Musings at 30,000 Feet

Journal entry, STL-PHX. Jan 18, 2011

We lift off and angle upwards through low, drizzly fog for a few minutes. As the flight attendant announces we have reached ten thousand feet and may power up our portable electronics, the plane enters a clear space sandwiched between two flat, horizontal layers of clouds. A short time later we pop up out of the top layer of clouds into the sunlight.

Now I’m reveling in the heat of the sun, glad to have scored the last free window seat on the sunny side of the plane. It’s been too cold and gray in the midwest for too long. Eighty-degree Phoenix is going to feel so pleasant, so comfortable. Just the thought of standing in the desert sunlight causes me to unclench and expand from my cold little soul outwards.

The clouds form a dreamy ocean of white beneath us, though looking beyond the nose of the plane I am beginning to see that we’ll be past them soon. These clouds have a topography all their own, informed by wind currents above and below. If the plane were to suddenly lose altitude and crash on a day like this, how lovely it is to imagine that we’d land gently on pillowy soft clouds instead of on hard water or unyielding earth. 

We’re passing over a stretch of clouds that have dual lines in the tops of them, running north to south. As if someone has been traversing them on a giant sled, or with cross country skis, leaving tracks behind. I smile to myself. These days it seems the only time I have the time to allow myself frivolous thoughts like these is when I’m on a plane.

I lean towards the tiny airplane window, wishing I could wrap the white mid-day sun around me like a cloak. I am grateful for air travel. I am grateful for this odd time-out thirty thousand feet above the earth. 

Mt. Hood, OR. For as much as I travel by air, I have so few photos taken from airplanes.

Journal entry, SFO-PHX, June 17,2014

Peach-fuzz atmosphere is what I see out the airplane window right now, with a layer of pale, bright blue above it that gradually becomes darker but no less luminescent. Flying from one place to the next is such a beautiful luxury. Especially when the flight has less than fifty people on it, like tonight’s flight. How rare, and how very luxurious it feels to have all three seats in which to spread out. It reminds me of the early 90s, the good old days before Southwest Airlines really took off (bad pun intended, most definitely).

Just in the minute I looked away to pull the book I’m reading from my backpack, the space between the terminator and sky became this wonderful shade of deeply purplish red, like you might see in an old painting of the Sacred Heart or in the gown of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Directly below that is a layer of deep indigo, also with a purplish hue that keeps darkening as each second passes. The layer between the indigo sky and the ground fades through light shades of grey-blue to a soft white. 

Now the blood-red is tinted brownish and has spread upwards into the sky. The lower bands of indigo, pale blue and soft white have taken on a misty quality and fused further into one another. 

We are over Southern California, and the pilot has swung the plane around to a more easterly trajectory. To the west and north I can see a low band of intense, fiery blood-orange just above the horizon. Such saturated colors, I can almost taste them. Sunsets and sunrises seem so magical from the windows of airplanes. Here I am a captive audience. Nothing within the metal tube of the airplane is nearly as interesting, and I have nowhere else to be, nothing to distract me from the unfolding drama in the sky. 

We’re under the edge of the terminator now, cruising into darkness with the last of the blue California twilight at our backs.

Speaking of skies, I’ve been enjoying images lately from the live site camera on the project we have under construction southern Florida. The sky down there has such an overtly tropical turquoise cast to it, I can’t help but call up the feel of sticky, salty humidity in the air and the tepid, viscous ocean water lapping at the sand. There are always squadrons of puffy white clouds - some passing overhead so quickly I can see them roiling and writhing despite the poor resolution of the site cam. I’m reminded of how long it’s been since the regular trips we took to Florida in my childhood. There are no skies that color in California, or in Arizona for that matter. I am almost struck with nostalgia. Almost. Northern California and Arizona have their own singular shades of skies, of which I am also deeply enamored.

The nose of the plane has begun angling earthward. Time to pull myself together and prepare to be earthbound once more. 

Wilderness Song

This poem by Everett Ruess just about sums it up for me:

Wilderness Song

by Everett Ruess

I have been one who loved the wilderness

Swaggered and softly crept among the mountain peaks

I have listened long to the sea’s brave music,

I have sung my songs above the shriek of desert winds. 

On canyon trails when warm nights winds were blowing,

Blowing and sighing through the star tipped pines,

Musing, I walked behind my placid burro,

While water rushed and broke on pointed rocks below.

  I have known green seas heaving,

I have loved red rocks and twisted trees and cloudless turquoise skies,

Slow sunny clouds and red sand blowing.

I have felt the rain and slept behind the waterfall. 

In cool sweet grasses I have lain and heard the ghostly murmur of regretful winds,

In aspen glades where rustling silver leaves whisper wild sorrows to the green gold solitudes,

I have watched the shadowed clouds pile high. 

Singing, I rode to meet the splendid shouting storm,

And fought its fury until the hidden sun foundered in darkness,

And the lightning heard my song. 

Say that I was tired and weary,

Burned and blinded by the desert sun,

Footsore, thirsty sick with strange diseases, lonely

And wet and cold,

But that I kept my dream.

Always I shall be one who loves the wilderness.

Swaggers and softly creeps among the mountain peaks.

I shall listen long to the sea’s brave music.

I shall sing my songs above the shriek of desert winds.

From "Everett Ruess: Vagabond for Beauty" by W.L.  Rusho

'I have loved red rocks and twisted trees and cloudless turquoise skies' 
Photo by DL Newbold, 2013.

Eleven Years In, or Why I'm a NaNoWriMo Addict

I just signed up to participate in National Novel Writing Month this November. 2013 marks my eleventh consecutive year as a participant. 

NaNoWriMo - which I shorten further, to Wrimo - began in the Bay Area in the late 90s as a challenge among a few friends. They dared each other to write a novel in the short space of a month. It could be any genre. It could be the worst writing ever set to paper, or the best thing since Shakespeare. Quality was immaterial. The main thing was quantity: each person had to write fifty thousand words of new, original material during that thirty day period.

Using that premise, Wrimo has since snowballed into a worldwide phenomenon. The creative folks who run NaNoWriMo keep the excitement of writing alive throughout the year with a variety of challenges for participants, including Script Frenzy (writing a script or a play in a month) and a summer camp-themed event in August where participants are assigned 'cabin mates' to act as mutual prompters and cheerleaders, urging each other on to their individual goals. 

The Wrimo website is supported by sales of Wrimo related merchandise and participant donations. Proceeds go to keeping their servers from crashing, yes, but the biggest chunk of their annual intake goes to programs that support literacy and writers, particularly young writers.

I've only 'won' - crossed the 50K word mark before 11:59pm November 30th - one time. I've come oh-so-very-close on several other occasions, most notably 2012, when the clock ran out and left me about four thousand words short. The 46,000 words I did get in were written over the course of about ten scattered, frantic days, so I felt like a winner regardless. 

I've never approached November noveling the same way twice. There have been years when I've meticulously outlined what I planned to write in advance, only to abandon the plan and go an entirely different direction come 12:01am on November 1st. There have been years when the word count was the only thing worth keeping: the words themselves added up to incoherent nothingness. Other times I've started the month with no idea what to write and ended up with some pretty decent material.

Some years I swore I wouldn’t participate. Not enough time. No desire to put myself through it again. Always, though, like an addict falling off the wagon, I find myself signing up at the last minute and scribbling frantically to make up for lost time. 

Why can’t I give it up and have a normal, quiet November, a November that's free of stress over whether I’m writing 1,667 words per day? There are two main reasons:

1) Wrimo has been one of the few constants. My life has been unpredictable and unsettled over the past decade. I haven't always known where I'll be living, what I'll be doing, or what transformation/transition I’ll be in the midst of at any given time. Yet I always know that wherever I am come November, I can unpack my laptop, dive into the lives of my characters, and immerse myself in their worlds for a while.  

2) The characters I write about won’t let me stop. I’ve been writing about the same basic group of characters for almost the entire time I’ve been participating in Wrimo (a couple of them even pre-date Wrimo). Every time I think I’ve started a new project with an entirely new cast, one of them eventually rounds a corner and runs into, or ends up being related to, a character from one of the other novels. At this point they’re more intertwined than the characters in a long-running soap opera. Unraveling ten years’ worth of entanglements, carving out story lines that are coherent and easy to follow - these tasks I keep pushing off, telling myself ‘next year’ every year. 

I do think about and work on these novels throughout the rest of the year, largely because the characters refuse to stay silent. They poke and prod their way into my consciousness at odd hours, arguing with decisions I’ve made on their behalf or whispering suggestions in my ear, options to get them into or out of the situations they’re in. They get progressively louder as the first of November rolls around. So I have to write about them, or they’ll never let me rest.

Poster from 2005. Courtesy of nanowrimo.org.

Ultimately, I liken the writing I do during National Novel Writing Month to my love of travel for travel’s sake. It isn't about surpassing milestones or rushing to a destination just to say I've been there. Making the time focus so intently on writing, each November, is like going for a ramble through the woods or setting off on an impromptu road trip, with plenty of stops along the way to take in the scenery and examine the flora and fauna. I have a destination in mind, yes. I’ll get there, someday. In the meantime, there is the pleasure of banishing my inner critic for a month every year, and the joyous process of seeing where my muses - and my characters - take me.  

The Ganesha Tree

A few days ago, Tanner and I struck out for our usual evening walk. We strolled downtown till we came to the steps of the beautiful Mission San Rafael, then turned west.

For no reason I can name, whenever we take this route I usually walk on the north side of the street. Perhaps it’s because Tanner is trained to walk at my left side, and there are fewer distractions for him nearest the curb. On this evening, however, I decided to shake things up and walk on the south side of the street. 

We crossed over at the library and continued west, falling in behind two women on a walk with their children. The willowy blond was pushing a stroller. The shorter brunette had a small girl by the hand. The girl was maybe two and a half, with a tiara sparkling from her dark wavy hair. She was wearing a shiny pale blue satin princess dress and tennis shoes with some sort of bling that glinted in the street lights. Unable to pass them on the narrow sidewalk, I slowed my pace.

The street dipped down a slight grade. Near the bottom of the hill, a tall sixty-ish man with white hair and beard was doing something in front of his house that involved a ladder. The ladder partially blocked the sidewalk. As we approached, he greeted the women and stepped over to move his ladder. 

I held back so the women could maneuver stroller and toddler through the gap he created. That gave me an opportunity to look up, and notice that the tree under which he’d place his ladder appeared to be shaped like - no, it couldn’t be - an elephant. 

But yes, it was shaped like an elephant.

The tree stood in the front corner of the man's front yard. Perhaps once upon a time the branches of the tree had reached across the sidewalk, almost to the curb. Now, the main part of the tree was sculpted to resemble the body and head of an elephant. A single long branch was trained in such a way that it stretched out overhead, curling upwards at the end. A silver ornament was placed near the end of the long branch, to give the impression that the elephant was holding the ornament with its trunk. On the tree itself, the man had placed a random assortment of hubcaps and old clocks, all silver, along with other shiny round metallic objects.

Once the group ahead of me passed by, I stopped to complement the man on his topiary art. He thanked me, pleased I’d noticed, and told me that that day was Ganesha’s birthday. ‘See the arm?’ he asked. Sure enough, a mannequin arm was sticking out of the tree from a place that roughly equated to where an elephant’s ear would be. I was thoroughly delighted and told him so.

Lord Ganesha is a Hindu god known for having a human body and the head of an elephant. In each of his four hands he holds a different object, each object symbolizing an aspect of his domain as remover of obstacles from the lives of his devotees. This Ganesha presides over a shop in downtown San Rafael.

After this brief exchange I continued my walk with Tanner. Later, headed home, I backtracked and went past the Ganesha Tree again. I saw the man had placed red and white garlands along the shrubs at the front gate as final touches.

Returning home, I quickly searched online for Ganesha’s birthday and found that it was, indeed, the date attributed to the birth of the deity. The beginning of September also marks the advent of a ten-day holiday, called Ganesh Chaturthi, that is celebrated by Hindus around the world, particularly in India. The celebration features colorful clay models of Ganesha, prayers, chanting, and singing. Tributes are made, special sweets consumed. The festival culminates with dancing and a procession to a local body of water or to the sea, where Ganesha statues are immersed as a way of sending him home. Ganesha is said to take all the misfortunes of man along with him when he leaves.    

Photo of a Ganesh Chaturthi procession, courtesy of celebrateindia.com

One of the best things about my passage through this life has been the exposure I’ve had to all types of people, cultures, ethnicities and religions. Seeing how others, like the creator of the Ganesha Tree, express their lives and beliefs brings me a joy I am hard pressed to describe, one that deepens my own connection to the life and beliefs I have. 

The Ganesha Tree

PS, I also might be a little in love with the Ganesha Tree because in its vine-covered state, it reminds me of The Tree that lived in my parents' back yard for so long.

Opposite view of the Ganesha Tree

Crossroads

Recently I read an article in which the word ‘crossroads’ was mentioned in passing. That one little ten-letter word stuck out from all the other words on the page like it was made of flashing neon. It unleashed an avalanche of images, times I’ve been at physical, mental or emotional crossroads in my life. 

I put down the article, gave those images a bit of time to settle, and hurried over to my laptop, excited by a new topic to write about. 

Half a dozen attempts at a first draft were begun and abandoned before I switched to ink and paper. Another half dozen drafts, a cramped hand and one dead pen later, I needed to step away. 

I didn’t quite know what I was trying to say, and it was obvious I knew less how to say it. Until I’d meditated on the topic more, and why the word and concept of ‘crossroads’ struck me as it did, I’d never be satisfied with what I’d written.  

* * * * * * * * * * *

Stumped, I embarked on a mental journey to unpack and define what meaning I can take from ‘crossroads’ at this point in my life. A week or two of sifting through the detritus of old memories brought me to this:

When I was in college, I worked one summer at a historic site. It was based around ‘living history’ of 1850s rural Illinois. We dressed up in approximations of prairie-settler garb, cooked pies in cast iron Dutch ovens over a fire, churned butter by hand, and tended gardens on the property to show the public what life may have been like during that time. The site included a house and several outbuildings, among which were a typesetter’s shop, a barn and a potter’s workshop.

A woman who lived nearby used the potter’s workshop to create and sell her wares. She was friendly but quiet, and kept to herself. We mostly interacted with her in passing. 

She made an impression on me nonetheless. She was independent. She had a big dog that went everywhere with her, usually riding in the back of the small pickup truck she drove. 

Watching her made me realize I wanted something similar for my life. A measure of independence. A truck of some sort. A big dog, definitely. And since I’d grown up in the flatlands of the midwest, I wanted to live in the mountains as well. 

After I left college and moved to Chicago, I rarely gave any conscious thought to my brief wish list. 

However, within two years of that college summer job, a client at the grooming shop I owned left his eleven-month-old German Shepherd with me. I was supposed to dog-sit for a few weeks…but the client never returned. I had my big dog - Shuby was sidekick and road trip companion for the fourteen years I was fortunate enough to have him in my life. 

Later I bought a used Chevy Blazer that was, well, not the most dependable vehicle ever. Once I traded the Blazer for Albert the Jeep I finally found the measure of independence I'd been searching for. 

I moved to the mountains of Northern Arizona. Shuby died of old age. Albert and I logged 214,000 miles together. 

A couple months ago, I gave Albert up because it was no longer economical to keep him. He was the last vestige of an era that began over twenty years ago, in the (fake) 1850s. 

* * * * * * * * * * *

Still: Where does the notion of ‘crossroads’ fit in with all this? 

I suppose in any pilgrimage there comes a time when you stand at a crossroads, scratching your head and wondering whether to turn off down an unknown path or continue forward. 

I’ve achieved the things my college-age self wanted most - and then some. The mode of transport that helped propel me down the path I’ve been on is gone. The changes in my life, the changes to who I am as a person, make progress down the same road, in the same way, no longer an option. 

So perhaps I’ve reached a T intersection instead: still a crossroads, just a slightly different configuration. It’s time to decide a direction, or series of directions, that will take me into the new phase of life that’s forming right now. 

It’s exciting. A little daunting. I just hope that in twenty-some years I can look back at this version of myself, this person who is at this crossroads, and say ‘Wow! If you only knew!’ - like I am saying to my college self from this vantage point.

* * * * * * * * * * *

I'll leave you with some ear candy, from a man who knew all about the crossroads.
Reposted from Classicmoodexp on youtube.com 

How do you get to Wonderland?

It’s June of 1989. I’m riding in a large blue hired motor coach with a group of twenty people. Basil, our driver, is racing along a rural four-lane highway through the English countryside. We are participants in an English Children’s Literature class led by my college lit professor, Jacqueline - Jackie - Jackson. 

Each stop thus far on the trip has been full of thrilling exploits in its own right, but this excursion has special significance: It’s Alice in Wonderland day. 

Some of my class members have already studied Alice in Jackie’s regular Children’s Literature class. Several of us have dressed as our favorite characters from the novel to attend one of Jackie's annual Alice in Wonderland potluck feasts. Most of us have even had the opportunity to make use of the Alice-themed bathroom at Jackie’s house. Jackie and her daughters painted scenes from the novel on the walls of the bathroom years ago, when the children were little. 

Now we’re headed to the source, to have a tea party/picnic at the place where the Alice stories were first spun by Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) to his friends’ children. Needless to say, we’re all in high spirits.  

Not far out of Oxford, Jackie confers with Basil, who slows the coach and eases it to a stop along the side of the auto route. ‘Grab your things and follow me,’ Jackie shouts. A few minutes of commotion ensue as we gather up our notebooks, pens, backpacks, and picnic goodies.

Once off the bus we mill about, getting our bearings. We don’t appear to be anywhere in particular. There is farmland on both sides of the auto route, looking neat and trim as English fields somehow manage to do. The pasture nearest us is fenced with wood posts and barbed wire. 

Jackie does a quick head count. Before we can start asking questions she waves Basil on and forges down the slight grade from the highway, headed for the fence.

At Jackie’s direction, we climb over the fence and begin traipsing through the fields. None of us bothers to question whether we’re trespassing, or where she’s taking us. In the past five or six days of the trip, we’ve learned to appreciate Jackie’s unorthodox leadership style. We merely shoulder our belongings and string along behind her.

Jackie cuts across the pasture as if she’s done this a thousand times (it’s very likely she has), to a small break in a line of trees opposite the auto route. From there we make our way to a narrow lane lined with hedges. As we hike along, Jackie explains that the lane was too narrow for the bus. We’ll rendezvous with Basil at the auto route in a few hours.

We reach the end of the hedges. In the open pasture before us stand the remains of an ancient stone building, a portion of which was obviously a chapel at one time. Beyond this lies the river Thames. 

We gawk as Jackie tells us the building is Godstow Nunnery, built in the 1130s as a convent for Benedictine nuns. It was infamous forty years later for being the place where Rosamund, mistress of King Henry the Second, lived for a time. She was buried there upon her death. 

Jackie sets us loose to get a feel for the place, telling us to be back at the east wall of the abbey in an hour for tea. I wander through a gap in the perimeter wall of the chapel. The roof is long gone but a few peaked windows remain; ivy has taken the place of any glass that may once have existed. 

Photo courtesy of http://www.afreeman.org/2008/02/09/godstow-nunnery/ 

Running a hand along the rough stone, I try to imagine a time when the building functioned as a working abbey, try to picture the lives of the people who once inhabited the structure. Their eras and customs seem as different from where I stand as the land of the looking glass was to Alice. 

The hour of free time flies by. We gather back at the designated spot, unfurl our blankets, and commence picnicking. While we eat, two of our classmates deliver their class project on Lewis Carroll, the Liddell children, and how an Oxford mathematician caused the story of Alice came about. 

The women are in the middle of their report when a lone cow strolls around one corner of the abbey and stops, blinking at us. We glance at her, surprised, having not seen a soul the entire time we'd been there. With unflappable grace, the cow lowers her nose to the grass. The two women resume their talk. 

A few minutes later, however, we are surrounded by an entire herd of cattle, which has descended on us in the direction from which the first cow arrived. All is bedlam for a while as we abandon the picnic, forget the lecture, and scramble about photographing, petting and - in the case of one classmate - recording audio of the cattle. 

All the class participants are Midwesterners. A herd of Holsteins isn’t a novelty to any of us, but now that they’re here we couldn't be more thrilled. 

We examine the likelihood that we have crashed the cows' luncheon spot and not the other way around. It's decided that we must seem as strange to the cattle as the Mad Hatter and his crew were to Alice when she crashed that party. 

Original Mad Hatter scene from the book, illustration by Sir John Tenniel. Found at
http://www.luckypalm.com/graphics-and-clip-art/childrens-book-illustrations/alice-in-wonderland-mad-hatter-graphic/

Unlike the Mad Hatter, the bovine contingent are merely confused and perhaps slightly annoyed by our hilarity. They ignore us as best they can, munch some choice blades of grass. Within fifteen minutes they’ve moved along to another part of the pasture. 

After the cows are gone Jackie reins us back in. We settle down for the last bit of the lecture. As our Alice in Wonderland day comes to a close we take a few last-minute group shots in front of the nunnery wall. Then we trek back up to the auto route, where Basil is waiting to convey us to the next stop on our literary adventure. 

I went on to house-sit for Jackie one summer. I could never pass the Alice bathroom without thinking of the abbey, the picnic...and the cows.

Rendering of the abbey in 1882. With cows, of course.
 http://thames.me.uk/s01860.htm

* * * * * * * * * * *

Unfortunately, my photos of the trip to England have not been converted to digital form. Plus they are stored in a box in a garage 750 miles from where I currently reside. The photos here are from the Web, with gratitude to the folks whose sites are credited beneath each photo. 

If you’d like to learn more about Godstow Nunnery, go here:

- http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=1485 This gives basic facts about the history, use, and dissolution of the nunnery.

- http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=40178 This has further history of the workings of the abbey through the 1500s.

- http://www.thamespathway.com/chapter4/godstow-nunnery.aspx This is a fascinating blog by a man who decided to walk from one end of the Thames to the other. The entry after the one about Godstow gives a brief introduction to Charles Dodgson and some really cool, lesser-known facts about him. 

Jackie has published a dozen or more books over the past fifty years, most of which are out of print but well worth the read if you can find them. To find out more about Jackie and her writing, go here: www.jacqueline-jackson.com. She also writes a weekly poem for the Illinois Times, a weekly free publication in Springfield, IL, which you can read here: www.illinoistimes.com  

Today

Here's what is happening today as I walk Tanner through the park: 

A baseball team in white, pinstriped uniforms with 'Seals' emblazoned across the front in old-timey script takes batting practice on the field. Their bat boy, who might be six, wears an oversized red foam hat and stands at the edge of the field imitating them, taking big swings with a wiffle ball bat. 

Two women, barefoot in the grass, practice standing yoga poses that defy gravity. 

Trash-talking and laughter drift through the rose bushes surrounding the bocce courts, over the strains of Nat King Cole. 'Are you real, are you warm, Mona Lisa? Or just a cold and lonely, lovely work of art?'

A woman relaxes under the small stand of trees near the day care center. A shopping cart in front of her is loaded with possessions. A dog crate is affixed to the bottom rack of the cart. Her three nearly-identical white fuzz-ball dogs go from tussling playfully with each other to standing in a row at full attention the moment they spot Tanner and me, their black button eyes bright and alert. 

A tall, thin man with a long beard and youthful voice patiently teaches his son, who is maybe seven years old, how to execute a basic trick on his skateboard. The man's own skateboard is near at hand.

Brightly colored flowers, patterns and hop-scotch grids have been drawn in fresh chalk on the sidewalk by a child's hand.

Acorns drop from a couple of oak trees at the edge of the parking lot. Their shells are shiny and brown against the green grass. 

Bees gather pollen from the clover that dots the lawn. 

Leaves on the small decorative trees in the median are starting to turn shades of orange and red.

A toddler gripping a well-worn Velveteen Rabbit stuffed toy leads the way into the community center followed closely by her mother. Dad locks the car and trails behind them, carrying baby brother in a car seat.

A pair of ravens hidden among the branches in the heights of a redwood tree squawk at each other. 

Two of my neighbors watch the baseball team warm up while they share a smoke in front of the building.

* * * * * * * * * * *

I've always taken pleasure in noticing and appreciating my surroundings, wherever I am. But I am beginning to realize that perhaps I've been moving too fast the last several years, letting the search for some nebulous big picture obscure the small, immediate things that make up a happy life. I'm grateful for this opportunity to live more slowly, in a place that feels like home. And so the pilgrimage continues...