30 September 2007

God bless the man
on the crowded bus
who let the four-year-old girl
in patent leather shoes
curl up against his vest-
his gold-link watch chain in her hand-
and sleep in the sanctuary of his arm.

29 September 2007

from the San Francisco boarding house:







28 September 2007

To be a canvas fish
Caught in the beak
Of an Audubon crane
Never to swim
Never to be swallowed

27 September 2007

According to an article today by Miwa Suzuki, researchers in Japan have developed the transparent frog. Advantages to this see-through thin-skinned amphibian include:

Fewer needs for classroom dissections; students can see the working organs within the living frog.

Medical researchers may be able to observe effects of their interventions as they occur-and follow any subsequent events. For example, no need to interrupt the frog’s life to follow cancers, or the ongoing effects of toxins.

Masayuki Sumida, the main researcher, stated they used artificial insemination to combine recessive genes to achieve this frog variation.

In Texas, we used to watch a pair of pink geckos who would park on the screen of the kitchen window at night and wait for bugs to be attracted to the light. Their fingers and toes were splayed in that fingery way geckos have; they effortlessly adhered to the window. The geckos’ skin was quite pale—perhaps not as much as that of the new frogs-but what looked like liver, kidneys and heart were visible through their abdomens pressed against the screen in the kitchen light.

26 September 2007


I take the last swallow of a glass of merlot, and notice a small maroon bump on the inside of the glass. Looks like an insect—but surely it's just a bit of cork. I look more closely, see a small, compact mass with a couple of bent legs. Ew. A dead fruit fly. Drowned in wine—perhaps not such a bad way to go.

The waiter shows up to take up payment for the meal, and I bring his attention to the fly in a friendly way. It's then I see the two tiny legs waving.

I roll up the corner of a paper napkin, and scoot him up out of the glass, for otherwise, his demise is sure to be ugly in the hot water of a dishwasher. Still, it's a delicate procedure, and it seems his wings and limbs are becoming more incapacitated by my rescue efforts.

We continue to make conversation at the table. Meanwhile, every now and again, I check on the progress of the purple fly. First sign of hope, the two hind legs rubbing together. Later, one wing coming unglued from the body—it's been crumpled but perhaps undamaged. Then the forelegs washing the face. Time passes, and now he's on the edge of the napkin, like a tiny plane on a tiny ledge, preparing for takeoff. By now, I think this guy deserves a name. I mean, soaked in merlot, all of his parts stuck together, he's pushing not just for survival, but for flight. For some reason, the name Ernie pops into my head just as, across the table, the name Lucky is proposed.

Ernest Luck.

It's time to go, and I plan to carry Ernie out with me but just as we're to rise, I look down at the napkin and, nothing but a purple stain to be found. Ernie has flown. He has other plans in mind.
This time, to follow the intelligent and nicest person in the room would have led to more suffering. It was the abrasive person who told the truth. It was the abrasive person who showed the way.

Still, it’s good to hear discussion, to know different perspectives have been aired and considered by all those at the table. It's good to know we all sat with the enigma of finding an ethical path…

25 September 2007

Moon is full,
yet dark night
follows long long day.
My mirror is empty.

24 September 2007











I don’t know why a reptile falling on my head would give me a sense of optimism, but it did. I mean really, how many people can say that happened to them today?

On the north side of the yard along the fence lined by trees, I felt something fall in my hair. I thought it was a stick, but as I brushed it off, it felt odd and it felt odd because it was alive. A black snake or lizard, I couldn’t tell for sure, it burrowed quickly under leaves.

Mosquitos continue to love me—I’m scratching a bite as I type single-handed.

I met my first grand-nephew yesterday, just turned 7 weeks old. He likes gazing at ceiling fans and lampshades. I woke up thinking about him—I guess he made an impression on me.

The first bloom of a purple double-trumpet datura with a long story behind it opened yesterday.

And yesterday, I think it was a barred owl hooting at dawn.

The sun rose today in a nacreous silver sky, and set in a sky that had great depth, as though one was looking across a burning sea.

There’s either a barking gecko or a chirping frog outside my window right now—the local newspaper naturalist has written of both of late, leaning more now toward the frog theory.

Pecans are falling everywhere. I found the first one of the season, oddly, under an oak. I suspect a squirrel got distracted.

I have to post this bad photo. Does anyone know what these are? Close up, each dot looks like a tiny white egg or larva suspended atop a hair attached to the window.

The nephew’s going to have lots of stuff to investigate once he finds his legs…

23 September 2007




















It's the equinox...

22 September 2007





She hands two-dollar bills to strangers, to people she admires, to people who could use a boost. She has sent five at a time to my mother to distribute. She instructed my mother to give me one when she heard I was driving every which way this summer to visit sons, relatives, friends and to do a Shintaido eval. ‘Tell her not to spend it but to keep it in her purse at all times.’

A very tiny woman with fine tufts of red hair, she graduated with my mother from high school in New Orleans somewhere around 1940. They played in band together. She calls nearly every day, and as my mother has grown less accessible, her friend now talks to me on the phone. She talks of her church in Ohio. But she remembers her days in New Orleans. She remembers going to the Fishermen’s Mass at 2:30 in the morning. She says she doesn’t remember any fishermen, but instead women in ball gowns stopping in after the party was over. In a time where women covered their heads with a veil or hat, these would pin a Kleenex to their hair. She remembers the priest deliberately turning around and facing the church doors to intimidate people from leaving Mass early.

She says she has sent five more two-dollar bills. ‘Maybe your mother will want to give one to her doctor who’s so nice, or to some of the nurses.’

My mother-in-law used to crochet scrubbies, her hands always busy with tulle of yellow, turquoise, red, blue. She distributed scrubbies in much the same way my mother’s friend hands out two-dollar bills. She gave them to the boys ‘to clean your bicycle tires.’ She’d mail them to Texas and tell me to give some to my neighbors, to my mother, to my aunt. A couple years before she died, she gave me a handful in a plastic newspaper sleeve and told me to hide them somewhere where I could come across them at some future date.

I discovered some today in a drawer in my mother’s kitchen.

21 September 2007

I deliberated at some length yesterday about interfering with a spider focused on building a web stretched low across the driveway. Within hours her labor would be for naught when the first car drove through. Her life likely also would be for naught. Should I break the shining support threads of her web, or mind my own business?

Little spiders were in the mushrooms and grasses with webs like tufts of silver hair from a brush. Orb-weavers to be found higher in the trees. There have been more spiders spinning webs this week than I’ve seen all year. The light at rising sun does not illuminate them all at once. The webs fade visible-invisible depending on where the sun is filtering through the branches of the oaks. A trinity of webs was spectacularly beautiful: one perfect, one neatly repaired, and one a deranged mess. The webs fanned out, pale silk banners, from branch to branch.

Unfortunately, I busted through many webs this week—not intentionally—but probably because there were more of them to run into. Also, I can’t see 75 percent of them at any given time until it’s too late. Strands of web dangle from my elbows and earlobes. They cling to my neck in reproach. (Though in breaking through one web, I did catch on my chest an interesting flying insect that had been trapped for Arachne's plate-lunch special. It had to be rescued again later from a bathtub of hot water. It survived both ordeals.)

Today, most of the webs were dangling or gone. Maybe blue jays flew through some. The silk-depleted spinners must have had little energy for repair.

So, back to the driveway spider. Of course I broke her web. My one deliberate destruction. I felt bad. Her taut main line hanging loose and tension-less. She was likely one unhappy cowgirl before getting going again. Better pissed off, though, than dead.

20 September 2007

In Jena, a kid asked the principal if it was okay if he went under the tree.

This could have been an entry point for the school's self-examination about polarization. Instead, kids were threatened by nooses. Another kid was beaten. Other kids charged with murder. The school building was burned. The tree was cut down.

I want to know the kid who noted the dividing line and quietly walked under the tree.

19 September 2007






Perhaps the most profound lesson I absorbed from my first Shintaido teacher two years ago was to run toward. I had always run away…

18 September 2007

It’s an honor to prepare the dojo—or practice space—before a Shintaido class. Your feet traverse every square inch of a small world we agree to use with sincerity in hope of becoming more aware both within and outside the class.

Your mind is given time to let go of family, work, car, illness concerns. Your body focuses on grass and sticks, or litter or dust, or folding chairs that are in the way. Pushing a dust mop up and down the length of the floor becomes a meditative ritual. The dog dung part is unpleasant, but the falling leaves, the shining gym floor can be satisfying. You are given time to become part of what is here and now. You are rendering a service, a clean and safe space, to those with whom you learn.

Sometimes, two or more people work together, sliding rolled damp towels across the floor, an opportunity to experience synchrony before class even begins.

As you empty the physical space before class, so you empty your inner space as well, and become more receptive to who and what are around you.

16 September 2007

Good news.

Researchers at Tokyo University have come up with ways to breed endangered fish using more plentiful species to generate sperm and eggs of the endangered species.

They implant sperm-growing cells of endangered fish into the newly hatched sterile common fish. The fish grow to produce sperm--and sometimes eggs--of the endangered species which then can be used successfully for breeding.

'In Japan, Yoshizaki is focused on bluefin tuna, noting that standard "marine ranching" techniques are difficult for tuna that can reach man-size.

He has begun experiments into how to produce baby tuna from mackerel, which are nearly a thousand times smaller than adult tuna. If it works, "we can save space, cost and labor," he predicted in an e-mail interview.'


This could have enormous ramifications for boosting the depleted numbers of fish that humans eat as well as protecting some of the many unique species that contribute to the complex diversity of the oceans and rivers.


See AP article by Lauran Neergard
09-13-07
"Salmon Spawn Baby Trout in Experiment"
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070913/ap_on_sc/trout_from_salmon&printer=1;_ylt=Ao32gPkuaHjmbijRU7p4VKpxieAA

15 September 2007

You walk away
for just a spell
You feel the suffering
of those you love
You don’t forget
the frightened face
of illness of pain
you can’t fix...
The nurse calls
Where were you?
We need you
a leaf rocked slowly
to the ground
You walked away
For just a spell

14 September 2007

The man was sitting alone in the kind of place where no one sits alone, noisy on Fridays because over half the community is Catholic and on Fridays you eat seafood, and this was Nimbeaux’s, a Cajun seafood restaurant and it’s always slow and packed on Fridays. His silence impressed me which is rather ridiculous since, sitting alone, most men would be silent. But his stillness, the absence of fidgeting or distraction had impact in a place filled with human noise and motion. He stared ahead with a kind of forlorn intelligence. I wanted to hear his forlorn story.

His profile was neither regular nor brutish, but had gravity. His skin not smooth nor gristled. His jaw not soft nor hardened. I then saw with my one eye that was not blocked by a lunch companion his one eye gazing back, and I slowly looked away.

I wanted to know him. He was casually dressed in well-worn clothes, but what convinced me that I wanted to know him were his shoes. The shining leather dressy newness incongruous to his jeans intrigued me. Not the shoes but the incongruity. I think now it was that his shoes suggested he has more than one life, or that perhaps he is a traveler who has not brought a spare pair to go with his casual clothes, or maybe he is someone gone undercover.

He watched/didn’t watch me as I rose to leave. I watched/didn’t watch him until the very last chance as I was walking out with my gang of six. I looked at him directly with two eyes to see him looking at me.

For that part of a moment it's possible I did know him.

13 September 2007





fork offers peaches
to trembling lips
rain falls
tender and forgiving

12 September 2007

I apologize. This blog is not very honest.

I have this sort of interior goal, that what I write, even if at times dark, should be at core optimistic, uplifting. That someone who follows this blog could come to read and reasonably expect to leave feeling: Hm. Maybe there's hope.

Oh, I'd like to be like that, and for that to be my truth.

But I was just skimming bits of a novel whose first draft I wrote--in broken choppy chapters--in 2003. I thought I might inspire myself to polish it, to finish it. I thought I might find a clip to throw in here tonight, because I'm too freaking tired to write.

Instead I found fire and life and stuff so honest I felt fear at the thought of quoting it in here.

And now I wonder, what is my truth?

Actually, nativearthling is honest, and so is the novel. It's just, there I've gone again, splitting. How challenging to be the ugly beautiful beasts we are.

What's kept me drawn to Shintaido this year is that every now and again in the course of physical practice, I don't feel guilty, I don't feel so holy. I feel whole.

11 September 2007

Of course if your data’s wrong or warped, the answer won’t be right no matter how logical the process.

And say when you were young, a cake was baking in the oven, the aroma of vanilla permeating the room. And then a tornado blew in, wreaking noisy hellish havoc in your yard and neighborhood.

Perhaps every time in the future when you smell vanilla-especially when you’re not aware of it-your stomach might clench.

And your intuitions might turn pretty negative on the brightest of days because your body has decided it’s very logical to get worried when vanilla is in the air. So-you might make an intuitive error in judgment here and there on vanilla days.

Still, mistakes are doorways to education and to expanding mutual understanding with others. And sometimes mistakes are doorways to where you’re supposed to go next, to experiences you’d never even know about if you were always right.

Which is a good thing. I’ve made more mistakes in the last two weeks than in the previous two years.

I swear, I used to be right all the time…

10 September 2007

Intuition may be a form of leap-frog, where, like in chess or in soccer, we have played the game so often that we no longer need to calculate every little step.

Another aspect of intuition may be the logical processing of data of which we are unaware. For example, our noses pick up familiar scents while we’re chatting with a friend. The subtle smells, and small visual and auditory cues, are below our conscious radar. Our brains, though, receive the information and fuse that data with memory and with the data we are paying attention to—such as the content of the conversation. The brain formulates strong intuitive hunches that are merely logical theories patched together with less than visible puzzle pieces. Like with magic tricks, there’s a logical explanation.

So, intuition (perhaps a subset of logical thought) is worthy of the respect of logicians. The process steps and data, and thus the logic, may just not be visible.

09 September 2007

Linear thought will get you there, but synchronicity or a good metaphor will take you right to the core...

Then there's the dream, the poem, the painting, the intuition, a soulful guitar solo...

You can walk, or Beam me up, Scotty!

I understand the great mathmaticians make the intuitive leap first in a flare of inspiration, then put in the hours or years of grunt work to prove logically what they know to be fact.

Skate back and forth and weave earth and sky together. Though elegant, it can be plodding, so limiting, to rely solely on logic; so disorienting to live above the clouds, to lose contact with earth.

07 September 2007




There's promise in every phase, richness in every challenge, beauty in decay...



05 September 2007

Finally without recourse
we bring our illness to room 500
first door on the right
the ice chips and red jello
canned peaches and needles taped to bruised arms,
tubes and mechanical beds,
and the little squares (metallic paper envelopes
that held antiseptic wipes)
float to the floor
confetti and IV drip cocktails
testify to the irony of body.
we breathe in
antibacterials and meatball stew on rice.
shall we dance and breathe out?

03 September 2007











1 August 2007
Utah?
Cedar Mountains

01 September 2007



'to everything
there is a season
and a time to every purpose under heaven...'

Ecclesiastes