A Pelican Foraging Frenzy

Have you ever seen a Pelican foraging frenzy?

If I were a Mallard or a Cinnamon Teal, or a Green Night Heron or another wetland dwelling feather friend I would be wary. 

If I were a silver or orange or yellow water swimmer I would be even more wary. More than wary, I would be afraid.

Pelicans forage in a flock; their tranquil glide a confused anticedent to a messy, floppy, splashy free-for-all with their massively powerful wings. 

A flock of foraging Pelicans form a semi-circle in which they ensue to pummel the surface of the water and scoop up fish or crustaceans and water. 

If I were the slough or stream or river I would be wary. The waves from a Pelican foraging frenzy crash or lap against the sandy or muddy banks-depending on where the sand or mud may stand. 

If I were a Killdeer or a Willit or a Stilt or an Avocet, I would be wary. 

Water churns, ripples echo, fish flea, and the Pelican foraging frenzy is an unforgiving fish herding contest. 

The prize in a pelican foraging frenzy goes to who can herd the most fish into their center. 

In a Pelican foraging frenzy water sprays and splashes, and along with unlucky fish, is collected into a wide and deep gular pouch, trapped between vertically held mandibles.

Unlike the unlucky fish, however, some water is released-as much as three gallons drain as the unlucky fish follow an unlucky path into the center of the winning pelican. 

Most are wary in a pelican foraging frenzy with the exception of the Pelican foraging winners.

Where do words come from?

... not a vacuum.

They come from messages I read, hear, or otherwise am exposed to in this here world. In an effort for me to understand the source of my words and therefore my thoughts, actions and behaviors, I'm forcing myself to generate a list. I was that kid that said a word I liked because I thought it sounded neat without actually understanding the meaning of the word. 

Occasionally I still say words I'm not completely sure the meaning of because I like them. This can be embarrassing or entertaining depending on who you are. I try to be more careful, but sometimes I just can't help myself.  Jacob and I had a conversation the other day about the fact that I didn't really understand the meaning of peccadillo. I had always thought it meant quirk, "we all have our pecadillos-deal with it." In fact, I'm pretty sure Robin Williams used it in this way when he and Matt Damon were having a therapy session in Good Will Hunting. I did not fact check that-but I think that is the root of my peccadillo misunderstanding. Peccadillo means sin as Jacob pointed out to me. Apparently he had pointed that out to me multiple times. 

I have a really bad memory. 

I like to think this is an endearing quirk.

Jacob then went on to say how frustrated he was that people used the word literally when they mean figuratively. Which is confusing. "It was literally 1,000 degrees outside." Saying literally when you don't mean literally does not add emphasis. 

I've been to the Mountain View Public Library a lot in the last year or so. I didn't realize I could track my reading list online and didn't click yes on my profile, so most of what I've read is lost in my mind. Perhaps the words come to me in dreams at night, or trickle into everyday conversation, or have made their way into my writing. I want to understand how words I read affect me so this is my effort to do so. This does not come naturally. I have to work at listing.

Without further ado: 

Books I've read in the last few months that I liked enough to remember now:

This Close: Stories-Jessica Francis Kane (2013)

Lucid Stars-Andrea Barrett (1988)

Servants of the Map-collection of short stories-Andrea Barrett (2002)

The End of the Story-Lydia Davis (2004)

Franny and Zooey-J.D. Salinger (1961)

The Psychopath Test-Jon Ronson (2011)

Them-Jon Ronson (2001)

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft-Stephen King (2010)

No Woman Tenderfoot: Florence Merriam Bailey, Pioneer Naturalist-Harriet Kofalk (2002)

Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer from Within-Natalie Goldberg (2005)

Psychiatric Tales:Eleven Graphic Stories about Mental Illness-Darryl Cunningham (2011)

When I'm not doing other things and spend time on the internets, these are the sites I visit most frequently.

Brain Pickings

Boing Boing

XKCD

The Rumpus

Bay Nature

John Muir Laws

Listening to Nature: A Sound Walk Across California

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology

i fucking love science

I like all of these sites for different reasons. If I had a million dollars I would donate it all to them for the work they do. Not all of it. But a lot of it. 

Is it a sin?

He sports a down-curved bill shaped like a scythe. 

His cousin is a mockingbird.

Is it a sin to kill a thrasher?

I remember

...a mosquito net over a single bed in a room at the YMCA in Dar es Salaam. Bustling, gritty streets, open sewage, a lone woman defecating on the sidewalk. Young men with hipster glasses, colorful hats, t-shirts and frayed jeans, like any major city in the US. I remember long days stretched out, nights and days in equal measure all year long. Close to things, body odors mingled with diesel exhaust, goats and chickens and the smell of burning rubber and plastic. I remember holding hands while saying hello, sometimes for many minutes-I remember morning tripping over afternoon, falling into night, rising moon a flash-konyagi and a first cigarette. The first time alone in a house and a first heart break. A longing for friendship, for closeness. So close to isolation. I remember it not being my language or my song. I remember feeling like the worst sort of coward. Immersed but distant, foreign yet familiar, a family of strangers. I remember being a floating mountain. I remember missing home.

I don't remember nights wide awake with someone there but not there. I don't remember staying even after he had left, I don't remember drunken nights begging for a love existing only in my mind. I don't remember feeling empty, stranded, and broken. I don't remember living in fear of the stranger, wanting something concrete and spoken out loud and simple. Transparent. Honest. Colorful and bright. Light and full. I don't remember half formed sentences and explanations. I don't remember a dead year. Weighty, heavy, disembodied, suspended. Nothing held. I don't remember thinking, life is a long walk through a waterless stretch of desert. I don't remember long letters written to loved ones far away with a single desire to convince them of excitement, when in reality it was a trudge. I don't remember wanting so badly to convey my story, this story of a powerful and novel experience, the drama of my discovery of a conspicuously different culture. I don't remember a hardening heart, sensitivities calloused over, compassion merging into fatigue. I don't remember turning to disfigured conceptions of reality.

I remember a conception of reality debunked by existing reality. I remember learning to retain sensitivity. I remember somehow making a crucial connectivity with existing reality, engaging with a situation as it was found. I remember reaching out to another human being as meaning, as the most basic form of energy found in a shared experience, the wings of a hummingbird, or perhaps more subtle, a dove. The sound a faint flutter. An unwavering sense of life, of hope.

It is difficult

...to sit in an exquisite space and rub against my imperfections. 
It is far easier to face coffee stains and stray hairs on the floor and leftover food crumbs, and moss growing in the windowsill than a spotless room. 

Sometimes I need to touch or brush up against my imperfections, my own personal fallen trees, shower mold, dirt prints - 

my own personal wild disorder.  

When you move around a lot

...things come in your mailbox from previous tenants. 

You learn their name, and occasionally, you learn something about them that very few people might also know. 

Or maybe many people know. 

You don't know them.

But in a way, or in some ways,

you do. 

What some people say sometimes

"I wish..."

"I want..."

"If only..."

"I'm so busy, I can't..."

"If I had...
more time
more money
more friends
more more more more more more more more"

"Why can't I..."

"Because..."

"You are lucky. I could never do that."

"At least you can put it on your resume."

"I have too many bills to pay." as she glides her freshly manicured fingers through her freshly highlighted locks and her diamond ring gets caught.

"It is so hard being me. I work full time with kids and a husband who is never around."

"Why me?"

"My job is so stressful."

"We just don't have enough money"

"I wish someone would just come in and clean for me, cook for me, and make everything hard go away."

"Oh, but that's because you don't have kids."

"I wish life were simple."