Ordinary Beauty

People who are just generally scared to drive, should absolutely never be allowed behind the wheel in spanking new automobiles–their fear of dents and scratches only magnifies their pre-existing paranoia, further impeding the flow of traffic.

It is 2:12 a.m. and I have been awake for awhile now. Long enough that I got hungry, and so, sleep slipped even farther from my possibilities.

So I arise and aim for the kitchen. In the dark outside I see that I left the extra porch light on, and then I realize that the bright light is moon-light so I go outside to play in the dark, using the moon’s glow to cast shadows–magic night-shadows with spooky velvet qualities.

I was somehow into my forties before I learned that there are (naturally lit) shadows at night. I was in Humboldt county in the hills of an old horse ranch above the ocean. All the homes there were “off the grid” and electric light was precious, so nighttime outside was mostly dark, except when the moon lit the hills.

We went walking in the full-moon light–like some folks go window shopping after-hours downtown–a stroll in the hills knowing that somewhere out there there were coyote and skunk and fox and bear. And we played games with contorting our shadows and waving our arms about. The stars were thick, creamy, magic. And life was silently affirmed.

I have been summoned again, as a prospective juror for King County Superior Court — in damn Kent; the gig starts Wednesday. Now, the Kent courthouse is a nice judicial complex and there is loads of free parking, but it is a LONG way from my home, whereas if I was serving in the Seattle courthouse I could take the bus, be there in oh, 17 minutes, and it would cost me about $3 to get there and home again. Now, I do get a mileage stipend for traveling to Kent, I forget how much, but argghh. Nasty drive, really. Google Maps estimates 42 minutes one way, or, “up to 1 hour 0 minutes” in traffic. Let’s see, a.m. rush hour, will there be “traffic”? Lemme think about it. Yes.

Isn’t she just magic?

3:03 a.m. September 13, 2007. I am awake.

3:43 a.m. September 13, 2007. I am still awake.

In the intervening 40 minutes I have realized that: It’s my birthday, my jaw muscles are raw with ache from clenching my teeth, my attitude is askew–pitched toward the unpleasant and negative aspects of my life rather than upon the bodacious beauty that is my world–and, as I understand it, this is the time of year when my focus sets the tone for the upcoming year. Uh, I don’t believe I want a full year of mal-aligned attitude. So now I am VERY awake.

Last week at this time my nephew was complaining about the teacher and the classmates he would have when he got back to school. He’s a fourth-grader, and I am perpetually intrigued at how he views the world. So I was questioning his perspective, and lecturing him that sometimes our circumstances are what they are, and to cope or enjoy them, we have to adjust our attitude. That, in fact, there were things in my own life that were perturbing me but over which I have no control, and that I was therefore trying to adjust my attitude.

Which is all true. However, I’m finding it’s very difficult.

So here I find myself at 3:43 a.m. ruminating on the negative portions of my life, in physical pain because I’m internalizing this crap and storing it in my jaw. And I am wishing that this attitude of mine came with some knob that I could hold between my thumb and fingers and twirl–click, click, click–adjusting to a new perspective. (Maybe it is that easy.)

I am still stunned.
Baffled.
Flumoxed.
Amazed.
Joyous.
Flat out perplexed.

Not in a bad way, any of it. Just effin remarkable. Startling. Puzzling. Indescribable.

And all completely NORMAL at the same time.

Nevertheless, stunned.

I married this man two months and a few days ago. It was all completely The Right Thing To Do, nevertheless I am still settling in with What Does This Mean?

I don’t have much more than that to say about that right now–except that it’s no wonder that it is so difficult to answer the question, “How will I know if he is the Right One?” — because the Right One, just Is.

Sue was right, the falcon came back. I didn’t really think it would, and I am very happy that it did.

This time, I had just come back into the house from working in the garden and was walking through the great-room. From the corner of my eye I thought I saw something on the big branch of the cherry tree, and was anticipating it would be a Flicker because Perry just added two more suet feeders out there for them. But it was larger than a Flicker so I grabbed the binocks–and saw that the Peregrine Falcon was back.

It sat there for awhile and I just watched. It turned its head sloooowly and in profile that hawk-like beak was almost spooky. Then it swooped to the ground, over in a spot below the cedar where the sparrows like to roost … and it walked around on the ground for awhile, its feather-covered legs reminding me of a chicken.

I sure did not expect to see it leisurely walking about on the ground! When it turned I could see its striped tail and then it disappeared into the bushes.

The Stellar’s Jays are greedy. Can we think of greedy without ascribing judgment? Of course the Jays are greedy, they are tying to feed themselves. But they are so obvious in their greed and the loss it brings them.

When there are multiple peanuts they will take their time to make a “wise” selection, taking each peanut into their beak and weighing it, then dropping it to try the next one, until they have the optimal ones. Certainly, when there is competition around–other Jays or the squirrels or crows–the Jays will just dive and swoop on one peanut, and straight-away fly to a tree branch to feast.

This morning there are three or four Jays here having breakfast on the peanuts I toss out. One has swooped and grabbed and now is perched in the cherry tree with his peanut sitting on the branch; next he will start pecking at the shell until the nut is naked. When I toss the next peanut on the ground, the Jay can’t resist and leaves his perch to swoop on another peanut. And about the same moment that he scores on that nut, another Jay has swooped on the one he’d left on the branch.

All of a sudden the wind is noisier than it’s been. It sounds more like a storm is near, but another listen and I see that the wind is not noisier–the leaves are. Drier. Crunchy. Unyielding, and noisier as the wind shakes them one against each other.

We are at the opposite end of my favorite time of year, which by definition perhaps makes this my least favorite time of year. Summer ending.

It’s not that I do not like autumn. Autumn in Seattle is a beautiful thing. Colors in the trees and the sky holds an amazing light. But, it’s the end of summer, and summer is where I belong.

So I try to hold this as a time of celebrating the changes, the subtle changes, their significance in their accumulation and the passage of time. The tips of the fronds in our Western Red Cedar are traveling from soft green to gold to brown. Today the wind shook them and seeds rained. Soon, the seed packets will be red and falling, thick layers piling on the ground beneath the tree, and the branches will raise ever so slightly without the weight of these packages.

The Big Leaf Maple is on a similar trajectory. The clusters of “helicoptors” are browning and already a few have fallen–but most of them remain on the branches, not yet ready to fly. Not quite yet, but soon.
It is true that this is my first autumn in this house as a full-time resident, so there is a lot for me to learn about how nature in these parts gets dressed (undressed) for autumn and winter. Will the hummingbirds stay? Will the flickers stay? Will the Pergrine Falcon that we spotted the other afternoon make many more appearances to fill its belly with an easy-to-nab songbird from one of our birdfeeders? And the Big Leaf maples in the ravine, when their leaves fall and their branches go bare and the valley opens up again, what evidence will there be of the Blue Herons’ nests which were built as the trees started to leaf out and which have been hidden in those tree tops for months?

Nice. Poetic. But I’m telling ya, I’m still a little bitter about imagining having to keep the top up on my convertible as the rain and cold returns.

We had dinner tonight at a new place in Ballard. This was a special night for Bizniks and I was looking forward to seeing some old friends and getting in on the ground floor of a little place that we might be able to make one of our regular spots for an evening out.

I did get to see some old friends, but the acoustics of the place are inhospitable to these aging ears, so conversations became limited to one-on-one, up close–got so that I couldn’t even carry on a conversation with the cute boy across the table from me.

The thumbs-up portions of the evening: silverware with substance, very friendly staff/people, and paper to-go cartons (not Styrofoam).

The thumbs-down portions: underwhelming food and beverages and the afore-mentioned noise. I could elaborate, but that doesn’t seem fair. The restaurant is only a few days old and I suspect/expect some of these bugs will be worked out. We’ll go again in another month or so, and order only an appetizer and a cocktail to share–see how that goes. I hope it goes well; I believe there’s a lot of power in friendly people and I know the intentions behind all this are good.

I see the fresh-blood-red throat of a Pileated woodpecker up there in the cherry tree. I hear the drone beat of another drilling the trunk of a tree in the ravine. A myriad of chirps and twitters cascades from the branches of the plum, the apple, the big-leaf maples. I cannot identify all these little birds by sight. Finches, sparrows, nuthatches, juncos, towhees, and chickadees. The simplest ones have a beautiful song which they shower upon me from high in the cedar.

I am conditioning the Stellar’s Jays to associate my whistle with the availability of peanuts. I whistle, then throw a peanut or a few out on the ground. The Jays follow, one or two, or sometimes there are five here. They shop amongst the peanuts on the ground, picking up one shell of nuts, dropping it and picking up another. Amy says they are weighing them, and I believe she is correct. The more skilled of them can take one shell into their beak, and then a second one too.

I am in love with these Jays. Their clever ways. Their method of holding the peanut shell tight to the branch as they pummel it with their beak until it yields and cracks and the fibrous hunks of the shell drift to the ground. The nut revealed now, and they pummel it more and more, until it is in pieces just the right size for eating. Then it is all eaten, and I whistle again, toss a peanut to the ground in front of me. Immediately, down he flies from the branch, ready for more.