Kamikaze Duck

Driving into town with Chickzilla not too long ago, I was stopped midsentence by the sight of a mallard duck barreling across the sky. His green head glint in the sun and his wings flapped furiously to propel his fat little body through all that sunny blue to cross the highway and get to the ocean. He did not have the grace of the soaring red shouldered and redtailed hawks that line the highway, nor the spry lithness of all the sparrows, starlings, or warblers. No majesty, like the owl, or haunting poetry, like the crows. Just pure joy at that estatic careening toward the ocean- I could almost hear him yelling "Yahoo! Look at me! Comin in for a landing!"

I realized, as I watched him, that I will never be a hawk. In this life, I am a duck. And in that moment, there was nothing more beautiful than that little green head and flapping wings working for all they were worth to make it to that place where the water crashes into white and washes up on shore.

Notes on Neko Case at Bimbo's 365 Club, December 2004

It has been so long since this acrid taste has set in the back of my throat: cigarettes and alcohol mingling in a pleasant sway as this woman wrings forth her voice. Specters of love past, distant factories, loyalties lost fly from her mouth in opaque clouds twisting around the room. They dance in and out of red velvet curtains, gently draped tables, rocking heads, fishnet stockings and horn rimmed glasses. They sweetly blow through wisps of long hair on tall, skinny musicians who back up that ethereal voice. Haunting, you have said.

She is beautiful, enthralling- that hair, the music, her sultry stare to the side- even the way she blurts out that she is bleeding and wants ribs with potato chips sprinkled on top.

For me she is an intersection between the present and my younger teenage self who reached for a model of something different, found in answer red hair dye, Aardvarks Odd Ark, mind altering substances, the Pandoras, Venice Beach, and Duckie from Pretty in Pink. Neko appeals to this incarnation of myself. For me, she evokes David Lynch- a scene from Twin Peaks where Audrey Horne plays a song on the juke box in the Double R Diner, languidly and seductively swaying in time to the spooky music.

I sip my gin and tonic and let Neko’s sway wash over me. I follow the treble of her voice on long midnight rides through abandoned doorways, forsaken meadows, dark woods, narrow alleys, pillows in gloomy apartments dampened with tears, and mornings with coffee when anger has run its course, and the outcome did not destroy life after all.

Saturday Night with Joel and Ethan

I spent almost seven hours today in one position cutting paper for wedding invitations. I didn't even notice so much time had passed until the alarm went off for Luna's medicine.

After half a bottle of wine and a viewing of the Big Lebowski I feel much better. That damn cowboy was saying the same thing I have been, only the Coen brothers were poking fun of this need I experience to wrap things up in a profound way- tearing it to shreds, they were. Maybe that's part of what makes those guys so brilliant- you can tell that they are total saps at heart, but they see it and can make fun of themselves while not denying it.

Oh Joel and Ethan, blessed be thy movies.

My personal favorites (from least to greatest): Blood simple, The Man Who Wasn't There, Oh Brother Where Art Thou, Barton Fink, Fargo, the Big Lebowski, Raising Arizona.

There's no place like home.

Luna came home from the vet today. We stopped at our favorite beach and had it all to ourselves. She stood at the shoreline and let the waves push up against her. It made me nervous, that power against her weak little body- I thought I might have to do a heroic lifeguard rescue if a large wave came, but I didn't have the heart to call her away from water- she was having a moment.

I think we're in the clear for now. One of the many vets we have been to this week said "when you have an old dog you think every episode is the end, and then just when you've gotten used to it and stop panicking, it is."

Death seems to be hounding me. I relished the essay "And Passion Most of All" in the Sun this month in which Michelle Cacho-Negrette beautifully recounted the birth of her best friend's last affair before she died of cancer. Other titles from this month in the same magazine: Surviving the Body, Grief Arrives In Its Own Time, and the subject of the readers write was Small Victories.

In my 8th grade English Class we are doing a study of the poems Whitman wrote grieving Lincoln's assassination.

I have been rewatching the first season of Six Feet Under.

The documentary I wandered into after dropping Luna off at the vet, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, contained in its content close relationships between a man, Mark, and some parrots. During the course of the film, some died, causing great sadness for Mark, as well as some profound realizations about the interconnectedness of all beings.

One of my students lost her grandmother, Francis, this week. My favorite thing about Francis was that she loved to ride her adult sized tricycle with her little white dog in the back basket through town. She would creak down the street, everything dutifully covered from the sun except her lips, pursed with the effort.

It is never clear to me whether or not the universe conspires to teach me lessons, or whether it is simply a matter of what I pay attention to creating the illusion of a grand plan. In the end, I suppose the outcome is the same, whether the lesson be fated or not.

No one survives life, and in this is the beauty of life. Learning to accept this is truly grace.

I am thankful that Luna and I have a little more time.

Luna update

She's doing better and, even though her liver is shot, may be able to come home tomorrow.

It's just a dog.

I didn’t understand when my grandmother’s poodles died. I was disdainful of the seemingly never ceasing tears, the flowers and sympathy cards. It’s just a dog. Luna is just a dog. I had many pets as a kid. The last dog my family had before I left for college ran away for lack of attention, but Luna is different for me. She has been my one constant over a decade of rapid change- in the span of 20 to 32 a lot has gone down. She has been with me through Massachusetts, Georgia, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Montana, and finally back to my home, California. In the years of my transiency she spent nights to months with various friends, yet always gave me a hero’s welcome when I returned. She survived the years of not enough money to buy dogfood, and with the vet bills coming our way, it's a good thing we're not there anymore. She’s been my source of comfort through too many heartbreaks- If you wrung out the sadness that dog has soothed over the years, the tears that have disappeared into her fur could fill an ocean. Luna helped me find the love of my life, and she loves him now almost as much as she loves me (almost). Over the years, Luna has borne witness to all my change. I’ve watched her grow from a wormy, mangy, cringing stray to a loving, lustrous, buxom dog. I have watched her grow old. She is over fifteen now, and I am not ready for her to go. Even if this is not the end, it is the beginning of it. I feel cliché and too sentimental, but when it comes down to it, a member of my family is sick, and it tires me to the bone.

Luna in the Late Night Revisited

I woke up Monday night at 3:00 am to the sound of Luna peeing on the floor. Luna doesn’t pee on the floor in the middle of the night. She woofs. When I went out into the kitchen, I found inordinate amounts of vomit. My dog is very sick. Luna wanted out, so I let her as I scrubbed the floor. She lay in the grass far from the house in the dark, the overcast night muffling her ragged breathing. I lay down with her in the dew, curled against her back. Twelve years we have been doing this. If she stretched out from paw to paw, we would probably be the same height. “I love you, Luna,” I whispered, and then we lay quiet, until the cold seeped into my bones and I began to shiver. She stood up for me, staggered towards the house, and lay down before she reached the porch. I had to carry up her up the stairs.

Almost 48 hours later now she’s got an IV in her front leg in a pet hospital 45 minutes away. It could be bacteria, it could be cancer. My girl is getting old. I did not like coming home to her empty bed tonight.

Luna in the late night, March

Luna has been on a bender. At first I thought these late night woofings at the door were all about being elderly and needing to go to the bathroom. No. It has become clear that what this is all about is a late night party that our senior citizen does not want to miss out on. There is the handsome young border collie next door, Nick, who sometimes comes to call. Then there are the two Jack Russels, Lonnie and Rossie, who are so jealous of each other that they never stop fighting, and there is Sky, the beautiful lean, sleek, young mother of seven from New Zealand who loves Luna like no other. There are the coyotes- who run and howl in the distance, at times closer, circling the farm and terrorizing the sheep. Even in the torrential downpour, Luna is called from her cushy bed in our room, rousing us to open the door and let her run. Sometimes she leaves at four, other times it is as early as midnight and she is gone all night. She is usually here when we wake in the morning, muddy and bedraggled, eyes red, blackberry briars, bits of redwood duff, willow twigs, clumps of grass, bits of sheep poo, and hounds tongue seeds stuck in her fur. She wearily drags herself into the house and loudly drops onto her bed by the refrigerator, barely able to raise her head for her arthritis medicine or breakfast. She sleeps most of the day, and by evening, is ready for more.

Spring Equinox

I live on a willow farm. It seems so short a time ago that the rain began to fall, that I looked back at the end of the willow rows, where the farm fields start, and noticed that bare branches rattled in the breeze, naked, starkly framing the sky. Today on my Luna’s walk, I looked back to find they have all erupted in full tender green foliage, softening lines, gently waving hellos. Gone are the small soft pussy willow buds that we cut and put in vases. They have burst into seed and fallen to the ground like slimy dead caterpillars. This last heavy rain beat them down, making way, making way. Sky, the mama dog next door, has weaned her puppies and fervently drinks all of Luna’s water after a quick snuffled hello. Click, the season turns again.

My First lover

"My first lover

He was tall and breezy with his long hair down
But he gets a little hazy when I think of him now

My first lover
My first lover

He was always talking tryin to bring me down
But I was not waiting for a white wedding gown
From my first lover"

Gillian Welch, 2001

This song came out on Gillian Welch's album Time the Revelator in 2001. I thought I knew this album intimately. I once sat perched upon a cliff top at the end of a long dirt road in Big Sur listening to this album. As the sun went down, beers replaced dinner, the doors to the truck sat open, and my friend and I sang its praises. How then did I not understand this song until three years later when I saw Gillian Welch sing "My First Lover" at the strictly Hardly Bluegrass festival in Golden Gate Park. As her voice rang out through the overcast day and reached me huddled in my little grass spot among the crowd, I thought have I even heard this song before?

I met my first lover in 1987, when I was fourteen. My friend and I lied and said we were going to a double feature, but instead went to her boyfriend’s house. There I met P. He was perhaps the skinniest man I have ever known. In high school, his best friend followed him around for a week thinking he was a girl he had a crush on before they actually met. He had kinky black curly hair that stuck out in all directions, except when he ironed it to stick straight out to the sides in a style reminiscent of Robert Smith of the Cure (our then hero). His face was graced with giant chocolate brown eyes, a wide nose, and full, full lips. He didn’t talk a lot, and when he did, he often said strange things that came from a world he existed in somewhat on his own. I loved him. He was my lover for the ensuing six years.

The last time I saw him was about three years ago. He showed up at my house in Santa Cruz unexpectedly one Sunday afternoon when my mom was in town. He was living up in Oregon playing in a psychedelic jam band. I think he was living in a communal situation involving some gardening, but maybe I made that up. He had in tow a woman named Venus we had met at a dead show some 10 years before who had married a friend of ours- I got the sense that they were involved. They were on their way down to LA to pick up her kids from their grandma’s house. My mother, Venus, P., and I went for a walk on the beach. As Venus told my mother the story of the failed marriage and the two children, P. and I talked and didn’t talk about where we were at, where we had been, what we wanted. He could so much more easily talk and say what he was thinking than when i had known him before. At one point in my life I thought he was wasting how smart he was, but at that moment on the beach I respected his decisions and was just glad that we could connect after so many years. On the car ride back to my house, they started talking about how much money they had. It made me nervous that they were going to pick up two kids and tote them back up to Oregon with less than $100.00 between the two of them. Yet, in essence, he was himself. As I think about it now, I’m happy for him. He did not compromise who he was to make it. Can I say that? No. He is, for better or worse, unabashedly the person I took as my first lover eighteen years ago.