Gray Sonoma Morning

waiting to eat a second breakfast
with my granddaughter
it's overcast, not the typical fog
that rolls in from the ocean overnight
and obscures all but the hint
of an outline of hills
behind the olive trees
then burns off and lets
the sun come through

the fog is gone now
as it always is by this time

I can clearly see the field
and the hills with their foliage
but the crystal clear air
is chilled and filled with random
drops of condensation
and the sky is still grey
I've photographed the grove
and the hills behind
in as many different lights as I could
and I've stood or sat
just looking from the deck
to lock the various shades of light
and the olive trees
with the shivering silver
of their green leaves
inside my mind so that later
when I look I can see
what the photo doesn't show

it's grey this morning
a quiet calming peaceful grey
the quail
still walk along the edge of the yard
and through the bushes
behind the garden
the roses still stretch
up from the porch
as if pointing at the sky
where yesterday I saw
an eagle and three hawks
and last night
as I did the night before
I saw
through the front room window
two stars
rising above the eastern horizon
to shine brightly
through the distant trees

Still adrift in California

dancing before breakfast
and then the farmer's market in Sebastapol
coming away with fresh caught wild salmon
and baskets of tomatoes
eggs benedict market style for lunch
market style=no ham or bacon
spinach with sundried tomato pesto instead
then a visit to screaming mimi's ice cream
the hottest spot in town
for a taste of local strawberries
an afternoon of photos
and a set of new acrylic paints
red headed woodpecker in the tree outside the window
that evening planked honey mustard salmon
and roasted corn on the cob
home made pesto and summer squash
market tomatoes
and ice cream with
the sweetest blackberries I've ever tasted
all made sweeter by family
summer in Sonoma County

Just do it

I really like it when people do fun things with words.

I found the following on Gawdess's Viewfinder 365's blog this morning. She was writing about glasses.

when I was a kid
I wore them because I had to
now I wear them because I need them

And here's how Braja at Lost and Found in India headed her post I saw this morning:

If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.

When I taught freshman English so many years ago, I used to start every term with a story about how I learned to dive.

I didn't learn to swim until I went to college, but then I never spent much time at pools after that. Then one year, when my oldest son was about 10, we suddenly found ourselves one summer with enough time and money to afford a family membership at the local pool.

I'd take the kids over two or three times a week in the morning for their swimming lessons and then we'd spend a couple hours just hanging at the pool. Mainly I'd sit in a deck chair at the edge of the pool reading a novel and watch the kids enjoy themselves in the water.

One day I heard my oldest son shouting at me "Hey, Dad! Look at me!" I looked up from the book but didn't see him anywhere. "Up here! I'm on the diving board!" I looked over at the diving board at the end of the pool but didn't see him. "No! Up here! The high dive!"

I looked up. There he was on the back of the high dive. "Watch!" he shouted and ran forward jumping when he got to the end, legs kicking, arms flailing, splash coming.

He bobbed up out of the water and swam to the edge where I was. "That was great," I said.

"Now you do it!"

"Maybe later. I'm kind of busy right now." (Hey, I was an English major in grad school. So it was actually work.)

"Oh c'mon, Dad. What's the matter? Chicken?" Of course, he said it in that quiet ten-year-old voice that turned every head in the pool in our direction.

Well you can't let your kid call you a chicken in public, so I closed the book and stood up. "Okay," I said. "Keep an eye on your brother while I go up there."

I walked to the end of the pool and started up the ladder of the high dive. About half way up, I remembered I've got this fear of heights. So I stopped, looked up, saw there was nothing to hold onto once I'd get there. Then I looked down, and there were both of my sons standing over by my chair beaming up at me and pointing. So, like an idiot, I went on up the ladder.

I walked out very slowly to the end of the board and looked down--a long, long way down. I don't need to do this, I thought. I don't need to prove anything to a couple of little kids. So I turned around and figured the best way down was the way I came up -- on the ladder.

I hadn't noticed before, but some kind of big truck driver who used to play linebacker in college had come up the ladder behind me. There he was at the top of the ladder, waiting his turn. I thought about saying, Excuse me, but I need to go back down. But before I could get the words out, he said, "Go ahead, buddy, jump."

So there I was, standing at the end of the high dive, looking down -- a long, long way down -- at the pool below, confirming for myself that, yes, I have a fear of heights. I was wondering what makes you stop before you hit your head on the bottom of the pool? And what if a big gust of wind caught me just as I jumped . . ."Jump, Dad!" both boys yelled in unison.

I looked over to where they were standing, and a crowd had started gathering there, some of them shielding their eyes with their hand, and I though I was hearing scattered cries of "Jump, jump." Then I heard somebody laugh.

I looked to the left, and there was the lifeguard sitting on his high chair chuckling at me. The lifeguard was laughing at me. What does that mean when the lifeguard is laughing at you? What's he going to say when you fall into the pool and drown. "Oh I'm sorry. I was laughing so hard I couldn't even get out of my chair." Pretty soon, though, he took pity on me. "Just hold your hands in the air, close your eyes and fall forward," he said.

What? Do I know this guy? Was he in a class I taught? Did I give him a bad grade on a paper? "What?!" I shouted at him.

"Just close your eyes, raise your hands, and fall forward. It won't hurt."

Now when someone tells you it won't hurt, you know they're not telling you the truth. But then I heard the truck driving linebacker behind me muttering. I couldn't tell exactly what he was saying, but it was something like, "Go ahead and jump, buddy, before I come out there and throw you off." I decided it was better to put my fate in the hands of the lifeguard.

So I closed my eyes, raised my hands over my head, and fell forward. For exactly .018 of a second, it felt exhilarating. But then I hit the water. The lifeguard had lied. It hurt. Oh yes.

But at the same time, I felt this wonderful sense of accomplishment. I swam over to the side, pulled myself out of the water and stood facing the beaming face of my son. "That was great, Dad. Do it again!"

Now here's the really stupid part. I thought, Yeah. Why not? Of course by the time I got to the base of the ladder, he'd run off to play with some new found friend. But that was okay. I wasn't doing it for him.

The second time hurt too, but not as much. And the third time hurt a little less. By the fourth falling forward, I kept my eyes open. It's a wonderful feeling to see the world turn upside down like that while you're in free fall. And it didn't hurt, either.

I must have fallen forward another 20 times before we left the pool. Then that evening, I went back over after dinner and fell forward some more. From then on, every chance I got, I would go off the high dive. Of course, I never became an Olympic diver, but I did get to go off the high platform once at the Ohio State varsity pools. (Quite a bit higher than the high dive at the neighborhood pool. We're talking cliff diving in Mexico.) That was a thrill.

Then I'd tell my students, "That's kind of what learning to write is like. You close your eyes and fall forward. Just do it. It may hurt a little at first. But you'll eventually come to actually liking that you can do it."

And that's what I like about the Blogosphere. All these people just falling forward. Just doing it.


And take a look at today's spotlight post (the link's over in the right sidebar) for a nice turn of phrase.

You're going to like this.

Maybe they're Not The Rockefellers, but Rene's posts are absolutely rich. If you've never been to her blog, don't waste any more time. Use the link and head on over to her "big bowl of quirky with a side of sass." You're going to be glad you did. I guarantee it.

I stole this

I stole this from Phil's Phun. It's priceless. Don't miss the final image. (If Phil wants me to give it back, I will.)

A Phun Place

If you haven't been to Phils Phun yet, you should go. Then anytime you need a respite, you'll thank yourself for doing so.

More Today's Quotes

There are lots of reasons to not like Georgia governor Sonny Perdue. For instance, one of his main responses to the drought we are experiencing was to schedule a day of prayer and ask all the church leaders in the state to lead prayers for rain. Or during the recent gas shortage, Mr. Perdue saw no reason not to go to Spain and leave the supply issue and public panic to resolve itself. On the op ed page of this morning's Atlanta Journal-Constitution under the headline "The Great Sonny Perdue Gas Debacle of 2008," Luc P. Noiset, an associate economics professor at Kennesaw State, took the good governor to task for one of the actions he did take during the shortage. While Noiset's criticism was not particularly justified or on target, he did turn a nice phrase, which the editor recognized and used as a call out:

"When naive voters vote for naive government leaders, they get naive government policies and suffer the consequences."

(The editor did leave out the comma, though.) And now, here's another one from Pearls Before Swine:

"A man's laugh should not sound like a weasel dying at the gates of hell."

Today's Quotes

Here are a couple of quotes to get us through the day. The first one's in honor of it being a Saturday in October:

"In Wisconsin, a spread offense means eating bread with margarine instead of butter." (Rob Oller, The Columbus Dispatch)

It will be 52 degrees at game time in Madison.

Now on a more serious note (although some people, including S, would tell you I take few things more seriously than Buckeye Football):

"Which amounts to saying that true union (that is spiritual union, or union in synthesis) differentiates the elements it brings together. This is no paradox, but the law of all experience. Two beings never love one another with a more vivid consciousness of themselves than when each is swallowed up in the other." (Piere Teilhard de Chardin)

Think about it.

Even traitors can be heroes

I like spy novels -- John LeCare, Daniel Silva, Len Deighton, Victor O'Reily. I like their existential essence. I get lost in the shadows of their moral border crossings. And I relish the idea that even in such foggy out lands and dreary back streets of a soft October night where, as Eliot says, the yellow smoke curls about the house and falls asleep, there can still be heroes, albeit weary and uncharacteristic ones.

Two contrasting reflections on poetry

Something to think about this morning:

“[G]reat poetry is not inevitable. . . .It seems to result from a providential gift of talent to an individual and to the patient cultivation of that talent by the individual.” (Timothy Steele, Missing Measures.)

“Surely there is good reason to avoid a definition of poetry. The clearer and more concise a definition is, the more poems it leaves out.” (Donald Stauffer, The Nature of Poetry)

With Apologies to Yogi

Proof it's never over until it's over. Thank goodness for people who like what they do.