Sublime Beauty

It has been raining here in California for the last several days. It is above average rainfall with is a welcome relief from the drought conditions we've been under.  Tonight, after work, after pizza, I went out for a brief walk around the neighborhood.  The sidewalks were slick with a light rain. There was a subtle breeze stirring things about. The ground was carpeted with fallen leaves.  It was beautiful, verging on glorious. I walked and I basked in the sights, the sounds and the scents. I am glad I have the ability to enjoy such sublime beauty.

Heavy Rainfall Sounding On The Roof

Heavy rainfall sounding on the roof
drumming the ancient songs, summoning
other rain storms, other places, other nights
And I awake with the song of the wanderer
Thrumming in my chest, in my imagination
Here, Now, Here, Now, Here, Now, Here
I pull myself back across the universe to
This moment as I toss the covers aside and
Roll over to sit on the edge of the bed
Watching the quarter moon on the horizon
Above the distant mountains, shrouded in the
Heavy rainfall sounding on the roof

A Hundred Gray Moods

A slow and rainy day of incidental errands and random wandering rich with the scent of a Pacific rain, a world painted in a hundred gray moods.

The Last Drops of Rain

The soundtrack of the last week or so has been Melissa Etheridge's new album, "4th Street Feeling". It is outstanding, a solid collection, through and through.  Her talent never ceases to amaze me. She writes and sings songs that capture the bittersweet nature of life in a true and honest fashion. I'll probably share the lyrics of some of the songs as I go through the weeks ahead.

The currents of life have been surging around me the last couple of months, with unexpected developments in all aspects of my life. A few years ago and the stress and emotionality of it would have been crushing, but I give a lot of credit to that stress counselor I went to two years ago for reminding me of many of the things I know about managing stress. Layer that on top of the journey I have been on toward a minimal lifestyle and exploring zen and...I still feel the currents, the emotions are as strong as they have ever been, they pull me this way and that, but I do not feel as if they buffet me.

I got an unexpected call tonight that has been, basically, two years in the coming I think. A conversation that has been had a dozen times, with an ending that never was, and tonight, well, tonight might have been the ending. It might have been that last tide that crashes ashore and then ebbs slowly back into the sea. I am sure I am going to write more about it in the coming days, writing that I may or may not share.  But, between there and here I have shed a thousand tears and the tears that remain are like the last drops of rain, that fall, softly to the ground.

The Rain Outside

We're slipping through our first winter rainstorm here in this part of California and it has been nice. I slept deeply and late this morning, in part cushioned by the rain and the gray shadows of the storm. I am looking forward to another deep night of sleeping.

I had an incidental day today, full of incidental things, including seeing Johnny Depp and Amanda Beard in "The Rum Diary". As we came out of the movie I told my friend Tony that a good movie has the ability to make you laugh spontaneously and out loud, and "The Rum Diary" certainly met that criteria. There were several places in the movie that were laugh out loud funny, even though the movie itself is essentially a drama. It is a very funny drama.

We had a late lunch at Puerto Azul in Willow Glen, a good place for simple and tasty Mexican food, with an emphasis on seafood. Though, my choice was the Enchilda Mexicana, which was outstanding. From there, I ran another errand, stopping at the AT&T store to look into microcells (cool technology) and then over to Barnes & Noble to look at calendars and Christmas cards.

I came home, took a nap, a hot bath, spent some time reading "A Feast for Crows" by George R.R. Martin., then called my folks in South Dakota and discussed some of the details of my trip to South Dakota for Thanksgiving. I am looking forward to seeing family, but I wanted to make sure that my ride from the airport to the ranch was coordinated, since I have been left at the airport a time or two.

It is kind of a Catch-22 - my folks or my siblings like to pick me up at the airport because it gives them an excuse to go to Rapid City, but the same time I do not like to be particularly dependent on someone else for a ride (see previous comment about being left at the airport before). But, at this point, it looks like we have the schedule coordinated. Of course, that is subject to change without notice.

I seem to have come out of October with a bang, and I seem to be sliding into a transformational time as I move toward the end of the year - transformation and change always happen and sometimes they can be painful. We try and remind ourselves that we grow through the transformation, that change is generally a positive thing, but that doesn't make it any less painful.

We are human beings. We attach to things. We attach to people. Buddha tells us that all suffering is a result of that attachment. Obviously, I've got a long way to go before I can get detached, in large part because, quite frankly, I like being attached. I am not a Buddhist (though I am strongly influenced by zen simplicity), I actually think that attachment is necessary and good. Even when it involved the pain of change. It certainly makes me contrary.

The Far End of the Building

I work in a very long building. It is about a third of a mile from where I sit to the far end of the building. That really comes in handy when the weather is less than desirable. It means I can take a short (or long) exercise walk and never leave the comfort of the building. Today is one of those days.

I woke this morning to the sound of pouring rain. I drove in through the waves of heavy rain. At lunch, I walked across the parking lot to the deli listening to the sound of the giant rain drops popping against my jacket. It’s pretty impressive. It’s also pretty wet. We’re moving through successive waves of storm fronts here, but Pacific storms have a great wild beauty to them that is hard to describe. The feel of them, the texture of them, the taste of them, is different from storms in other parts of the country.

So today, with the scent of rain, I walk to the far end of the building and enjoy both the storm – and being safe and dry in the storm. That dichotomy fascinates me. The experience of the storm is radically different when you cannot come in from the storm. I recall quite vividly more than a few times in my life when I couldn’t come in from a storm, both physically and metaphorically. It is the shelter from the storm that enables us to enjoy the storm.

Whether that storm is physical or metaphorical.

The Sun Breaks Free

The sun found it's way to freedom following our first winter storm of the year, which happened to be right on schedule with the first day of winter. After seven straight days of gray and rain it was nice to see the sun, nice to feel it on my skin, nice to walk underneath it. I made it a point on the drive home to stop and take a walk through San Tomas Aquino River park and watch the rainfall runoff splashing down the river, then came home to a simple dinner of a ham and cheese sandwich and a salad.

We've reached the still point at work, that point during the Christmas season when virtually everyone is on vacation and so our workload slows to a mere crawl. I think I got three email today, all about the same subject. I had one meeting and missed another because I got a doctor's appointment time wrong - I had written it down right, I just got it tangled in my mind - fortunately the tangle was that I showed up an hour early, so I took advantage of the mistake to head over and have a nice sushi lunch.

I am looking forward to a very quiet and very soft Christmas this year. With input from my beloved T.R. I've decorated my tree very simply this year, indeed, I've keep all my decorations to a minimum. I've got a string of lights on the patio. I've got the tree up with a single ornament (a Hallmark Eastern Bluebird). I've got a simple wreath on the front door. That is it, and it is also all I need or want this year. This is a very minimalist Christmas, with an remembrance of what the season is about, the birth of Christ, our savior.

I am starting to turn my mind toward my New Year's resolutions for 2011. I haven't carved anything in stone yet, but I have some ideas circulating inside my imagination. I managed to keep 2010 a simply year, focused on healing. Besides recovering from the amputation of my toe last November, a long and slow process, I also had the second toe surgery, to correct the hammer toe that developed on the same foot, so I spent my share of time limping and healing this year.

I also focused on other forms of healing, starting (and maintaining) counseling sessions for work stress, which were probably long overdue. The sessions have been very fruitful and I feel like I have most of my work stress under control. It's no longer a 500 pound gorilla knocking the crap out of me, but rather a handful of imaginary monkeys picking at things. Oh, every now and then something will happen that sets me off, but the recovery time from the stressful incident is far quicker. I don't dwell on it - I recognize it for what it is and am able to deal with it far more effectively than I could just a few months ago. I've still got a ways to go, but I am headed in the right direction and most importantly I feel as if I have the tools to continue on the path of healing and on a "return to the center", so to speak.

I am looking forward to the New Year and I think whatever my resolutions may be, one of the key components if a more focused internal journey and a more expansive external journey. One of the things I've been contemplating on the internal side of that journey is to focus and dedicate the year to poetry. I was discussing with T.R. and one of the things I thought about was spending the entire year with Frank O'Hara (one of the great American poets - if you are unfamiliar with his work run, don't walk, to the nearest book store and buy or order one of his works, or the complete and unabridged volume, which I have).

Two Poems On The Subject Of Rain

Rain I

We come in from a day
Wandering the city
A day that was marked
By a simple lunch
A Tuscan lamb stew
At a small restaurant
Enhanced by a red wine
Of an unknown vintage
In the living room
We shed our rain coats
She sits on the couch
With a dark wooden comb
She untangles her hair
In even strokes she
Combs the rain into her soul

Rain II

A crow
Sits petulantly
On the balcony rail
Watching the rains swirling dance
With bright black eyes that have seen
All those things the crows see that we do not
An eternity washed in rain

Falling

I am falling like a hard rain
Like a hard rain in the night

I am falling like a distant star
Like a distant star in the night

I am falling like a firefly
Like a firefly in the night

I am falling like a hard rain
Like a hard rain in the night

Rain

This morning I woke to driving rain.

Yester-Hour

It is night, and cold
The streets are painted black
With the freshness of rain
Reflecting the curtained lights
Of a thousand extraordinary lives
Warm within his red anorak
Miriam's Little Fox weaves within
The ripples of fragmentary conversations
Carelessly unleashed to ramble
Amid the zephyr eddies of the
Storm children of yester-hour

Sent from my iPhone

The First Storm of the Season

In the last several days as I drove into work in the small hours of the morning I have meandered my way through a heavy fog, laying still across the city.

This morning the air was heavy with the scent of rain and the clouds were low and full. There was a bit of that cold wet chill.

Can you close your eyes and smell the rain in your imagination? That is the world that surrounds me now. Still. Hushed. Sprinkling.

Each moment is laden with the promise of rain.

Pure. Simple. Beautiful.

Thursday's Tale

All in all today was a good day. Work settled out and I wrapped a few things up and then got back to my regular tasks.

My mother is doing much better today though she is still in the hospital with pancreatitis, most likely caused by the fall. Each day is taken one day at a time.

Dinner was Swedish pancakes.

Tonight's plan is rest, relax, maybe do a little writing, and sleep.

We have the first real winter rainstorm sliding in over us - it started sprinkling tonight and we are supposed to get rain all through the weekend, so most likely my plan will be to keep it close to home, do a lot of reading, watch a few movies, do some writing and just chill.