Hammock Stone

Sun setting over hills, clouds rolling in through twilight, dark sliding over trees, earth smelling of night. 

California Stars

Homesick all weekend. I've sat here for almost an hour now, trying to write about that, but the words won't come. I've felt in limbo since I got here, and such a non-place seems to defy description. Things aren't bad here at all--I love my job, my students, the many friends I was too far from for years. But now there are people (and dogs) on the other side of the country, and I can't really think about that distance too deeply, because I need to be able to function.
 
And there's the place itself, that other side. Maybe we only ever really find our place in the place where we find ourselves, whenever and however that happens. Maybe it would have happened here if I'd stayed. But I left before something in me was fully formed, and something about California helped me grow, expand, free myself.

All of this has been spinning around in my head. And then I heard this song tonight while I was driving, and suddenly I was on a cliff along Route 1, a damp, freezing wind blowing in hard from the Pacific, the scent of the ocean mixing with eucalyptus and coastal sage. And off to my left in the darkness there's a halo of light hovering over San Francisco, but it's nowhere near close enough to interfere with the millions and millions of stars in the perfect night sky.

Everyday Travel

The majesty of every bridge. The way every city glitters like Oz as it rises in the distance.

Saturday Morning

The storybook ideal of fall: A neighborhood of large, old stone houses and vividly colored trees. All around a maple, the ground is carpeted with orange and red, and the sun slants through the tree's remaining leaves.

Last Light

Just before the sun sets, it bursts across the tops of things. Then the autumn trees look like Tiffany lamps, mosaics of green and gold and crimson.

Fall Fruit

A friend posts to Facebook about eating pomegranates. I consider how far I am from the pomegranates that grew in my backyard and think of all the crisp-tart apples I picked last weekend.

Challenge Versus Ease

I'm a little homesick--for Annie and Tigger; and for dry, clear air; and for the wide fields and the hills off in the distance; and the fruit trees everywhere. I walked into a Whole Foods the other night and was greeted by a small basket of figs for sale--figs from California, of course; figs just like the ones that are probably currently ripening on the tree just behind the abundant garden I worked so hard to plant and left behind; figs that are ripening just in front of the two pomegranate trees that will still have a month or two to go before the arils burst the skins of the fruit.

But yesterday I walked past an apple tree someone had planted in front of their house. I don't remember seeing fruit trees anywhere in the city as a child. My grandfather's house in western Pennsylvania had apples, and the farm in upstate New York, where I lived right after college, had an incredible old apple tree with some of the most delicious apples I've ever eaten. Those seemed like the height of luxury--food! Growing right outside the door! California, with its abundance of edible landscaping--figs, pomegranates, plums, rosemary, cherries, apricots, pluots, blackberries...all just hanging out in city parks--seemed unreal and magical. Easy.

I have a hard relationship to easy. I'm never sure where the balance is for me: When is easy a good thing? When does it alleviate unnecessary difficulty, suffering even, and when does it begin to cross the line into facile and soul deadening?

This city is a hard place for me to be, in many ways. There are ghosts, emotional baggage. The weather here is terrible for me this time of year--not in an "I'm a delicate flower" way, but really, really hard. Atypical seasonal affective disorder hard. By the time I left for work one day last week, I was crying in my car, so rattled I couldn't even drive. My body was so physically miserable I could barely function, let alone maintain emotional balance. All I wanted was to be in the Central Valley, where it's dry as a bone and the mornings are cool, even in the height of summer.

The thing is, there are plenty of things I don't love back there. It took me years to stop being upset by the soulless architecture of most of Davis. The strip malls everywhere. The perfectly landscaped lack of wildness. The brutal sun in the middle of a summer day. The lack of public transit (I took a train to Center City Philadelphia yesterday, and it was blissful). 

No place is perfect. If there's a town that is ideally tailored to me, I've yet to meet it. I seem to keep making choices that end up challenging me one way or another, and that certainly sounds like a good thing on paper. But I'm not sure how to keep challenging choices from tipping from healthy and nourishing into extreme discomfort. But then I also wonder if maybe I'm just a challenged sort of person, always--maybe as a category of feeling it's related to the longing Lis wrote about. Maybe extreme discomfort is just part of the package, and maybe there's some cosmic lesson I'm meant to learn from that occasionally ease-less package.

In any event, despite my uneasy relationship with the kind of discomfort I'm feeling right now, my relationship with ease is, perhaps, even less easy. In some ways, certain choices have felt just as much about rejecting ease as accepting challenge. Is that just an adolescent distrust, a need to prove something to myself? Or is it actually a kind of self preservation? 

I want a life that's rich and nuanced and faceted. Ultimately, I guess what I really want is beauty and soulfulness and deep search and discovery. To the extent that those things are compatible with ease (and lack of humidity and heat--is that really too much to ask?), I'll take some ease, but apparently I'm unwilling (unable, even) to take ease if it means a lack of the other things. 

Meanwhile, this view out my office window is some solace in the middle of the discomfort of homesickness and sticky warm wetness. Rain glistening on slate and Wissahickon schist.

Blur

Self portraits taken today for Rewriting the Story. The assignment was to play with blur and focus--blurring things that might normally be your focus, focusing on things that wouldn't. I was a little stumped about how to control the focus while using a remote (which automatically focuses the camera). I could have set the focus manually and then set the self timer, but really--ten seconds to clamber around too many branches or climb past brambles to perch on a fallen tree? In a delicate, filmy dress? Yeah, not happening. So I messed around with making things "blurry" in one way or another during editing.

The blur interests me on levels I have no energy to delve into right now. I've been sick the past couple of days, and I have other posts stewing in my brain, but I can't write those now either. (It's amazing I managed to get any photos done.) But sometimes, I just like to come here and check in. Or reach out. Make a mark somehow.

Fairy Tale Photo Edits for Today

All played with, as that's my M.O. for this month.

I often have mixed feelings about doing this to photos--it's really fun to do, and I can get really into the experimentation. But I'm not always sure I like the results. The beauty of being able to play with them like this? The two below weren't very good photos to begin with, and now they're at least interesting to look at--see the before and after.

Before: Booooring

After. "Who's that trip-trapping across my bridge?"
All edits and textures from PicMonkey and Pixlr Express

Before

After--texture can be found here

So...definitely more interesting than the originals. Definitely a lot of fun to make. But they're not really anything more than pretty, you know? Not that there's anything wrong with pretty, but apparently I have a complicated relationship with making things that are just pretty.

But I don't always feel this way about editing heavily. Sometimes, it's precisely, exactly what a photo needs to become precisely, exactly what it's meant to become. Below, for instance, is my favorite self portrait so far. In altering the image's texture and color, I turned it into something that has less to do with what I look like, and more to do with being...I'm not really sure how to put it. But it became something outside of myself, something that has a deeper story, and something I hope is more than merely pretty. And I love that.

Also interesting--the texture on the self portrait is the very same texture I used on the orchard photo above. It works well on both, but it's astonishing how vastly different the total effect is, no?

Sunday Drive

I got in my car this afternoon with my camera and no particular plan except to get a cup of coffee and go somewhere beautiful to take some pictures for class. So, coffee in hand, I took off toward those hills I love, thinking I'd probably wind up at Cold Canyon to walk along the creek for a while. But once I got to the turnout where everyone parks to access the hiking trails, it was completely packed with cars.

So I just kept driving--up around Monticello Dam, where Lake Berryessa begins, and really into the hills. And when the road split into 128 and 121, I took 128 toward Napa. I've known for a long time that you can get to Napa that way, of course, but I've never driven the route--I thought it would take a lot longer than it actually does. Frankly, it can't be much more than half an hour longer than taking the highway, and it's about a thousand times more beautiful. I stopped a lot to take pictures.

(Photos are clickable for enlargification-type purposes.)

Caution: Hyper Edited Photos Ahead!

Since playful post-processing in the service of freeing one's creative intuition and discovering one's visual voice is sort of the point of the class, a little bit of hyper editing is a very good thing. (Also: Yet another free online photo editing program!)

And yes, I'm posting photos rather than writing anything real. It's a tiny door back into the blog--say, one of those cat doors you stick in your sliding glass door--but at least I'm crawling through it.

Without further ado, I present to you three takes on some nectarine blossoms. (So my landlord tells me, and she's someone I have reason to trust about plants...though, even she seemed maybe not 100 percent sure? So you know, whatever. Oooh, look! Pretty flowers!)

Just a Photograph, Plus Some Online Photo Editing Options

I've been silent lately, mostly out of exhaustion. I miss it here, though, and I'm hoping to come back soon. Meanwhile, I've just started another class with the lovely Vivienne McMaster. (And there may still be time to join, if anyone out there is interested! You all know I can't say enough about how much I love Viv and her online photography classes, right?)

Anyway, this is a photo I took a week or so ago, but just got around to editing today--in the playful, and hopefully messy, manner of our current assignment. Which is to say--a bit on the over edited side, but totally fun in its over-the-topness!

The dip in the hills (also seen at a distance here) is called the Berryessa Gap. Through it and into the hills a bit lies Lake Berryessa, and around the lake and over the hills and some very beautiful and windy roads you eventually get to Napa and Sonoma, set in their own little valleys in the hills. It's a beautiful place, this place I live.

For those of you who are concerned about Picnik closing this month, do you know about PicMonkey, Pixlr, and Pixlr Express? PicMonkey is the most like Picnik, which makes sense, as it seems to have been developed by the same folks. Pixlr Express is easy and straightforward--I'm having some trouble understanding the main Pixlr program, which is apparently a bit more like Photoshop? Which would explain my confusion. But they're all very, very useful to know about as free online photo editing options. That don't force you to join Google+.

UPDATE: After I posted this, I found this incredibly helpful link to a (rather large) collection of short, easy to follow videos all about using Pixlr! It's a wonderful resource--many, many thanks to whoever is behind this little labor of love.

Notebooks

(This essay is old, but I was thinking about it recently when I read Alice's post here, and then I found the pendant and used it for photo experimentation. [And I have to say, the photos are at least a whole lot better than they used to be!])



On the sofa next to me are no fewer than four journals of various sizes, all partially filled. There are also two sketch books (one large, one small), and a large pad of silky, sturdy graph paper that I like to use for taking notes and making lists and for sketching. In addition to the notebook pages that have been written or drawn on, each of these books has its own collection of scrap paper shoved into it, not quite fitting, getting worn and ripped around the edges that stick out.

I was looking for a list of words I’d written down at some point, thinking that I wanted to use them as the basis for a writing exercise. I scribbled them on one page or another, somewhere toward the back of a journal, or so I thought. But I currently have no idea where they are—I can’t find them in any of these books, and I can’t think of any other notebooks I’ve been schlepping around with me over the past year and a half. (I mean really, isn’t seven enough?) The rest of my notebook collection is neatly packed away in a box, historical documents now. But I came across my inspired word list just recently, so surely it’s in one of these living, breathing, and extremely disorganized books.

But if I can’t find the list, I have at least gotten a chance to look over a portrait of my brain as it really seems to work on a day-to-day basis, and I have to say, it’s a little distressing. For one thing, my journal writing has been less than regular of late. I know that my writing is better when I keep a more regular journal—and by “better” I mean that honest-to-God non-journal pieces of writing happen more often.

On the other hand, it seems that I never stop taking notes of one kind or another, even when the goal isn’t anything you could call “writing.” Example: My life is absolutely littered with tiny bits of paper covered in ideas about food. “Steamed carrots with vinaigrette/dill/etc.” says one. Another: “Greek style ‘yogurt’ with almonds and honey.” And then there’s simply: “coffee and chocolate frappé thingy.” The same page contains notes like, “get soldering stuff working,” and the somewhat cryptic-unless-you-live-in-my-head, “etsy!”

Other pages list the measurements of various beloved children for whom I’ve made clothing or plan to do so. Lists of spices my acupuncturist wants me to incorporate into my diet. Over-ambitious to-do lists that, I note, are in most cases still not completed. Almost dictatorial lists of life goals: “Learn to play the guitar/Make more of my own clothes/write more/learn to balance creative endeavors.”

The sketch books are just as overwhelming, with drawings for pieces of jewelry or clothing I want to make, various designs I’d like to turn into texture stamps for jewelry, not to mention all the things that aren’t sketches (more lists of food, more to-do lists, and the occasional more-to-the-point notes on soldering, polishing, forming a bezel, etc.).

So these notebooks are a mess, and I’m not sure what to think about that. My lack of focused writing frustrates me, and it’s super annoying not to know where things are when you want to find them again. I like to think I’d prefer to have one journal and one sketchbook and fill all the pages before jumping to new books. I’d like to keep my writing and sketching segregated from my to-do listing and recipe imagining. Surely I’d be way more productive if I had a place for everything and if everything were in its place.

And yet, just now I found a year-old sketch I wouldn’t have said I was thinking much about—it’s for a small, roughly drawn landscape pendant, with a tree in the bottom left corner, a hill behind it, and a moon in the top right corner. I hadn’t looked at it in months. But as it turns out, I took almost that exact pendant out of my kiln just yesterday:

I can’t consciously remember the words on that lost list, but maybe someday soon I’ll write something with them anyway.

What Friday Looked Like

Yesterday, the light and the cloud cover were all over the place, even during the 15 or 20 minutes over which I took these photos. But it's amazing what can happen when you adjust your shutter speed more or less correctly, eh?

(This in no way means I knew what I was doing--it only means I'm finally brave enough to adjust the dial and see what happens. Which is no small thing, really, I suppose.)

Crow (sort of the unofficial bird of Davis, CA)

Walnut trees and sky

UC Davis research fields

UC Davis research fields

Flowering quince

The town logo

Wild Nights Are My Glory*

Close to the house, the steady, wet sound of rain on pavement, slapping in puddles. Farther off, the wind gusts and swirls; you can hear the trees bending at wild angles in the dark.

*Okay, readers, just for fun: Who can tell me where the title comes from? :-)

Winter View

The sky a wash of cold white and grey; the trees all brown, spindly branches or the most subdued shades of grey-green; and the swimming pool, an unlikely splash of the brightest color, like a giant aqua kidney bean outlined in rosy red brick.

American

(This piece was written after hearing Dr. Martin Luther King on the radio a few years ago. I cry pretty much every time I hear his voice.)

In the Sierra Nevada mountains (in the
El Dorado National Forest), August, 2011

Driving east from Sacramento, the change from valley to mountains happens so suddenly it’s a little disorienting, and it would be beautiful if it weren’t for the development that’s taking over—clumps of ugly, thoughtless houses advancing on the wilderness, shrinking its vastness, taming something wild and exciting into nothingness.

And yet, even now, there’s something so intense, so fiercely romantic about the way these mountains rise out of the valley. Each time I drive this way, my heart opens. Because there’s something about the way this vast wildness leads east, further into the rest of the vast wildness that makes up this country. There’s something about driving across such a magnificent expanse of land that makes you aware of what it means to be from somewhere—to be born into a place that will always be a part of you.

America is boring and exhilarating. It’s covered in bad politics; problematic history; ugly, cheaply made houses; cloned shopping malls; racism and other brands of small mindedness. But underneath all those ugly houses is the land. And inside the ugly houses are people. And those people, all of us Americans, are capable of so much more beauty and kindness and love for one another and for the land than we remember to practice on a regular basis.

Every time I hear a Woody Guthrie song, or Martin Luther King’s voice on the radio; every time I think about riding through Indiana, trying to capture in scribbled words the purples and greens and pinks and grays of a Midwestern June landscape; every time I reread the Little House books; every time I sit on a cliff over the Atlantic Ocean, the honeyed scent of pine trees at my back; every time I hear a guitar played or a voice raised in song a certain way; every time I remember hitting the eastern edge of the Rockies for the first time, feeling the cool, dry, clear mountain air on my skin; every time I ride a train north along the Hudson River; and every time I drive out of the Central Valley and into the Sierras I remember that the sights and smells and sounds of this land are part of me in a way I can’t escape. I can leave it, but it will always affect the way I feel about everything, all the ideas I have about the world.

Because how can you see the Rockies, how can you listen to Dr. King’s voice, how can you laugh with a perfect stranger over breakfast in a diner in Wyoming and not believe in freedom, and democracy, and love, and the beauty and resilient strength of the human heart?

Sunrise

Driving east in the semidarkness, I crest a hill to find the sky floating over the Sierras in wide ribbons of rose, gold, teal. Morning is heading west to meet me.

Winter Trees

On the bike path, dried husks of seed pods cling to the tree, lit from within and hissing against each other in the breeze.

Festive

Crows and mistletoe are hanging like ornaments on the old, gnarled trees.