The right now
Morning birds in mountain view, a
humming sewing machine while Jacob works on the cases we'll carry our
clothes and other such things in on our backs this summer. The right
now is morning, just before 8am on a saturday in May. The right now
is sunny with the light streaming in through the window. The
temperature is mild and the wind is absent of but a slight breeze.
The building next to us is lit up, and I wonder if others have woken
from their slumber. They might wake to the sound of the sewing
machine. I am sufficiently caffeinated and I was using the iPhone app
Jacob added to his library for me-the Audubon Guide to Birds.
I can listen to recordings, and try to put a face to a sound. I use
John Muir Laws Pocket Guide set for the San Francisco Bay.
I listened to the barking hoot of the Spotted Owl and wonder if my
recordings are an interloper to the resident singers outside. My
friend Jazelle is on a drive from Tucson, making her way up to
California. She is working on the Northern Spotted Owl project in the Eldorado National Forest near Lake Tahoe this summer. Jacob and I walked
through that area two years ago and it was still very much covered in
snow in July. She asked if she would need warm clothes. She'll be on
an owl clock for her work, so I think she might need some new
clothes. Owl work requires a different, night-rythym.
The where
Lone Oak apartments in Mountain View,
the cement was laid around the lone oak of which our building was
named. A young avocado tree is growing through the pavement in our
backyard parking area, growing up against a fence that divides our
building from another. It's struggling, many leaves are
dead or dying. I try to pick out the dying or dead leaves to help the
tree. I don't know how well it's going to fare growing in
pavement. That would be tough.
Mountain View is a tricky place to
people watch. Many people travel in their metal box protectors and
move quickly, and it makes it difficult to watch. It's possible to
glimpse as they speed on by. Even at a coffee shop where they sit,
it's difficult to watch them, their image projections a tricky mask
and the performance an addictive distraction for my imagination. I
try to imagine other things about them, but there are so many shiny
things. Sometimes there are breaks in the performance but I usually
have to do something to confuse them, or entertain them, or put them
off to stop long enough to properly watch.
The Who
Sometimes I'm just an image projection.
Even this writing is an image projection-there is a great distance
between the world and the word and what I try to share and sometimes
I fail.
The Why
I like the potential for random
encounters or the possibility to stumble over odd events or images. I
fall on my face sometimes, and sometimes this is nice to meet
gravity. I sometimes see someone or something do something different,
something I could never imagine. I like learning something new from
or about Jacob, the person I think I know the most. I'm interested in
limits and constraints and open spaces and narrow tunnels and the
light shining in an iceberg and river edges and river channels, and
stories about discovery and stories about ordinary things. I like
perambulatory excursions where I'm immersed in experience and
sensation. I like the rhythm of walking. I like learning about how
other animals move on land, how some use their appendages like us,
how some use their body as propulsion like a snake, and how some roll
up into a ball when they are scared. Sometimes we are just walking on
by and kick up some dust and there are little and long worm-like
larvae that leap into the air, coil themselves up, and hit the ground
spinning as a fear and wind-powered wheel. They can't run, the wind
carries them to safety. That's how they roll.
