tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56499090106816503472024-03-18T20:06:31.131-07:00enihsnusymerauoyUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger102125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5649909010681650347.post-28937711141196879872010-11-29T17:49:00.000-08:002010-11-29T17:51:22.937-08:00Lost SensationsMore than words<br />I miss the warmth of your touch<br />Coming from inside me<br />The sea motion when I closed my eyes<br />Lying beside you<br />The forest taste of your kiss<br />You have vanished into the trees<br />Sailed away<br />I cannot even imagine<br />YouUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5649909010681650347.post-74467342243521982972010-09-20T19:01:00.000-07:002010-09-22T10:06:45.227-07:00Tonight I Will Count DolphinsTonight I will count dolphins<br />Hemming the edge of the ocean two by two<br />With a running stitch<br />Playful, friendly, unreachable<br />We dive clumsily into the brisk waves<br />Our stories unfolded on the beach<br />Making a grey speck in the fog filled distance<br />Later we shiver in the car together<br />You have to be warm enough to shiver<br />In the dark we find each other<br />Two strange mammals on the edge of the land<br />So much heatUnknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5649909010681650347.post-3014058025465602302010-05-04T15:01:00.000-07:002010-05-05T10:28:46.941-07:00Time Under CatThank God for those precious moments<br />When the cat graces my lap with his presence<br />A puddle of furry warmth<br />Purring and making Big Paws<br />Half caresses, half digging in claws<br />Hooking my hand with his chin<br />Demanding my full, bi-manual attention<br />I daren't even look at the screen<br />Only my mind is free to write this poem<br />While my legs go numb<br />Until some lapse in my Purr-fect<br />Pleasuring of Him<br />Makes him leap away or bite me.<br />Thank God when they end, too.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5649909010681650347.post-22248068939659824252010-05-04T09:52:00.001-07:002010-05-04T10:06:06.981-07:00Bilingual RoseRose, how can I describe you when<br />English only has one word for pink<br />And you have two colors<br />Of blooms growing haphazardly<br />A foot above my head<br />Pale pastel pink and deep cerise<br />It doesn't make any sense<br />If one were grafted I would understand<br />As though ideas are bursting in your mind<br />Untranslatable<br />This morning you made me see<br />My neighborhood with new eyes<br />And I noticed for the first time<br />A patch of open sky between<br />The gated stairway and the roof.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5649909010681650347.post-87679020247512902562010-03-16T21:09:00.000-07:002010-03-16T21:41:40.787-07:00Notes from People WatchingA woman with two young children, one in a sling, one holding her hand, pushes an empty pushchair slowly across the crossing. They pass the bored young man waiting at the bus shelter, who has finished his soft drink and carefully put the empty bottle in the recycling, and finished entertaining himself by talking on his cellphone. Suddenly his bus arrives and he is no longer there. The bus shelter is empty.<br /><br />A family of three passes, a woman and her two daughters, maybe seven and four, walking alone together in single file.<br /><br />A man in a big sun hat slowly tends and waters the plants at the nursery across the way. People stop and talk to him about the plants.<br /><br />People sit in their cars in the traffic, scouting out parking spaces at the grocery store. A dog cowers alone outside the meat market or deli, waiting for his owner to come back out. A man reading a book, perhaps a novel, stares into space looking up toward the sky, caught in his own thoughts or processing something he has read, or maybe a combination of the two.<br /><br />Someone else is reading a textbook, twiddling a pink highlighter in his hand. Now he is on his cellphone, distracted, seeking distraction.<br /><br />I email someone I first met here once before about other memories of this place:<br /><br />"Trying to people watch for an hour as part of the parenting program for my son (did I tell you he is out in the Arizona wilderness for several weeks after struggling with computer addiction, truancy and depression)? I remember our first (maybe only) date here at the cafe in Hopkins, a couple of years ago, when I wanted to fall in love with you and you weren't really interested. And the year before I met an older guy here who wanted to fall in love with me, and fly me with my bike in his private plane to go for a weekend ride, but he reminded me too much of my father.<br /><br />Difficult to people-watch when bombarded with so many memories.<br /><br />Wow, I had another date here, maybe third or so, with an alcoholic writer/dj who was too stubborn to let someone else publish the four novels he had supposedly written, and so they were lost when his old computer crashed. I still see him sometimes on the bus.<br /><br />Hey, he dj's an 80's night every thursday - want to go? It would be a fitting conclusion to my meandering thoughts."<br /><br />Another young man waits at the bus stop now, less composed, his things in disarray all around, and a soda bottle on the bench seat beside him, so only one of the two young women that join him can sit down. She puts her pack on the empty seat beside his soda bottle, and then another young man joins them and they clear him a space, starting a conversation together. The young woman on the end of the bench is not exactly with the others. She sits forward and close, knees together, balancing a plant pot in her lap, playing on her cellphone and occasionally turning her head to follow their conversation.<br /><br />The man who was staring into space leafs through his book. Definitely not fiction. A whole lot of art pictures are on the first few pages.<br /><br />Two different dogs now wait outside the deli, both facing the door where their owners entered. A little impatient, but not despondent.<br /><br />The stuff in front of the young man at the bus stop turns out to be not only his own, he was watching it and saving a seat for his friends, who now grab their packs as the bus inches forward in the traffic.<br /><br />A young kid tries to enter his car, testing all the doors to see if one is unlocked, then banging on the windows of the empty car. Perhaps he got tired of grocery shopping with his mom. He experiments with pulling two door latches at once. Nothing works. I look at the bus for a moment, and the kid is gone.<br /><br />Children sit in the car in the traffic, their mom driving. Each alone clutches a juice bottle or senses it with his mouth, neatly strapped in his seat, looking forward into space. The mom looks forward into space also. Nobody talks or looks out.<br /><br />In another car a child plays with an empty wrapper, pretending it is a hat, and his dad reaches back trying to take it away from him. At least they were communicating.<br /><br />Every few minutes somebody touches a car the wrong way and its alarm goes off.<br /><br />I think that once my ex and I met here too, for a divorce discussion meeting. Not particularly productive.<br /><br />I like that about 50% of the people at this cafe are engaged in conversation with each other, only 25% on laptops, and the rest reading.<br /><br />Inside the cafe where I went to use the restroom two men sitting at separate tables are talking. I applaud them and almost wish I could join in. Why is it so hard to meet people at cafes these days? It was easier outside of Wholefoods, where I used to sit at a large table under a sunshade, and that necessitated interaction such as asking if I could join the people there already, and new people asking me. Sometimes this led to real conversations and exchanges of contact information, which I never followed through with, but did remember the people to greet them next time we met in the same place.<br /><br />A woman carries two heavy bags of groceries, two little girls walking alongside, and I wonder why she doesn't ask them for help. Then she sets the bags down and they each grab one hand. I wonder if they are helping her carry, or if she is now carrying them too, safely back to their car, along this busy street. If I were in her place I would have them hold the other handle of each bag and share the weight.<br /><br />A woman pushes three girls old enough to walk on a tandem trolley loaded with groceries. She is young and happy, and the girls scream with joy and excitement for the ride.<br /><br />A couple unlocks their bikes and distributes groceries, the man ending up with a heavy bag in one hand, signaling the traffic with it that he is about to pull out, riding single-handed.<br /><br />I suddenly think of my son on the trail and check my email for urgent news of his visit with his shadow today. An hour has passed since I first sat down.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5649909010681650347.post-50709483184904929982010-03-09T02:10:00.000-08:002010-03-09T11:08:06.896-08:00Steep RavineSeagulls ride the ocean wind<br />That slaps the rain against our window<br />Their sillhouettes half an infinity<br />Enduring in my mind<br />As you say you are flying<br />And I long to sink forever<br />Under your warm body<br />Looking up at the cloud ridden sky<br />A perfect exchange of ecstasy for heat<br />Our ship tethered to the rock like this cabin<br />Knowing someday the wind will lift me up<br />Afloat on the waves of your tender careUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5649909010681650347.post-55070583929745790932010-03-01T14:13:00.000-08:002010-03-01T14:14:48.955-08:00Dancer Stretching<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg64qgUhjARBSSMwUTz81S6MUwrRCsDh7bUmzrHE7JvPsZgbSH7TdvIUAGOX14nMCOjcIiTOlUn4MfcqylNvNnRQGC3_GqGE9z2K9atn9iTOsBYXhct_TeJwA-4tcuhi6neICcd0_ZHs52k/s1600-h/dancer+stretching.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg64qgUhjARBSSMwUTz81S6MUwrRCsDh7bUmzrHE7JvPsZgbSH7TdvIUAGOX14nMCOjcIiTOlUn4MfcqylNvNnRQGC3_GqGE9z2K9atn9iTOsBYXhct_TeJwA-4tcuhi6neICcd0_ZHs52k/s320/dancer+stretching.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5443792320543598114" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5649909010681650347.post-75787882243379405962010-02-27T17:38:00.001-08:002010-03-01T14:15:12.675-08:00Mermaid and Moon Sculptures<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOAPzk_vQkQVrwBgg2Z65Wf45QuJI0MfDeAazgQr7hMIxCGB0-nGTG62KjGuRQCFapS3NmxsS9miFxc-atjKzEdxWNdSf3cv8kvJ_3OKi7jVRqIYTsUDzwCVX0OmmN4wwgd13Aw1pL4PIa/s1600-h/photo.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOAPzk_vQkQVrwBgg2Z65Wf45QuJI0MfDeAazgQr7hMIxCGB0-nGTG62KjGuRQCFapS3NmxsS9miFxc-atjKzEdxWNdSf3cv8kvJ_3OKi7jVRqIYTsUDzwCVX0OmmN4wwgd13Aw1pL4PIa/s320/photo.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5443102797427686530" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5649909010681650347.post-32400613445610653972010-01-09T20:30:00.000-08:002010-01-09T21:08:20.579-08:00Poem For Dance<pre><font size="3" face="Ariel">I dance from my heart<br />Sensing my body's freedom to move<br />Sensing the beat pulsing through my core<br />More ancient than this electronic music<br />More ancient than a drum beat<br />As old as footsteps echoing down the valley<br />As old as a wing beat<br />As old as the ocean<br /> waves lapping the rocky shore<br /><br />I see the figures of people dancing<br />It takes a leap of faith<br />To look in their beautiful faces<br />To touch, to invite myself in<br />However briefly, to their dance<br />To create something together<br />That we couldn't have made alone<br /><br />And my heart goes out to the others,<br /> not present<br />Whose core pulses or pulsed<br /> with the ancient beat<br />Of the waves lapping the sea shore<br /> the imaginary wing beat<br />Who are fearful, alone, or in pain<br />And who do not know<br />I am dancing with them.<br /></font></pre>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5649909010681650347.post-79186298341539734622009-11-17T21:09:00.000-08:002010-03-01T14:15:51.087-08:00Bath garden view with wheelbarrow<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwsO0s72r60MO6DM4rZAmeuY1BT7Lok9LjQQl_5AbvgzS94shI02cXHo7JgYkdSXlZq8uCM1KJptTAIMBbXGXtr1H9HtKTEVONiI2gMLjd4LxlN4xnhzDD5hmHH65xf9To7meAgva4LVq7/s1600/view+with+wheelbarrow.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 253px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwsO0s72r60MO6DM4rZAmeuY1BT7Lok9LjQQl_5AbvgzS94shI02cXHo7JgYkdSXlZq8uCM1KJptTAIMBbXGXtr1H9HtKTEVONiI2gMLjd4LxlN4xnhzDD5hmHH65xf9To7meAgva4LVq7/s320/view+with+wheelbarrow.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5405311561523632562" /></a><br /><p class="mobile-photo"><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5649909010681650347.post-63427109564799777342009-11-17T21:08:00.000-08:002010-03-01T14:16:48.339-08:00Caffe view<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihhyphenhyphenaRJvg9ZzbXGnnSIvpP4wRX1b1DWwuObn_HWGiKP6mkSIOvX3ZCTYdYQc_jMKNDccwMZu3JLu8dFwIMAMSIIcZJdhr1s9RejvKSs9ZFRNVajVx_ffEa5kuyEuyUuwhmJEar2FO2CIh3/s1600/caffe+view.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihhyphenhyphenaRJvg9ZzbXGnnSIvpP4wRX1b1DWwuObn_HWGiKP6mkSIOvX3ZCTYdYQc_jMKNDccwMZu3JLu8dFwIMAMSIIcZJdhr1s9RejvKSs9ZFRNVajVx_ffEa5kuyEuyUuwhmJEar2FO2CIh3/s320/caffe+view.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5405311360437025442" /></a><br /><p class="mobile-photo"><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5649909010681650347.post-83163044695091358292009-11-10T02:13:00.000-08:002009-11-10T03:36:38.509-08:00Hike to Hot SpringsThere is something perfect about hiking to a hot spring. The 10-mile journey is enough to make you sore, and then the soak in the tub, in the wilderness, helps feel relief. This reminded me of the "lost penny found" argument for the existence of pain - there is little as rewarding as a pain removed.<br /><br />At the spring I met an acupuncturist. In retrospect this profession must have some of the same rewards for the patients. I have never tried acupuncture but perhaps I will someday. The hike back left me with bruises on my knee and ankle, because I was distracted by sucking my thumb (literally, I cut it chopping pears for the dessert) and fell.<br /><br />Great camping recipes (that may have tasted so good because of hunger brought on by carrying a heavy backpack over 10 miles of up and down and fording a cold river):<br /><br />1. Prosciutto Wrapped Pear<br />-very simple to make, but watch out with the knife!<br /><br />2. Campstove Melange<br />Ingredients:<br />Pre-cooked lentils<br />Pasta<br />Oregano<br />Garlic<br />Onion<br />Prosciutto<br />Parmesan<br />Salt<br />Bread (optional)<br /><br />Cook everything together over a campstove and then toast the bread if you lack utensils.<br /><br />3. Intense Chocolate<br />Ingredients:<br />1 ziploc bag of dark chocolate chips<br />1/2 can sweetened condensed milk<br />water (but not too much)<br />Pear slices (optional)<br /><br />Melt the chocolate in the milk. Use as fondue to dip the pear slices, or simply drink up.<br /><br />4. Breakfast Melange<br />Ingredients:<br />Leftover Intense Chocolate<br />oats<br />1/2 can sweetened condensed milk<br />water (but not too much)<br />ground coffee<br /><br />It would have been a good idea to bring quick-rolled oats. We ran out of gas...<br /><br />5. Lazy Iced Tea<br />Steep about 4 bags of Earl Grey tea in a canister of pump-filtered river water. Tastes great after a couple of hours... Carefully squeeze out the bags and remove before drinking.<br /><br />TIP: Bring whole pears and a knife. I've seen people take sliced fruit in ziplocs instead. Trust me, that tastes awful after a few hours on the trail. A sturdy knife can double as a can opener, and mine has a corkscrew attachment as well. Bring bandaids if, like me, you are clumsy.<br /><br />Thoughts along the trip: Does a tree in the forest make a sound when it falls and there is nobody to hear it? Seems obvious to me that if there are atmospheric molecules to move then a sound is made. How about on a distant planet or the moon? Only if there is enough atmosphere. How can people even wonder about this question? I suppose it all depends on your definition of sound.<br /><br />The leaves on the burnt trees by the river made a very interesting sound in the breeze, crackling against each other like a raffia curtain.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5649909010681650347.post-21473076643592995762009-11-10T02:02:00.001-08:002009-11-10T02:11:52.526-08:00Trees in the Wilderness 2<p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU6vL1f6cTz6VXMjxSC_HBxfwj4ZmsT5oeegP61sf1I5fzaPPvO11xC_RGIDx5PxdePKl4UBdIkWReoLSbpe9Gb7fLwY2rtqVF3QfLhGkMQIvzUk8LQhFZwI3edCjsPslOp5uvk2ThdPsf/s1600-h/photo-763694.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU6vL1f6cTz6VXMjxSC_HBxfwj4ZmsT5oeegP61sf1I5fzaPPvO11xC_RGIDx5PxdePKl4UBdIkWReoLSbpe9Gb7fLwY2rtqVF3QfLhGkMQIvzUk8LQhFZwI3edCjsPslOp5uvk2ThdPsf/s400/photo-763694.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5402413287949612786" /></a></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5649909010681650347.post-46265352263772485692009-11-10T02:01:00.000-08:002009-11-10T02:12:06.727-08:00Trees in the Wilderness 1<p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLTofrKW5kvxdTCjFKmhGiv-x90KHyHnFpGjLjMupCmtL3vCzxpWcw4ATyQG7qaJSGf7uLsJUphdE7bI4ncreV9285wO5LsE6Qw73fDQX0eAfaKW9fwR4SHM6vPs9qNENhmv2j44PMGCvl/s1600-h/photo-799608.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLTofrKW5kvxdTCjFKmhGiv-x90KHyHnFpGjLjMupCmtL3vCzxpWcw4ATyQG7qaJSGf7uLsJUphdE7bI4ncreV9285wO5LsE6Qw73fDQX0eAfaKW9fwR4SHM6vPs9qNENhmv2j44PMGCvl/s400/photo-799608.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5402415160100423090" /></a></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5649909010681650347.post-81695863584901070142009-11-04T23:35:00.001-08:002009-11-05T07:23:36.972-08:00I know I need to sleepI know I need to sleep because I feel I might be coming down with a cold, but I can't. I tried, and my mind filled with thoughts about upcoming social events, making up stories about the people around me. Not sad or anxious thoughts, but somehow I didn't feel tired any longer. I don't even feel hungry or needing sex or physical comfort, just wide awake. My mind trips to the hum of the traffic on the freeway, wondering what it might be like to be going on a journey right now. Where would I be heading, and what would I be leaving? I hear the Amtrak train blow its horn and think about train hopping. Maybe I should start counting sheep. Perhaps there are sheep on the train, going to slaughter. Not a good thought. The past and the future are both very present on trains, and the ability of one thing to stand for another. Me, sheep, sleep. I think about praying, remembering the prayer for leaving my soul in the hands of god when I sleep. Sleep like a little death that sustains us and keeps us alive a little longer. Night trains bearing unloved little elephants on their way to the circus.<br /><br />Earlier I played on the stepping stones in the park, and noticed for the first time the inscription: Be the change you want to see in the world. But how would I know what will be the results of my actions? I must take some pictures of the my free yoga class in the park. It seemed on the face of it pretty good today. I feel inspired to try a new movement exercise next time, and have students pair up and take turns mirroring each other. I did that at the dance Friday, as is my habit, and somebody said to me felt good. Nobody had said that before and I hadn't thought about it. As a matter of fact, earlier I had mirrored someone because she looked sad and lonely, as though she wanted a dance partner, and she smiled and got really happy.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5649909010681650347.post-49408931762987156372009-10-31T13:19:00.000-07:002009-10-31T19:14:12.566-07:00Friends are wonderfulThis week I feel so grateful for my friends. On Sunday I was feeling a little lonely and discombobulated, and I felt like opening a bottle of wine so I called my friend and he came and joined me for dinner. We had a great discussion with my son about not sure what, and then my friend and I exchanged relaxing foot massages. <div><br /></div><div>Later in the week I got caught on the far side of the Bay Bridge, having driven around the snapped cable on the way over to the city. Foolishly, I tried to drive back across the same bridge and ended up sitting in traffic for about an hour before being turned around. Friends were making a gourmet dinner using their new wedding gifts, and invited me to join them. We cooked scrumptious butternut squash soup with real nuts in it, duck in pomegranate sauce and brussels sprouts with truffle oil. I must get some truffle oil for the kitchen!</div><div><br /></div><div>Then today a friend chatted with me on facebook and invited me to a moonlit hike tomorrow night. I hope that pans out! I would love to splash in the ocean at sunset, warm up in the pub with him, and then hike over the cliffs by the moonlight. I hope he picks me up on his motorcycle. That would be so cool...</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5649909010681650347.post-26935755530088543002009-10-15T06:52:00.000-07:002009-10-15T07:14:19.036-07:00You Are a PoolYou are a pool<br />I step into the water<br />not knowing<br />if it will be deep or shallow<br />warm or cold<br />if I will drown or float.<br /><br />I step into the pool again<br />regardless <br />hoping to warm all this water<br />with my heart's faint glow<br /><br />wondering if I will remember <br />how to swim<br />or if I ever learned.<br /><br />And peace falls down on us<br />like snow.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5649909010681650347.post-78974901178791851542009-09-26T22:32:00.000-07:002009-09-26T23:08:48.716-07:00A Poem for JoyI wanted to write a poem for joy<br />That would conteract all the sadness in the world<br />A poem that dances from the page<br />Filled with wild mountains to climb<br />Blue sky, birdsong<br />Sunlight playing in the water<br />Between the tall trees<br />A poem filled with possibilities<br />Friendly upturned faces<br />Hands welcoming you to join the danceUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5649909010681650347.post-88234957485641753352009-09-23T11:55:00.001-07:002009-09-23T12:02:10.411-07:00From Albany HillBelow, the jointed buses glide by<br />Like matchbox cars, the whir of their wheels<br />Subsumed in the general hum of traffic<br />Over passed only by the occasional BART train<br />Or the horn of an Amtrak train on the bay side<br /><br />Eucalyptus leaves frame the view<br />Their vertical strokes a perpetual reminder<br />Of the inevitability of tears<br /><br />I patiently await my turn on the rope swing<br />Overlooking the fog-enfolded Golden Gate Bridge<br />As the distant campanile keeps time<br />Too far away to see with the naked eye<br /><br />But I know I can always come back<br />Another dayUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5649909010681650347.post-34152904803423287932009-07-08T22:26:00.000-07:002009-07-08T22:34:07.670-07:00Objective Reality 2So, during the discussion at the philosophy group yesterday, I revised my intersubjective view of objectivity in favor of the following: objective reality is that thing which human knowledge aspires to. Whether it exists or not is another question...Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5649909010681650347.post-15749376005270988232009-07-06T19:21:00.000-07:002009-07-06T23:31:31.741-07:00Is There an Objective Reality?Thoughts for philosophy group tomorrow.<br /><br />What is real? We think we know, can sense it. Plato (Republic) disputed this in his allegory of the cave. Socrates asks his student, Glaucon, to imagine prisoners in a cave forced to look only at the shadows cast on the wall of people, animals and other figures walking by in front of the fire. The prisoners think they know what they are looking at, this is their reality, until one prisoner is set free. He cannot immediately recognize the things that cast the shadows for what they are, although they are more 'real' according to this allegory. Once given time to acclimate to the sun outside, the prisoner loses his facility with recognizing the shadows and begins to appreciate his freedom. Socrates argues that intelligence and reason provide access to an ultimate truth of ideal forms, besides which the reality of our senses pales like the shadows on the cave wall.<br /><br />As a culture, we are still obsessed with this anxiety over what exists, or what is real, cf. The Matrix.<br /><br />Aristotle disagreed with Plato, and held that there is no such hidden world of ideal forms, only the sensate world and the world of real human constructs, such as the law.<br /><br />Kant pointed out the problem is that we are limited by our senses and intuitions. There may be qualities of an object, the thing in itself, which we are unable to sense or know. Bishop Berkeley argued that the world of our senses is no more real than the world of our imaginations, except that we can exercise our will on the world of the imagination, whereas the real world is governed by the will of God. [As an aside, Berkeley used an apple as his first example of a real object. Food for thought - the apple of God's mind's eye]. Hegel said very little with a lot of words, culminating in a predilection for everything to come in threes, in this instance 'being' (aka existence), 'ideas', and 'nature', where nature is the synthesis of the external and internal worlds when they correspond.<br /><br />So there are a number of possible scenarios here. 1) Reality is not what we think it is, but the privileged few get to see it by virtue of their superior education, reason, or fortune - the freed prisoner in Plato's cave, Neo in The Matrix. 2) Reality may be different from what we think, but we are limited by our senses and will never know for sure, in spite of our desire to know (Kant). 3) Reality is more-or-less what we see and think (Aristotle). 4) Reality is the realm in which the will of God is exercised, instead of our own will. In other words, reality defeats us (Berkeley). 5) Reality is the intersection between what exists and our ideas of it (Hegel).<br /><br />Incidentally, Berkeley's view was preempted in the creation hymn from the Rigveda (c. 1500-1000 BC): "Whence this creation has come into being; whether it was made or not; he in the highest heaven is its surveyor. Surely he knows, or perhaps he knows not."<br />Which brings us by a leap of faith to Nietzsche's method of genealogy, looking at the origins of ideas as a battleground rather than a building site, and postmodernism with its notions of reality by consensus or intersubjectivity.<br /><br />What is the problem? I think it is this. We commonly encounter both agreement and disagreement about the real objects of the world. Where the objects are more abstract (God, money, politics, love) there are both more disagreements and stronger feelings. People on the whole don't feel very strongly about, say, apples. We need a theory of reality or existence that can contain both agreement and disagreement, but we are ill equipped to imagine topologically beings walking around with worlds in their heads, of which some parts are shared and some parts private. So we fall down the rabbithole of metaphorical collapse, insisting one way or the other (subjective or objective) and justifying our position by flagwaving on the totem poles of realism and relativism.<br /><br />Maybe there is some bigger picture where the music and the dance synchronize together, like in a movie? Ah forget it, I'm just trying to be Hegelian.<br /><br />I think we must concede the question is unanswerable. <br /><br />Speaking of which, I just discovered the word epistemocracy today. It means a Utopian society governed by rulers with epistemic humility, meaning they know (and acknowledge) what they don't know. Supposedly coined by Nassim Taleb in his 2007 book The Black Swan, it is spreading throughout the blogosphere perhaps thanks to the fact that Google's blogger recognizes it (and coincidentally not the word blogosphere itself) as a correct spelling.<br /><br />Why does the internet impose itself so unquestionably on our reality, like an apple and not like a God?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5649909010681650347.post-8168370509479759672009-06-23T17:24:00.000-07:002009-06-23T17:27:52.791-07:00Moving Apple PlantingI have moved Apple Planting in America here:<div><a href="http://apple-woman.blogspot.com/">http://apple-woman.blogspot.com/</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Where you will be able to follow pictures from our apple-core planting trip on Google maps via Picasa web albums.</div><div><br /></div><div>Finally. It only took about 14 hours of work playing around with my new iPhone and the web to figure out how to do this.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5649909010681650347.post-28847048291485688742009-06-23T15:33:00.000-07:002009-06-23T15:34:16.473-07:00<p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN6-F3Je2mYfcn9d-mOJMyzQth_29VCf9RPM4JMihCo9GBbt0EIgBUyVx6YSw883jRNyWalqflwo6FuNAyccJZDXbSXfsXC6BUrGCK9jAT2UB4XQl5nEoAKgnAtGodcSxyQob2TJZaq5Qv/s1600-h/photo-756475.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN6-F3Je2mYfcn9d-mOJMyzQth_29VCf9RPM4JMihCo9GBbt0EIgBUyVx6YSw883jRNyWalqflwo6FuNAyccJZDXbSXfsXC6BUrGCK9jAT2UB4XQl5nEoAKgnAtGodcSxyQob2TJZaq5Qv/s400/photo-756475.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5350655036071525154" /></a></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5649909010681650347.post-78012060073196336952009-06-19T17:57:00.000-07:002009-06-25T15:08:23.248-07:00The Young Girl and the AmmoniteWhen she was a young girl, maybe two or three years old, her family used to vacation at Lyme Regis, in Dorset. There were a few photographs in the family album that helped Cynthia remember this time. The crisp, cold feeling of the water as she ran in and out of the waves, the radiant '70's windbreakers where her mother sheltered on the chilly beach, the scary feeling of excitement atop the gigantic green slide on the way back home to their rented cottage, and the smell of coalfires in the evening air. In London there was no more coal burning after the clean air act, but her mother said the smell reminded her of her own childhood. Sometimes Cynthia wondered how many of these memories were true, and how many had been fabricated and embellished by speculation each time she looked again at the old photographs. But the photographs were black and white, so the radiance of the psychedelic windbreakers, and the greenness of the vast slide, were things she must have remembered. And, of course, the smell of coal, and the touch of the water.<div><br /></div><div>And the ammonites. They never took pictures of the ammonites, but she remembered them clearly. Inset in the neighbours' whitewashed garden wall, all around the museum and on the pavement outside. She asked her father about them, calling them snails. Those are ammonites, he said, relics of ancient underwater sea-snails. He explained how a fossil is formed, by the dead creature being pressed into stone, and eventually rotting away, the cavity itself slowly filling with rock. Cynthia thought of the spiral inside the Brighton rock that her grandmother once gave her, and wondered if that too was a fossil. She searched underwater, among the seashells, for ammonites, wanting to prove they were not extinct, staying in the icy English Channel so long that her parents first worried about her feet turning blue and then since she seemed happy enough jokingly said to the concerned onlookers that she must have seal blood in her. On the way home, she drew ammonites in the sand, spreading the sand on the foot of the green slide and digging spirals in it until the last of the late evening sun vanished over the playground wall.</div><div><br /></div><div>Eventually, her search turned from the sea itself to the rocks and cliffs of the sea wall. She dug at the rocks with her fingernails, trying to unearth fossils. It was tiresome work, and she was just about to turn to collecting seashells instead when she saw a large rock in the shape of a woman bending down and washing her hair. Cynthia felt the form of the rock, looking closely, and found to her surprise a tiny bit of the ridge of an ammonite's shell, with which she had become so familiar by rubbing her fingers on the neibhbours' wall every evening until they had become calloused. In her imagination, she pictured the ammonite sitting inside the rock, coiled in the woman's belly, like the fat ripples her mother called her 'spare tire'. She wanted it. It was her ammonite. But she had no idea how to get it out, and soon their vacation was over and they returned to London with only the black and white pictures in the family album, none of them showing the ammonites.</div><div><br /></div><div>They never returned to Lyme Regis, for shortly after Cynthia's younger brother was born. Her mother placed Cynthia's hand on her belly, and instead of an ammonite she felt inside her brother kicking. He was born with a murmer in his heart, and a mitral valve prolapse which meant that he could die at any moment. Her father explained that the heart pumps blood through two loops, one to the lungs and one to the rest of the body. The hear squeezes the old blood into a new chamber, and the mitral valve stops it from coming back and mixing with the new blood. Like the valve on the big orange bouncy toy that he let her inflate. In her baby brother's heart, the valve was broken, so some of the blood flowed right back when the heart squeezed, making a murmering sound. She tried to listen to his chest on one of the brief visits he had at home, like listening to her grandmother's conch, hoping to hear the sound of the sea. But she didn't hear anything. </div><div><br /></div><div>Instead of vacations, Cynthia went to kindergarten and her father picked her up while her mother was in and out of the hospital with the new baby. Her father took her to the Museum of Natural History, where she saw the giant ammonites in the entrance hall, just like her ammonite on the beach. She wanted to buy some little ammonites in the museum shop, but they were too expensive so they bought gemstones for her mother, for when she came home. Her mother put on a polite smile, when they hid the stones around the room for her, like fossils, but Cynthia saw her father's face fall. They both fussed over the baby, and Cynthia bounced around wildly on her orange toy, abusing it to see if the little valve would give way like the one in her brother's heart.</div><div><br /></div><div>When she was an art student, Cynthia went back to Dorset, on a field trip to learn about stonecarving. She and her fellow students stayed at a caravan park on the cliffs, overlooking a small, dingy beach where they had bonfires every night and smoked. During the day, they drove to the quarry, all eight of them in one student's old Volkswagen Golf, with the windows rolled down, blaring Ziggy Stardust out loud to the rolling hills and craggy old people of this large village or small town. There they were lectured by a sculptor who taught art at the nearby community college, then let loose on the rocks, vaguely supported by a local stone mason. The rocks were not only from the quarry itself. The place was a graveyard for old gravestones. The town had decomissioned two cemeteries to make way for a shopping centre, and dumped the stones in the quarry. A few graves remained, ornamentally sandwiched between the Vodafone shop and a council estate, and it seemed nobody mourned the loss of the largest part. Then other towns began dumping their gravestones here from all over Dorset, adding to the natural resource of rock, undoing centuries of human labour and rebuilding mountains in the derelict quarry, piling up high on the cliffs what had long ago fallen into the sea.</div><div><br /></div><div>Cynthia wandered among the discarded gravestones and boulders, liking the idea of finding something here to use rather than carving more stone out of the quarry's rockface. She started collecting interesting letters and inscriptions, copying them into her sketchbook. Then she sketched a boulder that looked to her as though there was a tortoise hiding inside. She wanted to find a form already hidden in the rock, so there would be less to carve out. She had no idea what she wanted to make, and so imposing her own will on the quarry was meaningless.</div><div><br /></div><div>There was a rock that looked to her like a dancer, and another that looked like a woman, washing her hair. Cynthia began sketching this rock from all sides, drawing the form of the woman inside in the style of Henry Moore or Barbara Hepworth. Henry Moore sculpted woman as a landscape, and Barbara Hepworth made women coming out of the hills. They both drew with contour lines and frames, and so Cynthia proceeded to form her washerwoman from all angles inside of the rock. Then, something made her decide to feel the rock. This rock looked familiar. She did not normally imagine women washing inside of rocks. She knew exactly what she was looking for, and she found it - more by touch than by sight, because the whole thing was now faded and a little grimy. The ammonite ridge. Cynthia was convinced this was the rock from her childhood beach in Lyme Regis. She had found her ammonite again.</div><div><br /></div><div>All plans to minimize carving by seeking a form close to the surface of the rock vanished from her mind, and she began chipping away with her hammer and chisel, mining for ammonite. The stone mason saw her and started to help, saying she had found a nice, big one. He could understand wanting to take it home. As they worked, he told her about how he became a mason, the years of training and the initiation consisting of carving two linked rings using only hand tools. The rock was hard, and after working all day they had only exposed a few centimetres of the outside curve of the ammonite's shell. It seemed to be intact. He suggested renting a power tool and generator to finish the job the next day, as Cynthia and her group were going back to London at the end of the week.</div><div><br /></div><div>That night, they went to the local pub and drank apple scrumpy. Then they went back to the beach, and since they were out of dope somebody suggested smoking the wild fennel that grew all along the steep path back to the caravan. The next morning, Cynthia woke up in the bed, which was strange because she normally slept on the couch. The teacher from their art school came early, which was also strange, and told them that they had to go home. Apparently, the neighours complained that someone had been seen dancing around on the top of the caravan, threatening people with a mallet, and they were all making a lot of noise. Cynthia was taken aside and gently blamed for being the cause of this collective punishment. At first she remembered nothing. Then, she dimly recalled climbing up the front of the van. She was sure that she handed her mallet to someone down below, so that she could get a better grip, but perhaps they had passed it up to her later. Why was she holding a mallet?</div><div><br /></div><div>A few weeks later, she and her brother drove back to Dorset to retrieve the ammonite. As children, they had never been close, since her parents took care to protect Jacob from the trials and tribulations of childhood, worrying about his heart. Cynthia felt left out and not a little jealous. Now Jacob was himself out of the house and going to college, and Cynthia hoped they could get to know one another as adults, beyond the constraints of their close-knit family. Once in the Dorset village, they found the friendly mason and with his help, hired a power tool and a generator. They had until sundown to carve out the ammonite, plenty of time since it was June 21st, the summer solstice and longest day of the year. Jacob was good at finding fossils. As a child, he had asked for an archaeologist's pick-axe for his birthday, and promptly came home with a large rock containing a dinosaur's footprint. His finding was confirmed by several bemused experts among their parents' friends. After extracting the ammonite, Cynthia planned to show Jacob the beach. Maybe they could light a bonfire together, to celebrate Midsummer's Night.</div><div><br /></div><div>When they got to the quarry things started going awry. First of all, it was hard even for all three of them to carry the generator all the way from the car to the rock. Then, the thing wouldn't start up and they had to carry it all the way back and drive into town for a replacement. With two people chipping away by hand, they had revealed about a quarter way around the ammonite. It was nearly sunset when they finally got the second generator going, and Cynthia realized they would have to risk paying for another day's rental. As the sun was setting over the hills, tinging the white walls of the quarry with its red light, Jacob, who had been chipping away at the rock, suddenly collapsed.</div><div><br /></div><div>Cynthia went through in her mind the steps of cardiac ressuscitation that she had learned years ago at a first aid class. She wondered if this was even the right thing to do for someone with Jacob's condition, the mitral valve prolapse. In that moment, she remembered a recurrent dream or nightmare she used to have about her brother, when they were younger. She had been left to take care of him while her parents went to get something out from the car. They were at a stately home, in the garden, a place way out in the countryside and larger than life. Jacob was just learning to walk, and he stumbled into a maze. Cynthia saw him enter, and ran after him, surprised he was not right there in the entrance. The passageway bent around in a spiral between the tall, dark green boxtrees. Cynthia kept going, expecting to find Jacob at each next bend, running faster and faster. Finally, she arrived at the centre of the spiral, exhausted, and there was no Jacob. She felt terrible. She felt so ashamed, what would she say to her parents when they came back and discovered she had lost her brother? They must be back by now, she should go out and ask them for help. To her surprise, she noticed there were not one but two exits from the place where she found herself, in her mind the centre of the maze. She looked from one to the other with increasing trepidation, trying to remember which passageway she had come from. Which was the way back out? This was the point when she always woke up.</div><div><br /></div><div>While Cynthia hesitated, the stone mason, who knew nothing of Jacob's condition, had already applied CPR. Jacob spluttered awake, and asked where he was. Cynthia took him to hospital, while the stone mason returned the power tools. Ah well, she thought, he will get the ammonite himself another day. Small payment for rescuing my brother, while I was shamefully trapped in indecision. They had a long wait in emergency, because by now Jacob seemed to be fine. He told Cynthia how he had felt he was falling, not from the little rock but down a great cliff, as his life flashed before his eyes. He saw the light at the end of it. It was hours before he was seen by a doctor and sent home, and by that time Cynthia was too worried about him to attempt any bonfire on the beach. They stayed at a small, innocuous bed and breakfast which was already on the way back to London.</div><div><br /></div><div>Cynthia and her brother never got close, and eventually he suffered a cardiac arrest and suddenly died. She held as a comfort the image of the light he saw at the end of his near-death experience in Dorset. A year later, when it was time to set the stone for his grave, she drove back just in case the ammonite was still there. To her surprise, there it was, exactly as they had left it, about a quarter revealed from the belly of the woman bending down to wash her hair. Cynthia found the stone mason again, and he helped her load the entire rock onto her van this time. She went back to her old sketchbook, and thought about simply carving the stone woman in the style of Henry Moore or Barbara Hepworth as she had first envisaged, instead of trying to get 'her ammonite' out of the rock. In the end, she did not have the heart to do even that. She simply lumped the whole thing on his grave. Maybe others would see in it the woman washing her hair, maybe not. Maybe they would find something different. The ammonite was there now, for all to see. At the end of the day, she didn't even know him.</div><div><br /></div><div>Writing stories is a little like stonecarving. Sometimes one comes with a plot fully formed and one hacks away at the quarry, regardless of the shape of the rock. Sometimes one looks at the rocks of life and sees something hiding just beneath the surface, waiting to be told. If you take a moment to look at the rocks, maybe you will see something there. It's not always about finding ammonites.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5649909010681650347.post-32762508402544755912009-06-18T15:36:00.000-07:002009-06-18T16:13:36.600-07:00Are Apples the Thingiest Things?Out of curiosity, I searched on 'apple' through the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP). Apple is used in 42 entries, almost invariably as an exemplar or instanciation of objective reality. The first entry that came up was, interestingly, the one on pain. There, apple is used as an example of a thing we can all sense - we all see, hear, smell, taste the same apple - as compared with pain, which is private. We each have direct knowledge from experience only of our own pain, in our own bodies. Another entry was the one on neutral monism. Monism is the idea that everything consists of one kind of stuff. According to neutral monism (as opposed to idealism or materialism) this one stuff of reality is neither mental nor physical. Spinoza was a neutral monist, according to SEP. Apples are used to illustrate Bertrand Russel's strange notion that things are organized around holes, that happen to project their aspects into the minds of the observers:<div><br /></div><div>"<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px; ">The characteristic feature of the of this construction procedure is that it gathers up into one object the spatially scattered appearances of the object they are said to constitute. A particular oddity to this way of proceeding is that the groups that are physical objects are “hollow”—the apple presents apple-appearances all around it but it does not present such appearances where it is, i.e., in the region occupied by the apple. This central region “may be as small as an electron or as large as a star.” (Russell 1927a, 217) It is this feature of the view that critics such as A.O. Lovejoy have in mind when they call Russell's view “centrifugal realism” (Lovejoy 1930, 203) according to which “all material things…are built around holes” (Lovejoy 1930, 198) Russell happily acknowledged this consequence of his view and expressed in such slogans as: “‘Matter’ is a convenient formula for describing what happens where it isn't. (Russell 1927b, 126)." (SEP)</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;">Apples are interesting, because they themselves are organised around a core. A core is a thing like a heart, we use it for expressions such as 'core values' to mean something central and incontrovertible. As already mentioned, apples were used in Wikipedia to differentiate Aristotle's philosophy from Plato's. Plato believed in a world of universal forms, where the perfect apple might reside, whereas for Aristotle the essence of appleness was in the core of each apple. Maybe having a core is the reason apple was used in that example. Imagine it being a potato!</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;">In fact, I suggest that the heart symbol used in European iconography bears a much stronger resemblance to the seed-case of an apple sliced along the core than it does to any of the anatomical parts it is said to depict (an ox's heart, a woman's vulva). Go ahead, open an apple and tell me if I'm wrong.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;">SEP has zero entries for avocado, and while oranges are mentioned they are rarely used in the same way as apples. There are many more pages using 'egg' than 'apple', but eggs are cited as much for their potential (to become a chicken, or an embryo) as they are for their thingness as eggs. Leading me to wonder, are apples the thingiest of all things?</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0