And now a brief pause for politics

I began writing, and remain committed to, a blog that chronicles personal change, but I must deviate this morning to vent my rage, and concern, over the extremists that threaten our world. Read at your own emotional peril.

I awakened Saturday morning early to take a long walk, longer than usual because that is what makes week-end mornings wonderful, and drove to Crystal Cove, a ruggedly beautiful spot between Laguna and Newport, for a roughly 5-mile walk above the beach that always soothes. A little more than an hour later I returned to an iced tea and light breakfast and the pleasure of a new novel, yet to be published, by the divine E. L. Doctorow, and even in those few first pages I can report that it is, in fact, divine, so far. Feeling righteous and rested, I stopped at Trader Joe's for the requisite fruits and vegetables that fill my fridge, and always enjoy the pleasant ambiance there, only to emerge to be verbally assaulted by two young men who asked me this: Do you want to help us stop Obama, the new Hitler?

No, I said, but even in my rage, I refused to engage them, as I know there is no talking to people with fanatical misguided viewpoints, although I suppose I reneged on my obligation as a citizen to try to alter their view. I couldn't do it. Shaken so suddenly and painfully from my morning reverie, I was too angry to speak, and have learned over the years to withhold comment when angry, preferring to wait until a calmer more balanced commentary might unfold. Instead, I drove away and called a sympathetic friend to vent.

Ironic, in the worst way, that they invoke the monster that used the politics of fear to manipulate the masses to his end... seems to me, these otherwise ordinary well-dressed politico's are the Nazi's. I know, when I am rational, that extremists get attention, especially in our 24-7 news world. I know they are misinformed and misguided more than evil, or so I want to believe. I know that perhaps deep down they are terrified of what they do not understand or what they have been led to believe, or merely terrified by the deeply held beliefs indoctrinated in them likely much of their lives by those infused with hate. I know they do not represent the majority, but I also see a country increasingly misled by deliberate misinformation and dictated by fear and thus, I too am frightened by the potential sabotage of our future beyond what we have already lost in the years lost to the conservative core.

I am a moderate. I am not the liberal many believe me to be because I vote Democrat and work for the disenfranchised. I believe in taking responsibility for one's life but also for the lives of those less fortunate. I believe in help rather than scorn and encouragement rather than abandonment. I believe in the common good beyond any individual, but in the preservation of individual rights. I believe that only if we nurture and protect the children, all the children, do we have any chance of a better world, but as children follow what they see, there will always be extremists, of all types, and they will always color the debate and inhibit change. Thus, after the vent, I cry, as I often do, when inhumanity invades my space with its ugly face.

Is it possible to request political asylum in France?

Oceans

A 16-year old girl, niece of a colleague, arrived for a week’s vacation with an equally adorable South Dakota friend in tow, and when I asked if they had ever been to California they replied no, they’ve never even seen an ocean.

I cannot imagine a landlocked life. Growing up in NYC, the Atlantic Ocean was never far. Although I had to take long hot subway train rides to Coney Island or Jones Beach in Brooklyn, or occasionally the family drove to Orchard Beach in the south Bronx, the Atlantic Ocean always beckoned. Summer was beach season. We never had access to a pool and when, as an older child, I spent summers at a camp upstate, I discovered the pleasures of boating and swimming on a lake, but the ocean remained my touchpoint for summer living. The only other water source in summer was a hydrant unplugged, a city kids version of waves.

We visited my aunt every summer in Virginia or we met half-way in Rehoboth Beach, Maryland. And when I grew up and moved to Connecticut, I picked a town on the Long Island Sound, an extension of the Atlantic as deep and profound as the ocean itself, but with gentler waves, and began regular sojourns to Cape Cod or the Rhode Island and Jersey shores, as the Atlantic held its sway up and down the coast and always welcomed visitors longing for the soothing steady rush of waves rolling to shore.

I cannot imagine life without the ocean, although I rarely go into the water these days. The Pacific is always colder and the riptide [which a friend recently explained is different from the undertow we were warned to watch for by our ever-protective parents] is often at a powerful pitch and I no longer feel quite so brave as when I was a girl, jumping giant waves and waiting with great expectation to crash within and come up gasping for air, a water-logged roller coaster.

But wait. What if one grew up with giant trees and forest terrain bordered by creeks or rivers, or flat lands punctuated by lakes or ponds suitable for swimming? Perhaps the ocean might seem too vast, monotone and oppressive. Waves unsettling. Is the ocean uniformly embraced by virtue of its majesty?

Apparently so. The mid-western girls flung themselves into rolling churning froth and loved every minute of it. As if the ocean is home to us all, home to the amoeba’s that gave birth to us and thus a collective womb.

Swimming in the ocean is only one of its pleasures. I regularly walk along the beach and dig my toes into the moist sand at water’s edge. I sit in a striped beach chair and read, distracted pleasantly by children and dogs and families enjoying Oceanside life. On a sunset walk early in my life in Laguna Beach, I stood at the edge of one of the many streets that end at the beach, watching surfers catch the swell, when all of a sudden they all stopped and sat on the boards facing the sun as if sculptures of themselves, and I thought it might be some sort of homage to the end of day, when a school of Dolphins passed by and I realized the surfers were giving them right of way. One of the many wonderful moments only found at the ocean.

When friends remind me that I could live ever so much more cheaply inland, I am reminded that the ocean is my ballast and today, I am also reminded of how blessed I have been to be so close all the days of my life, a blessing never to be taken for granted, and always top of mind in this place where the Pacific is southwestern wallpaper, always there for the taking for anyone and everyone, including teenagers from South Dakota on a holiday they will likely never forget.

A note from Wikipedia. The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. Its name is derived from the Latin name Mare Pacificum, "peaceful sea", bestowed upon it by the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. It extends from the Arctic in the north to Antarctica in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east. At 169.2 million square kilometres (65.3 million square miles) in area, this largest division of the World Ocean – and, in turn, the hydrosphere – covers about 46% of the Earth's water surface and about 32% of its total surface area, making it larger than all of the Earth's land area combined.[1] The equator subdivides it into the North Pacific Ocean and South Pacific Ocean, with two exceptions: the Galápagos and Gilbert Islands are deemed wholly within the South Pacific.[2] The Mariana Trench in the western North Pacific is the deepest point in the Pacific and in the world, reaching a depth of 10,911 metres (35,798 ft).[3]

The best moments

Think about the moments you were most happy. An event, a period of time, a phase of your life. These moments mark our passages. Markers on the continuum of our own lives. They define us.

I think back to my fifth birthday, which I do not remember at all, but I have an old film of it, and I see happiness on my face. I have been perched on a chair at the head of a kitchen table, surrounded by my extended family, my chubby tan little body capped by sun bleached hair, even a few curls there, rarely seen again, where I preside over the lighting of birthday candles and the opening of presents. There is glee in my eyes, the one and only feature of my face that remains largely the same. My mother is especially beautiful that day, tanned and freckled skin exposed by a sundress, and healthy - perhaps the last time in my life as she was diagnosed soon after with the disease that would define and ultimately rob her life.

I leap forward not to my wedding day, which was marked more by nerves and uncertainty than joy, but to a belated scuba diving honeymoon where we finally relaxed into matrimony and where my first daughter was conceived, and subsequently the utter joy of that pregnancy, filled with the delight of possibilities, an effort, the first really of my life, to be truly healthy, and the rewards of thicker hair and brighter skin and a joyful outlook, only now and then marred by the anxiety that would come to plague the early years of motherhood. Fast forward to the birth of the second daughter, and the happiness, not only to have another healthy child, but to begin to be a better mother, always easier the second time.

The first publication of written words. The completion of a degree and then another, although these were more relief and satisfaction perhaps than happiness. Moments on the beach, at family gatherings, with friends. Rare but heavenly moments where my husband and I were in sync and taking such pleasure in love.

Maple Avenue. At last, having released the ballast of the big house in the back country, Rusty’s dream house, we move to the 150 year-old Greek revival on the busy in-town street, with wonderfully tall ceilings and chestnut floorboards and five carved mantles over working fireplaces, and the sheer treasure of owning and inhabiting a house filled with history. I drove down to Maple Avenue the morning before we closed, 5:00 AM, a rare quiet time in town, and stared at the house from across the street, knowing in the deepest part of me that the house and I were meant to be. My house, my home, the address of which remains with me as my internet moniker, where holiday parties became tradition and church bells chimed the passing of each day and the first novels were written in the front parlor, while children grew and flew and, sadly, romance was lost, but a self discovered.

Meandering through bookstores, especially the great ones, these are always happy moments. Working at bookstores. Discovering new places. Time with children, with the dearest of friends. A great play or film. A great book. Long afternoons on the beach. These moments of happiness, constant but fleeting, punctuate a life.

The first moments in Laguna Beach, the neon sign marking a new life. The move. The first year of discovery, the year of making friends. The early blogs so filled with delight at everything from views to foliage to the familiar detritus of a walk to town.

I look back at my life and see what made me happy and seek more of that going forward. The best part of life, the looking forward, is now largely past – love, marriage, children, career, personal development – but the pleasure of all that stays with me. None of it has to do with work or money or status. Only moments of joy and contentment. That’s all there is and that perhaps is the essence of happiness, if one is so lucky as I to have had so many moments.

Love and the Lonely Traveler

I fell in love with a place. And like all love affairs, reality sets in over time and one is faced with the choice: to stay in love, to leave, or to determine if in fact being in love, even if not true love, is good enough. I like to believe that good enough is good enough in many things – parenting for example – but when it comes to affairs of the heart, good enough may be settling for less when something else awaits. Ah, but the risks of the search grow weary over time.

There are those who suggest that being in love is infatuation. It is the thrall. The romance. Even the honeymoon. It is not the essence of love. Loving is infinite. Loving is tumultuous. Loving is commitment beyond the magic. Intimacy beyond the surge.

Love is what keeps us in place, more than what draws us. Love is often saying you are sorry and meaning it. Love is day to day, moment to moment. It is beyond any one need, beyond ourselves. It is not the all encompassing passion but the all encompassing emotion.

I speak of love of all forms. The enormous and profound love for children. The love of parents, beyond their flaws and beyond mortality. The love of spouse or partner, which sputters and spits on a continuum that too often ends too soon. The love of a pet which is easier than perhaps any other love and is thus powerful beyond explanation. The love, sometimes begrudgingly I observe, between siblings, with which I have not been blessed. The love for friends which, for me, has been as powerful or more so than others because my dear friends are my family. I have created my own set of siblings, brothers and sisters, with whom I suffer and spar and delight in their company as much, perhaps more so, than if they were born to me.

The love between people that extends over time becomes the page upon which our history is imprinted. We are witness to our loved one’s lives and in so being we perpetuate and accentuate their sense of self. Those of us with small or no families to serve as witness rely on friends and it is this distance, from those who know us best, that threaten our identity. Who are we, in effect, without those we love? Who are we without love. If you stumble into the forest without your nearest and dearest, are you really there?

I fell in love with a place. Makes no sense, but in the absence of lovers and the distance from grown children, a place opened its arms to me. A place filled with warmth, hillsides and vistas, and the ever-present power of the sun and sea. A place can welcome you home at night, but only in spirit. A place does not warm your bed. Neither does it challenge you to be your best or applaud your achievements. Rather than reflect your identity, and in so doing enhance the best in you, a place absorbs you into itself. A place has always been and will always be and you simply stumble into it and stay, or go. Depends, like all things, on the nature of love.

Morning Reading

Early morning. I sit at Dana Point harbor, following a long walk along the pier, among tourists or friends meeting post-yoga or breakfast meetings, and enjoy an iced-tea while I read. I prefer fiction to start the day. Others prefer the newspaper. I have never been one to devour the news first thing in the morning. Too dour. Too much fodder for introspection. Although, in the interest of full-disclosure, my mornings begin with NPR, which is a kinder gentler voice of news and often delivered as story.

I prefer stories. Enlightenment well beyond newsprint. I do keep an eye on breaking news via the internet, although prefer the fuller version via NPR or PBS. And I remain devoted to the hard copy of the Sunday New York Times, perhaps more tradition, or habit, providing context to my week – the opening moments of the day of rest which will close with 60 Minutes, another great storyteller. Every page is another story.

I read today a novel by an unknown but accomplished writer who tends too much to looking inward rather than description. What writing teachers decry as “show don’t tell.” What booksellers fondly refer to as “navel-gazing.” This particular writer, Charlotte Bacon, tells a great deal, but what she has to say is worth reading. Still, I find myself often longing for story. This look-at-me and listen-to-me style is a by-product of the Gen Next generation more than boomers, who observe the world only through their own lens. The writing is strong, many opportunities for notes in the margins or underlining, which I still do as a way of remembering what is otherwise lost moments after the reading. I have never been good at holding on to the words, only the essence. Fiction is the purview of essence.

Voyeurism seems to me pervasive these days, but not the sort of witness that gives rise to great literature. Rather the Facebook world where we share our lives moment by moment, thought by thought, as a way of defining ourselves. Look-at-me is slipping into fiction as well, a natural evolution of the late 20th century obsession with memoir and the new millennium madness for reality television. Everything laid bare. No nuance. No metaphor. Essence eclipsed by mirrors reflecting stark action and reaction. Feature writing dismissed to blurbs. Stories to Twitter. Personal essay to blogs.

And here I am, captive to blogging now as a means of self-expression. I write only for myself, expecting a mere handful of friends to join the journey, and these are already familiar with my own navel-gazing. Have all the best stories been told? Biblical, mythical, classical literature having examined every theme, so that all that remains is derivative? Jane Austen would have been a great blogger, but what might we have lost if she’d had the choice? Then again, it’s ever so much easier to be published these days, at least for a nano-second.

Shoeprints

I am traveling west to east across the country to the place I still think of as home, and the time spent in airports facilitates the transition. Even before I am beyond the borders of Orange County, differences are apparent. I am reminded of the magnificent mix of peoples in America, not only in the obvious facial structure and skin color but the nuances that define our many geographical cultures. Different accents, different body types, different ways of dressing [picture the college girl with pink cheeks matched by pink sweatshirt, pink purse and pink rubber sandals, surely not a California girl.] But of all the clues to our inner landscape, shoes, albeit captive to trends and fashions, gives much of our identity away.

When I was a girl in the fifties, traveling to Manhattan on the subway with my mother and aunt and cousins, on our way to the cultural activity of the week-end, whatever was free and most interesting to my culture-obsessed mother, we played a game they devised to keep the children occupied during the long ride. We had to guess the occupation or pastime of the people around us based solely on their shoes. This was simpler then as there were only so many shoes and these restricted primarily to season or stature.

White of course was never worn after Labor Day, unless you were a nurse, so that was a dead giveaway. Laced rubber-soled shoes were a work shoe, reserved largely for those who spent time on their feet, meaning service or medical professionals, or retailers. Wingtips, a dressier leather shoe men wore to impress, likely meant a lawyer or businessman. Soft-soled shoes for men were rarely in evidence then and perhaps the dominion of physicians. Women had even fewer choices, largely some variation of a pump or, in summer, sandals, and these generally heeled for a dressier occasion. Sneakers were worn only by children or a serious athlete. Boots were the providence of construction workers, women having given up the Victorian lace-up before I was born. High heels were rarely seen on the subway, other than in the evening hours on the way home from a night on the town. Of course, we never knew if we had guessed correctly and thus enjoyed the private satisfaction of the clever who are never tested.

Today in the airport there are sneakers of all types and worn by all ages and rarely referred to as sneakers. The laced up formal shoe remains reserved for business types. Flip flops are iconic among southern Californians and I smile in recognition. It is summer, thus many versions of sandals, although few “hippie” types anymore like Birkenstocks, I imagine those are more in evidence in northern California still. Sandals now are rubberized or plasticized or Pradaized. People tend to travel in comfort these days, so serious shoes like Jimmy Choo’s are nowhere to be found, not on a summer Saturday in the OC, nor even in Dallas where I switch planes and see yet another round of shoes, more sneakers, more plain sandals, a few fashion icons here and there. Target and Wal-Mart shoppers are distinct from Macy’s or Bloomingdale’s, the quality of the shoe, and, frankly, the quality of the clothes, a give-away, and yes, while not a fashionista myself, I know the good goods when I see them. However, the playing field has been leveled since I was a girl, in all ways, and the man in shorts and flip flops sitting next to me on the plane pulls out his Wall Street Journal and might be worth millions.

All I know for sure is that we are a melange of travelers, a complicated mosaic of life stories, which are less obvious than they might once have been. I, by the way, am wearing a low-heeled slide, my toes peeking out from the half-moon slit, and only because it was easier to pack my favorites flats then wear them, even though I wear an ancient pair of yoga pants and a linen shirt that anyone in the know will recognize immediately as J. Jill. This makes me a prototypical middle class middle aged female of indeterminate geography because I shop at a national chain. Thus, I am in some way indecipherable beyond my clothes, as most of us are in the end. Who might someone imagine me to be? Will they hypothesize that I am a bi-coastal woman who grew up poor and isn’t anymore, but lives a simple life and looks forward to a bit of time back in New York City where I will ride the subway and invariably find my eyes glancing downwards, wondering about the path each pair of shoes has taken, and what prints have been left behind.

Photo compliments of the Andy Warhol collection.

Bird Songs

Birds chirp almost incessantly outside my new home. Day and night. I have never been a fan, thus cannot identify them by their song, but I suspect the late night warbler, who begins almost on cue when I retire to bed, is perhaps a nightingale, and as such, to be treasured. The internet advises me there are many different types of warblers around here. Also mockingbirds, who I am told have a plethora of sounds. Mockingbirds are territorial and this, the spring, is their mating season, their nightly music their mating call. Their music is not only loud but powerful. Persuasive I imagine to those in wait. I lay in bed and try to decipher the code. What are the repetitions? Is there a coda? What makes them stop, and start again? I try to experience the music in what is otherwise merely sound that pierces the silence of night.

I never knew that birds were nocturnal. Not until I moved to California. A similar night bird serenaded me the first weeks, perhaps months I resided at my first Laguna Beach home, as if a reminder that I was no longer in Connecticut. I did not need a reminder then, nor do I need it now, and I imagine their east coast cousins also sing in mating season and beyond, however I hadn’t paid much attention. I was always more attuned to city street sounds. My new home is surrounded by interesting foliage and it is a quieter environ, equally as pleasant to birds who long to be heard. Is it warmer temperatures that encourage their musicality? Perhaps they are in effect celebrating the pleasures of life here.

If I am to sleep, I must make friends with bird songs. I try to think of it as music because music is a lovely lullaby. Mind over matter. I imagine the bird as philharmonic musician, replete with starched white collar and cummerbund. The image makes me laugh, not conducive to sleep. Now I try to imagine the bird as a street musician, which in fact it is, a tiny hat perched precariously on a neighboring branch to capture loose change. This is equally ludicrous, and makes me concentrate on the music, rather than relegate the bird to background. I harken back to the sound of the elevated subway that paced infrequently but regularly through the night only a few blocks away from my childhood home in the Bronx, New York. I rarely awakened to the sound. I took comfort in its constancy. This is the approach that might work – relegate the sound to white noise. Like sea breezes or the chatter of neighbors on a nearby porch. However these birds wants to be heard. I must find a way to honor that. Like any other voice. Perhaps the only way to make friends with the sound is to listen harder. Listen more actively. Active listening, the lesson taught at PTA’s so that we might truly hear our children, hear what they mean as much as what they say. The lesson of good communication. Listen well. A Buddhist parable.

Who would have thought that annoying loud little birds would convey such a profound message. I am listening little birds. I am listening very hard to what needs to be heard.

Photo of Mockingbird in Long Beach by Monte Taylor.