Blog o' Gnosis

This morning I woke at 5 am and could not get back to sleep. I lay in bed for an hour verifying the fact, then rose and walked quietly through my dark house. I was drawn to the windows facing west, which were filled with moonlight. Looking out I noticed with surprise that the sky was perfectly clear; gone was the overcast of previous mornings.

Today I took a much-needed break after weeks of teaching, travelling, and working hard. I had been getting progressively more tired as the weeks went by, but I didn’t realize how bad off I was until I heard myself suggest to a friend that she take a day off to recharge. It was one of those moments when realization finally breaks through the fog: I am giving someone the exact advice I need to take.

Do you remember Ronald Reagan’s first Secretary of the Interior, James Watt? The guy was a real piece of work, a fundamentalist Christian (oh, how we have become inured to religious extremists in public office since then!) who shocked the nation by his crass attitude toward the environment, and also to other people.

My favorite quote by him (and he is eminently quotable) comes from a source I can’t remember, but it was an interview somewhere, I believe after he left office. Someone asked him what his biggest fear was about environmentalists, and he said he feared that all of them were secretly Pagan.

Another early morning walk, this time along a trail in the Laguna de Santa Rosa. The trail meanders through the remnants of one of California’s major freshwater wetlands, with wide paths strewn with fallen grasses and dust. In the morning it is all tamped down with a light coating of dew, so the dust stays low and the air fresh.

One long stretch follows a series of ponds and waterways, the edge of the water choked with willow and briar, poison oak and Himalayan blackberry. The berries have been ripening steadily for the last few weeks, and these bushes so close to the trail have all been picked clean by a constant stream of visitors. I love a luscious, ripe blackberry as much as anybody, but I don’t even try to find one in this stand.

My eye is drawn instead to the opposite side of the trail, where out of the jumbled grasses rises a tangle of wild rose canes. The blooms are long gone, pink as I recall, small and lightly fragrant. Even the leaves are turning and falling, and what remains are thin clusters of tiny red rose hips scattered among the briars.

One morning last week I drove out to Bodega Head for a hike. The day had dawned clear and still, another instance where sweltering heat inland gives rise to a spectacular day on this wild coast. Though it was not particularly early, the parking lot was empty save for two elderly beachcombers. I had the headlands to myself, and took the south trail toward the very tip of the land.

To walk along the head is to traverse a slice of Los Angeles that has migrated north over a long stretch of time, thanks to the San Andreas Fault. The cliffs are ribbon striped in long diagonals of rock that heave skyward as though the promontory itself were craning its neck to see what lies farther north.

This year was my first 4th of July in the Mission District of San Francisco, and even though I’d heard reports I was unprepared for the amazing exhibition of loud, bright, flaming things flying through the air. Chrissy Field and the Embarcadero were lit up with big traditional fireworks displays. But so was the Castro, Twin Peaks, Bernal Hill, Potrero Hill, and every intersection between those points. Big ones, pretty ones, mean and noisy ones, sparkling, whistling, screaming, and ear-popping ones—you name it, it was going off that night. At 2-second intervals. In short, the City looked and sounded like a guerrilla war going on in a carnival tent.

There I was, minding my own business on a beautiful Sunday morning, sitting around reading internet news and opinion. I heard a helicopter overhead, which is a fairly unremarkable event here on the coast. Summer weather combined with weekend visitors means lots of work for those who pluck people off cliffs, save drowning swimmers, and rescue anyone left as an offering on rocky outcroppings.

Anyway, the noise kept getting louder so I glanced out the window and saw said helicopter landing a few hundred feet away from my house. Instantly, I intuited that it was time to take Vince for a walk. Acting on a hunch, I also brought my camera.

It’s Sunday, a day when attention-seeking pundits across the nation are paid to appear on opinion shows whether they know what they’re talking about or not. If they can be overpaid to spout off on national TV, surely I can do the same here for free. So in the spirit of free enterprise, here’s what I think about various sorts of things.

This morning I took my camera to Doran Beach, in order to capture some of the great profusion of blossoms there. It is a peaceful place to walk and think, especially on overcast mornings before the weekend crowds. I am not much of a photographer; my technical expertise lies somewhere between point-and-click and set-your-own-f-stop. Except [...]

Okay, I’m sorry, this is it. For those of you who weren’t watching, and even for those who were, we have just witnessed the countdown clock begin to tick. That sound you hear is the imminent end of American Idol’s fifteen minutes of fame.