Things We Miss In the Night

Last night I woke to the deep, non-musical hoots from a great horned owl outside my window.

Soon another owl began to hoot in a higher tone. This happened more than once, the two owls trading off hooting until they began to call simultaneously, and to my pleasure, in harmony.

The previously non-musical sounds took on a different quality all together. 

 I fell asleep thinking about all the things we miss in the night.

The lizard who had to grow a new tail

The Alligator Lizard had to grow a new tail

because someone tried to eat him.

He moves like a snake

and shakes his head side to side.

But before he moves his hands and feet

his tongue flicks and his new tail of a different pattern swings.

Woke up it was a May, 2013 morning

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.

Concrete is

... a substance not so easily impressed.

Appeasing the backyard bird-feeder dreams

Some dreams latch onto your leg, pull you down, and whisper into your ear.

Some dreams grasp onto your elbow, and gently stroke the hairs on your arm. 

Some dreams swagger on by with a peacock strut and sly glimmer in their eye. 

And some dreams are the backyard bird-feeder of chatter.

There aren't enough ambitions, awards, accolades, responsibilities, duties, or morals to muzzle the buzzing, whistling, and screeching chitter-chatter of the backyard bird-feeder dream.

 Is 34 *17 degrees enough latitude for a backyard bird-feeder dream?

 (*note from a later time when I looked at a globe=34 degrees would be a much longer journey than my backyard bird-feeder dream) 

What not to leave behind

My good friend said, "What matters is what we choose to give to the world, and what we leave behind. That's why people have kids, have careers, write novels, paint pictures. We become what we leave behind." I love her and I admire her.

What happens to a person as we conceive a person to be after they die is a matter of faith and belief. Matter remains, but the person is gone. If I don't believe in God or gods, an after-life, and this is my one and only life; then when I am gone, I am gone forever. 

And yet our choices and therefore lives are endless, cycling reverberations. After we are gone, the reverberations continue in the conscious lives of people who we loved and who cared about us. The reverberations continue in our abandoned edifices, our emotional and physical landfills, in our waters and in our air. The after-life is real to the living of this life, in memories and minds, and in the world we inhabit.

While I'm here I can choose how I spend my time, how I treat other people, and how I treat the planet.

Perhaps it matters what we choose not to leave behind, the very act of defiance a message of love.

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.