magenta red of Indian warrior plants, that as far as I can recall are dormant all summer, springing forth now with the rains, defiant and beautiful. There's a tinkling soothing sound of rock-bedded little water falls, little creeks running out to San Pablo Bay.

It is an astonishment of greenness, of moist air. Our lungs gobble it up and we march forward with no purpose but to be walking. A few joggers and several squads of mountain bikes pass us, everyone moving faster than us, hoping to avoid the bigger rain drops. The backs of all the bikers are festooned with strip of mud straight up their back side, from saddle-seat to mid-back.  We relish this rebound of green and mud after the months and years of drought and dust. Bring it on, we think!

 This was in February. March soon became another matter.

 

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

what is up with you people?

The prompt from yesterday's workshop: Write about your morning routine from the point of view of your pet. And so, once again, Oscar observes how the world doesn't conform to his expectations.

 

This morning, Oscar, our bulky tabby, stretched out of his thick curl behind my knees and then climbed up my legs, arranging himself along the ridgeline of my body, pinning me in a kind of wrestlers move created by his weight and almost savage intent on getting breakfast and then outside. First he nuzzles and then he glares, restless, needing the Comptroller of the Cupboard, the Doorman of the Door to stir and attend to him. 

Ahem he seems to say, with every shift of his considerable bulk, ahem!. Why are you still abed, with the morning larks a-buzzing and the dawn gilding the slight horizon? What is this snoozing, when squirrels are beginning their taunting dance and I must attend and chase? Up up, lazy bones, get a move on!  Okay, so  maybe they aren’t larks, maybe they are finches and winter sparrows, but I must remind them who is the Boss of the Lawn! 

And now why must you spend so much time in the water closet, that place of Growls and Gurgles? What gods are you appeasing before you stagger to the location of bitter smells, the Grinder of Beans and Clatter? What is up with you people? 

I implore you and your thick legs, I rub them with my most endearing pheromones of pleasure and appeasement. I watch your every move; I trouble your legs with my double-cross leg-weaving to guide you to the Big White Doors that hold the most deliciousness of treats, the Salmon Pate, the Tuna Snackerals I so desire. Like right now! My mouth waters, I reach out to remind you with my Sharp Reminders which way to go, not toward the door to shoo me out, no no no, but across the kitchen to the Big White Doors. 

Dang howdy, that was fast! Up by the scruff of my neck and now I am outside, in the damp, in the cold, no Tuna Snackerals, no Salmon Pate, just the graze of my Reminders in your salty, marbled flesh. 

That was a mistake, yes, yes, but not something I can’t recover from. A well timed thud against the door should work. Thud! Um, no. There’s some anger behind that door, in those grumpy phrases. Okay, up on the ledge under the window, a few scritches on the screen. That always cheers you up, right? 

Um, nope. Not sure why I deserved that howl, that slam of window. I switch my tail to indicate my displeasure with this whole process, but I’m beginning to worry that I might be served chum - outside, on a metal plate, with pickles, like a prisoner. 

The wind is coming up, fluffing up the fur along my flanks. I offer my most piteous Meow of Apology. Now I need in, I want in, I’ll be patient, I swear. A splatter of rain drops, a fine mist floating across the grass, a heaviness in the dark thick air, a dampness, a pressure. Okay, okay, I’ll be good, I’ll behave, just let me in. 

I raise my paw but don’t scratch, I squeeze and pulse my eyes, to become the greenest of greens, as I’ve heard you say. Open the door!!! Open the door!! Jiminey Crickets, where did this all go wrong? From a warm bed to the bitter cold sideyard in less time than it takes me to stalk a squirrel. Oh woe is me, oh woooooh meohhhhh is me!

Before the rains, she goes into the forest.

Wrote the following piece one evening last week on the cusp of the mega-rain last weekend, in response to these prompts and also memories of hiking up in Mendocino, at Russian Gulch State Campground:

•  “The forest is a place in which everything your heart desires and fears lives.” by Charles Simic, in the book Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell,  a quote I found on Peg Alford Purcell's Instagram: .
  
• Arriving at the Church of Poetry.*
  
• She gave a sweet, slightly mocking, smile.*

* Sources undocumented. Apologies. Will try to track the authors down for these two quotes.  

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Arriving, she gave a sweet, slightly mocking smile. This, indeed, was the church of poetry: this forest, which the heart desired, this forest, where fear conspired. She walked into the cathedral of tree trunks, dwarfed by the redwood spires that twisted slightly as they rose; that smell, as pungent as cinnamon, that damp as close as a best friend. The path was wide and spongey,  bordered by ferns at times, ferns as big as cows, as big as desire, as big as the space between molecules, which when she thinks of it, is a big as it gets.

She sidestepped a big yellow banana slug, munching its way along the muddy edge of the path and then was startled by the big eyes of a mottled salamander, skin glistening as it turned and vanished under the soggy edge of a log, the felled corpse of a redwood lying parallel to the trail for a hundred feet or more. The horizontal trunk, blanketed by green moss, was high enough to be a bench to sit on, wide enough to walk along with out having to balance, simply placing one foot casually in front of the other.

She walked along the wide trunk, soft and crumpling a bit underfoot, a highway to the inner courts, to that confluence of light and mist, that tapestry that captures just what is molecule and what is wave, where dissolving is not so much an act as a state of being.

Writing Prompt: “Well, you know, he was in a prison in Dubai”

 These are the warm days, the warm side the hot side of the year. We have gone from keeping track of wooly cowls and warm shawls to searching out the gauzy, light fabrics. Crinkle cottons, wide-brimmed straw hats. We’re putting up the shade-sails, unfurling the umbrellas against the blast of the bold sun, rising higher and higher in the sky.

The mockingbird pair bounce along the top of the fence, jabbering at the indolent, rotund tabby cat, who might have once in his younger years been a threat, but now is more intent on loafing his days away in sun or shade. He’s a real garden cat, lolling about under the stunted artichokes, sunning himself on the hot rocks. He watches a caterpillar inching down the slender trunk of the new pomegranate tree. Meanwhile, the mockingbirds, feeling he is too close to their nest in the wildly blooming pyracantha bush on the other side of the fence, take turns to dive at him, skimming his fur and causing no end of consternation from us witnesses. Nevertheless, Oscar, that thick-headed tabby cat, continues to loll and flaunt his considerable flanks, the lines and sworls of his sides like a map of a forgotten island in an atlas of abandoned lands.  Where we all seem to be residing this spring.

This is not a crowd of mockingbirds; nor are they repugnant, evil little dive-bombers. They simply refuse to believe in the serendipity of a fat cat in the garden enjoying the sun before it becomes intolerable even to this inveterate heat-seeker. They understand only that the shape of a predator is far too near their babies and they are determined in their strut and bluster and buzz-drills to drive him away.

But you know, Oscar acts like he had once been in a prison in Dubai. Nothing excites him, nothing annoys him. He is on the bulky side now, as if making up for those lost meals from prison, which adds to his look of imperturbability, but there comes that moment when one of the mockingbird scores a more direct hit, grabs a twist of fur, yanks. Oscar snarls and hisses, then curls up to sitting, gives himself a lick, and waddles off, as if he intended all along at precisely 10:13 a.m to move around to the other side of the house. And so he does, tail tall and stately, like a flag of state. Not giving up exactly, but not sticking around, either. 

* * * * * * * * * * * *

October 2021 

I found this post anguishing in my stack and thought I would publish it, seeing that it's from that other side of the summer, before the heat drove us half-mad and the drought drove us the rest of the way.  ~ lk

Maybe I Am Wrong

This October morning, redwing blackbirds swarm the backyard trees, absolutely loud with their raucous chatter, scratchy and scritchy, like a foreign language I almost understand, but don’t. But maybe I am wrong, maybe my body does understand — as I rouse and walk outside to refill the watering bowls, padding along the few soft, still-damp sections of the mostly brown and crispy lawn. 

Squirrels bounce along the top of the brown wooden fence, taunting the taut and laser-focused yearling kittens hunkered down behind the wire grid of their catio, set across the lawn. One squirrel, an acorn gripped in its teeth, dances down the thin trunk of the young ceanothus leaning against the fence, skittering around in the dusty dirt under the mulberry tree, hopping straight toward the kittens. The two kittens sit hunched side by side, frozen in their desire to capture this tail-snapping, sassy-ass squirrel. 

Maybe I am wrong, but it seems like the flippant creature hops closer and closer, throwing a knowing glance or three at the kittens trapped behind wire, and digs in the duff and old wood chips conspicuously within leaping distance. The kittens stare and swivel their heads in exact unison, like two heads on one cat neck, conjoined in their focused desire, side by side, just behind the wires.

 Today, I wake up with ideas, with a plan. Time to get my book out of the laptop and into the real world. I can't keep it trapped within wires any longer.

.... apologies for the slump in activity. I think I fell into some kind of mental ditch this winter. Or hibernation. Or coccoon. Or just general languishment.

Sept 14 2020 - Monday - a note from the near past.

There is the grinding down, as we circle through the whirlpool, 

before we are spit out into a new world. I feel stretched and thinned out.  Effaced.

We are working on the new world.  We are birthing it

together. 

 

 

 

November 2 2020 - the Day Before

 ...not that we will get much closure about the election on Nov 3rd. But ...well, it's all we can think about.  Will the Deposed Maniac try to claim victory and hold onto the presidency if he's ahead Tuesday evening -- and then try to end the ballot count? Then I will take to the streets, because all votes must be counted. Besides,  races aren't always called on Election Day -- that's a convention brought about by media and the ability to predict an outcome. Back in the day, it would take weeks to tally the vote and get the results to the Electoral College.  We will Protect The Results.  Absolutely.

 

We are restless, hearts thrumming

like the hummers

roaring in and out of the purple sage. 

We are haunted by 2016 - when we felt the time was right, that we were in the sweet spot to have a woman president to continue a more just society.  Now we are grimly hanging onto our hearts, crossing our fingers, gnawing our nails, working to propel a woman Veep.  These four years have changed us - all of us, We are a different nation, in many ways, with a new respect for health, for justice, for a government that works for the common good.

Today, I watch a patch of pelicans, brilliantly white with black wing tips, wheel across the sky, determined and steady. That is us, the Determined Ones. We're not extremists, seeking to bash heads or run candidates off the roads, using intimidation, bullying, falsehoods and lies to secure the election because we can't run on our record, because we have nothing to offer the country but more chaos and ineptitude. We use steady inexorable persistence to make headway against injustice, writing batch after batch of postcards, 10 or 20 at a time, to remind voters of the power of the vote, of their voice.

Protect The Vote

Sept 13 2020 - Saturday.

Picture by  Buddy Poland     from Heather Cox Richardson's post Sept 13 2020

Taking a cue from Heather Cox Richardson today, from  - because I'm exhausted just thinking about all the levels of chaos going on. And HCR stated it all so well in her post from today, which I quote in it's entirety. :

"Lots of people are tired right now. Indeed, the whole point of the constant stream of chaos coming from the administration is to exhaust us to the point we will stop caring what Trump and his supporters do.

But have you noticed that reporters are increasingly calling out the administration's lies, and people are increasingly articulating what they want the world to look like, rather than what we are currently enduring? Famously, "in the midst of chaos there is also opportunity."

Here's a little inspiration for those of you for whom the chaos is obscuring the opportunity: Wilhelmina Smith of the highly-regarded Salt Bay Chamberfest, a small non-profit performing arts organization in Maine, playing her cello-- somewhat unexpectedly-- in the light of a late-summer afternoon. 

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-13-2020

Taking A Mental Health Break

This in the midst of the horrendous fires in Ashland, Oregon and Butte County, California - (again)

Fires, fires, fires.

 But we soldier on, right?

Sept 12, 2020 - Saturday NapDay

the wild abandonment of kittens to the power of a nap