Month: May 2023

THEN & NOW

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On my run this morning I thought about how, as a teenager, I used to plan my life. Alone or partnered? With or without children? Horses? Goats? I was still dreaming of five acres and independence in college when I completed a sustainable living plan for a Botany class using a book by that title as a reference. [Five Acres and Independence by Maurice Grenville Kains, 1935]

I was younger than the young woman pictured below, but she must also have dreams of where her life might take her. Life will probably surprise her.

While we were waiting for a friend, I asked for a photo of one of the two girls celebrating her quinceañera in the Portland Rose Garden this weekend. It does not show in this photo, but she sparkled extravagantly! Behind and to the left you can see two of her quinceaños wearing black shirts with white embroidery, one holding his hat over his face. The other quinceañera wore peacock colors.

I’d hoped to meet up with a friend from my MFA program in the garden. I walked with Gary to the park, but she drove. She’d forgotten it was Memorial Day weekend, and I had never visited the roses after 8am. The crowds were astonishing and Felicity could not find a place to park. We walked back down the hill and sat outside Starbucks after she parked in the Zupan parking lot.
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‘DOING?’

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It might have been a very young Ruby who used to say: “Doing?” as in “What are you doing?”

Knitting, reading, and revising and submitting two stories and four poems. And working on the novel. You remember that? The book? I meant to take a break from the novel, slow down, get some rest, but it’s almost as hard to stop as it was to get moving so fast last month!

You might just be able to make out the numeral 18 on this sign. These signs are meant to aid rescue workers offshore in locating people in trouble, but they are out of luck with this marker. Even here on the coast, people think their trashy writing is clever. It’s boring. Seattle is considering making graffiti a felony because of the cost of repairing the tags. The spiky and bubble-letter nonsense reminds me of what classmates doodled when I was in Second Grade. I found it stupid even then. People who tag raw wood, stone, tile, and brick are abominable. They should suffer guilt and shunning, imo.
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UP HILL

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Gary doesn’t want to walk up hill to the rose garden this morning, especially with bears. (Probably just one black bear, but three sightings so far in Forest Park… not anywhere near the area we walk.) Climate change seems to be foremost in the news everywhere in the world but in our country. Recent heat here suggests this may have to change. Reading, writing, walking, and admiring trees.

One of our favorite local beach gardens a couple weeks ago. There is a lovely succession beginning with pale daffodils and hyacinth, the tulips and bluebells, and eventually hosta and hydrangea.
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HEARTS & CORDWOOD

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Gary is filling the gap in his woodpile he so carefully straightened and vacuumed. He used to object if I called our cords of firewood “his” but no more. He has never allowed anyone to help him cut, clean, stack, or rearrange that pile. Photos follow.

Back to from, left to right: rough quartz, basalt, quartz (agate), sandstone, three white milky quartz (agates), green seaglass, jasper, purple jasper, and green glass. The glass on the left was what Gary found and gave me for Mother’s Day last year. He found the one on the left this morning.
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MOHS SCALE

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This post began, the idea of it, last month when I was supposed to be working on the novel. I left a stub and then folded the post away.

I cannot believe it took me so long to actually look up the hardness of glass. It took Duck-Duck-Go all of two minutes to find everything I wanted to know.

When we search the beach, aside from agates and the odd diabetic needle or florescent tube, or the wonderful and rare fishing float, what we are really looking for is sea glass. I have wondered if glass floats more easily than stone, is its specific gravity is lower? Is it lighter and softer and that’s why glass is rare? It wears away?

We found this huge group of starfish far south in Falcon Cove last summer. For a time people feared the species might die out completely from a wasting disease. There are gooseneck barnacles and mussels in the photo. The shellfish people were two miles north where there might be two starfish near one another here and there.
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THE BOOK: stirred words

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When I was teaching high school English, I kept a Bible and the Qur’an on my shelves. I had the American stories collected by Erdoes and Ortiz. (Most of my books were free to borrow and generally came back, but that book and the side-by-side original Spanish and English translations of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda had to be replaced again and again.) I had many novels, books of poetry, collections of short stories, literary journals, nonfiction, science fiction, fantasy, realism, traditional and modern stories. I urged my students to be respectful of what is called “myth” because that word has become pejorative. Myths are most often the sacred stories of other cultures. Have respect.

On the way home from a walk.

My own book is not a myth, not sacred, magical, nonfiction, poetry, or even published. But it is done.

Yes, there will be further drafts, editing, revision, new words, passages cut, rewritten, moved. I may have crossed a line with Nadya’s or Amani’s story. Just for the next hours, let me say it is done. Just for today.

And if you or someone you know might be willing to help me make the story better, please let me know. [See below.]

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