I was born less than 2 blocks from a cathedral called St. John’s. I’m living less than 2 blocks from a cathedral called St. John’s. A two-steepled building of white. The bells ring modestly to mark the hour. There’s a special little 2-note repetition to announce noon and 6 PM.

People recommend art museums and house tours, cafés and theaters. San Francisco has so much to offer.

I don’t know why that doesn’t draw me. There’s a part of me that’s focused on shintaido--or what I imagine to be shintaido--and nothing else. Then, there’s the ocean, the local birds, the unusual plants--so many amazing and fragrant fall flowers--huge hanging trumpets, honeysuckle, roses, cacti, bougainvillea, these lovely purple blooms that shed their petals, creating confetti along the streets. There are the houses--limitless shades of green, yellow, pink, orange, purple, blue. San Francisco must boast the highest paint consumption per capita in the country.

And people, how they dress, talk, behave. Such high density traffic, yet I have seen no wrecks, and drivers are more patient than in any other city I’ve been in. They insist that the pedestrian crosses first.

I pick up strong ethnic awareness and biases combined with tolerant behavior. In general, people are considerate and noisily not color/gender/whateverblind. (I know that’s rather confusing--and it is rather confusing.)

With the cool weather has come outbursts of passion: boy carries girl over his shoulder down the sidewalk. Street embraces. Rendezvous.

Halloween is exuberantly embraced. Five skeletons around a table playing poker. Spider webs 2-stories high. As I walked here, a skull-masked head poked out of a shabby bus window and told me—ooohahahaha! And I laughed.

I do have collapses of resolve. At least twice a day where I totally don’t get what I’m doing. Where I'm ready to abandon my oddly focused quest.

I hang in there--no easy alternatives--and on some level I trust this process. So, I’m afraid. You can be afraid in your room, worried about anything, watching Everybody Loves Raymond! reruns.

When I was a girl, reading about boarding houses in books like Little Women and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter made me curious. What would it be like to live in a house with people thrown together in part by chance, in part by circumstance? Had romantic appeal.

Last week I woke up and realized, hey! Got a room of my own in a nice big house with people of different histories, personalities and interests renting rooms for varied periods of time.

I’m living in a boarding house.

I have heard the music of Rufus Wainwright, tasted some sort of soy-based amino-acid stuff, tasted a good 2 dollar wine and some I guess pricey vodka, been invited to a Latino film festival that starts here in November, seen a short homemade art video, learned of someone’s work history in Ireland. And we’re a sensitive group--seem aware of boundaries, needs for space, needs for conversation, needs for keeping clean the common areas, needs for honoring the wishes of Ms. Landlady. (She’d laugh at that title.) Nobody knows you at first--share as much or as little of yourself as you like. You wander downstairs and someone’s carving a pumpkin, someone else is washing a paint roller while talking to the cat.

Maybe it’s a honeymoon period, maybe not. And there are awkward dances. But people are social animals. At least for the short run, it beats living alone. And hey, it’s an unforeseen arrival of something wished for. Something imperfect and beautiful.

a woman, her bo stretched upward

a hawk, circling our class, circling within the circle formed by tops of tall trees

4 men, bowing in appreciation of grass and sun and space

a great blue heron, reminder of ancient roots

a mother and daughter, mother and daughter, mother and daughter

on the phone, mother and son, mother and son

creating a vacuum for your partner/opponent...now there’s a thought to hold

two women, bowing in appreciation

quiet eyes meet mine

‘all you have to do is show up’

from Nervous Dog Coffee

i am where i belong

What does throwing punches have to do with growing peace?

That question occupies my brain after I needed it explained to me that, hello! this IS a karate class. (You are expected to attack, and you are expected to defend yourself.) I was seeing it as something else altogether.

I tried to do two classes yesterday. The karate in the morning, then a bo class. I walked to the second. There I was on a bald mountain in Bernal Heights. Never found the class, but so many hawks. A red-tailed hawk lighted upon a utility pole, eye-level to me mid-trail. Robed in rich brown feathers. A predator’s head but shy, aware I was there, neither inviting me closer, nor insisting I leave. I’d never seen one in the wild so close before.

And then came the lab to the first class. As I walked back home, a young man at a bus stop kicked me in the leg. Out of the blue in front of God and everybody.

It was as though he were saying (like the teacher earlier): Wake up, Linda!

That’s why I am here.

This blog entry is flying through the airwaves from Nervous Dog Coffee on Mission Avenue due to numerous human and mechanical difficulties over the past week. Hey, but it's a gorgeous day.

What I have learned includes the following:
San Francisco is such a walkable city. Sidewalks and pedestrian bridges everywhere. A half hour's walk connected the points of the city for me more directly than a week's driving had. From Chenery, accidentally found Monterrey near where I first lved, and then Glen Canyon Park rec area, where the Wednesday morning bo class takes place.

Late yesterday afternoon, I walked to Glen Park again. High, high in the eucalyptus trees,two great horned owls, a male and a female, call and response, call and response.

Echoing an entry I'd just transposed from over a year ago, two eastern screech owls, a male and a female, call and response.

Sometimes I've been lost since I've been here. But Tuesday late in the night, I turned too early onto Mission and I went a couple of blocks down the narrow dark mystery street I was on. I u-turned, and as I u-turned, saw I was on Mission after all. U-turned again, and all was good.

Sometimes we think we're lost, when we're not lost at all.

I dreamt
your anger turned me into ash
and the ash turned into ink...

I watched the leaves
red green gold brown
let go
of their attachments

I tasted the wine
of a fall blackberry

This is what I’ve experienced in 2 classes using the bo, or stick.

The stick is an extension of one’s body, not only in the sense that your range of contact is increased, that you can ‘do’ or act through the stick, but also that you can ‘sense’ or receive through the stick. You can feel the ferocity, the complexity of your partner’s emotion. There is one beginner exercise where the two partners stand face-to-face, bos crossed. They maintain a contact point between the sticks as they slowly bring them from side to side. There is a communion of light at the contact point between the sticks.

I am no warrior. But my experience in these classes makes me wonder about the intimacy between combattants.

I am also learning the formality, the etiquette of combat if observed and respected might paradoxically be a door to ending combat, to healing injury. The respect for the form leads to respect for your partner/opponent.

So. I think maybe Portero will take me to a gas station and a place to change oil--I turn right and instead, the street becomes residential. So I try to turn around, but end up on Dewey. Still, that should circle me back to Portero. But a sign says Sunset District and I’m on Terazol. (I think I’m mangling the street names as well as where the streets go.)

My car has a mind of his own--all roads lead to the ocean. I swore I wouldn’t go today. But instead, here we are again in the simple grid of the Sunset District. I find gas. I get him an oil change and, as long as we are there, to the ocean we must go.

Maybe the car is looking out for me too--for surely every time I go, I come back refueled.

I meet a woman in flowered blouse and navy blue apron who is willing to teach me a little Cantonese. Nay-ho-ma. How ya doin?

I grab a bite at Bashful Bull.

Then on foot again across The Great Highway and:

here I am
in the sand
facing sun
white flame
racing across the furling coil of a wave
bees of light
applauding on and on into horizon
framed
by the serene gray-blue.
my words fail me
but the ocean does not.

(It is so beautiful)

It might make more sense to park near the beach and just walk up and down the water’s edge. Instead I park say on 26th, and walk 22 blocks to the ocean and 22 back. Why is that more appealing?

I don’t know. I do love the sight of the water beckoning in the distance. I like the surprise when I cross the street that is called The Great Highway, the surprise of the dunes covered with plants of varying shape and color, with their varied birds and butterflies. The surprise of the change in the air, from car and refuse smells to fresh salt-sea air. And there’s the surprise as I crest the dunes: The Ocean. Ta da!

Maybe one is more open after walking a distance, more receptive than if you go from sitting in a car immediately to the beach.

Maybe not. Maybe I just like people-watching as I walk through the Sunset District. The unfamiliar plants in unfamiliar gardens. I don’t know.

Yesterday at the ocean, a man was flying his remote-control bi-plane--wingspan maybe 3 feet, red with yellow propeller, and little white wheels like you might find on a play baby stroller. It was a seductive thing, its low-pitched purr, how it gently rode the currents of air back and forth back and forth.

The sun sparkled in a pool of light on the surface of the water. I took that in me, and it returned to me hours later, somehow a reminder that I have worth.

Yesterday I learned that in Shintaido, money is never offered to the teacher. The ten-dollar fee goes through an assistant. A teacher should never have to think about money but is focused on what he or she is teaching, on what he or she is seeing.

So, I have been gauche in my ignorance, unintentionally rude, handing over my check (out of cash).

When I started on this trip, I divided my cash. One envelope in my purse where it could be easily accessed, the other stored separately in case I lost my wallet.

The first envelope lasted me the whole trip. The only problem was that once I arrived, I still had not found a place to live, where I could unload the car. Days passed. I was out of cash. And, I had no idea where I had stored the other envelope.

I was trying to write the other morning about porn I’d looked at before I falling asleep. Ant porn. Reading a book called Journey to the Ants.

As these things tend to go, the pictures were grainy. An orgy of ant legs and feelers. No telling what was going on.

I was interrupted, and never finished writing about ant sex and people sex. (Sorry!) But that night, I went on with my reading: “After the nuptial flight the newly inseminated harvester-ant queen breaks off her [own] wings by pushing them forward with her middle legs and hindlegs.”

Wow. One must read of these things in small doses.

I put the book down.

Then, last night I came upon this:

“After reaching the adult stage the young queen undergoes yet another radical transformation. She changes from a highly versatile, self-reliant adult into a helpless colonial mendicant. While a young virgin still resident in her birth nest, she is ready with little notice to fly away on her own and mate with the winged males. She alights and sheds her wings, builds a nest single-handedly, and raises the first brood of workers unaided over a period of weeks or months. Then abruptly...the roles are switched and the workers begin to take care of her, reducing her to little more than an egg-laying machine, a demanding beggar who trails behind the workers as they move from one gallery or nest to another. Thus diminished psychologically, she cannot be a ruler in any overt sense. She issues no commands, but she does remain the prime focus of attention of the workers, whose lives are consecrated to her welfare and reproductive activity.”

I found my second envelope last night. Finally. Right there in a zippered compartment of my toiletries bag. Where it was all along.

The money etiquette in Shintaido is certainly more important than the money. As may be true in most exchanges.

Tomorrow will be dedicated to the care and maintenance of my little car. I promised him a luxuriant bath in San Francisco as I pushed us across the west. He probably could also use an oil change. We take good care of each other.

And yes, this is all related somehow. And the quotes are from the writings of Bert Holldobler and Edward O. Wilson.

I was stopped at a red light an Santa Clara, and there he was, to my left, a man, sitting behind the steering wheel of a small sedan, perfectly still, parked on the side of the road. It was a long light, but I didn’t mind because I wanted to stare at him. Because he was doing exactly what I had done earlier in the day. Pull off the road and sit.

Try this when you are stressed: Take a vacation in the middle of your transit. Find an easy legal spot, pull in, turn off the engine, open the windows and hang. Look at how the light touches the branch of a tree. Let your eyes close. Be aware of light within.

Finally, he opened his eyes. His gaze wandered to mine and held without expression in the same way I was looking at him. Mirror image. A quietness. And the light changed to green.

I awoke to see the sun shining on a watercolor above me: a red-winged blackbird within a timepiece. Part of the caption below read: ‘...Red-winged blackbirds sat on the hollyhocks, marked their territory by the tallest stems. At the hint of a breeze, birds and stems moved together, forward and back, in harmony with what they knew.’ The artist’s name is Tanya Joyce.

It's a place of birds and flowers, butterflies and bees. A safe and nurturing space for migrating goldfinches. My friend has a beautiful garden.

I steeled my heart against missing my kids. They're doing fine.
I steeled my heart against missing our house, our cat.
I steeled my heart against missing those I love in Texas.
I steeled my heart against missing my life as a mom.
I steeled my heart against missing Sundown Ridge, the big quiet sky spangled with stars.

Then, here came the cocky little nuttall's woodpecker, so similar and yet different from the ladderbacked. My eyes betrayed me: they started to weep. I miss the little ladderbacked in our yard in Texas, with his red cap and confidence.

The callouses on the heart serve a purpose, but it's good to know there's something still pulsing under there. Available for quieter times.

Of course, I miss it all.

I walked to the ocean today, and it made all the difference.

The old microwave took about three minutes to bring a cup of water to boil.

I heated water--was it to make coffee for my sister? We were distracted, and I didn't take the cup out right away. So, when I returned to the microwave, I figured it had cooled some. I'd bring it back to boiling. Without opening the door to check, I turned the switch and watched through the tinted window. 15 seconds passed, 30. The surface of the water was smooth as glass. A minute. A minute and a half. Two minutes. I knew something was unusual. The water had not cooled that long, and here it was nearly 3 more minutes, and it was not boiling, not even rippling.

I turned it off. I opened the door and as I reached in, I changed my mind and stepped back.

The water erupted into boiling fury, shooting and spitting everywhere. Only half the water remained in the cup.

Smooth surfaces can be deceptive.

I was driving in Utah, west of Salt Lake, when I came upon an unexpected find in the middle of nowhere. I pulled off the road at a rest stop. For miles outward, no growth, no structures, just smooth white surface. The Bonnevile Salt Flats. They stretch out to the base of hills in the distance. I walked out, felt the cool breeze flowing in the sunshine, touched my finger to the hard crystalline ground then tasted. I looked out and experienced the utter hugeness. If I were more adventurous I would have waited the six hours or so for the moon to rise high, to see what moonlight looks like reflected from an immense natural mirror.

I felt changed, larger, for having stopped there.

Arrived so easily into California yesterday afternoon, sun--or moon--shining the whole way.

My last night on the road was in Winnemucca, Nevada. The chain motels struck a gloomy vibe, and I tried instead The Santa Fe Inn. The woman at the desk played with my name, and told me stories about her name: Imelda. The room was very clean, the carpet was brown sculpted vintage 80s. When I arose in this travelers' strip kind of place, I walked across the parking lot toward the office for coffee. The past-full moon was still up in the west. To the east across the street, I could see the first hint of dawn. A flag drooping in the dark, and rows of familiar-shaped stones against the silhouette of mountains: a cemetary. This sparked cheer.

Perhaps because it was the last morning of my trip--or perhaps because of the unexpected serenity--this was my favorite overnight stop.

It is a glorious day today in Fort Collins, Colorado. The trees all gold in the sunshine. I'm at my son's computer, soon to head on west, but for now, I think I'm just going to step outside.

I saw migrating monarchs through Oklahoma--and a park called Toad Suck.

I saw tall white pillars with Grecian statues in the middle of the plains of Kansas, tumbleweed swept across the highway, roadside grids of rotted wood signs--unintended art.

Dark cows against pale fields, all grazing but for one on top of the hill, gazing outward. And hawks perched low on fences where no trees were near.

Dogs barking in the night.
I am weary before I get back on the road today.
I know how to walk: one foot before the other.
To drive, it just takes gas, and a foot on the pedal...
I opened a book last night--an autobiography by Sidney Poitier. The man has such a rich perspective. I was surprised to land on a reference to the Harry Harlow experiments (he thought the subjects were chimps too) and his take: that we must be careful modern life does not become the wire monkey. That we do not turn our bountiful planet into a wire mother.

He also made a statement that he feels balanced and at peace when he trusts his quiet inner voice, but rarely so when he lets himself get out of touch.

Ah--he put it so much better...it's time for me to go!

Wow. Four hours into the drive yesterday, and I shifted lightly into wonder. The space between the old and the new.

I only have one key, and that is to my car.

Wow.

Today’s the day.

The boys left, one by one, this summer. The ruby-throated hummer left a few days ago. The monarchs should be floating over any time now--if they haven’t already started. I guess it’s my turn.

I wonder if they experience qualms before the restlessness for flight takes over.

I know for a fact they don’t carry as much baggage! Amazing how much even a Civic can hold.

I don’t know what the journey will be like. I don’t know exactly where I am going. But there’s enough of that red-tailed hawk in me to trust my instinct.

The goodbyes have been lengthy. It’s time to get on the road.