Still Amazed

Blessing

  

The grasshopper appeared on our window screen several days ago. I admired its lovely greenness, and marveled at how closely its body resembled a delicate leaf. More than once I left and returned to check on it, and it was still there. It lingered on the screen all day, a silent and unmoving visitor. I began to feel honored that it had chosen to call on us, and pleased that it felt so safe and comfortable lodged there on the outside of our kitchen window. I read someplace that in Chinese culture a grasshopper is a sign of good luck, and in Native American lore it is a harbinger of joyful news, but the feeling it conveyed to me was one of peace. I found an online article on animal totems and symbolism that states (with conviction) that the grasshopper can serve as a grounding totem that teaches stability and patience, but also, for obvious reasons, represents a leap of faith. We are advised, further, to call upon the grasshopper when we need creative inspiration or a sense of adventure in our lives. All this may be true, and for me it would certainly be helpful, but there is only one thing I knew intuitively and for sure: we had been blessed. Finally, when dusk and dark were drawing near, we checked the window and the grasshopper was gone. I still feel inexplicably blessed.

 

Little Shrines and Other Finds

 

On Sunday we rode our bikes in blustery winds along the crests and dips of the main ranch road and paused on a bluff by the railroad tracks. There we came upon a grouping of painted stones and a tattered feather placed in memory of someone loved.  

We pedaled past the hole in a rock by the side of the road where for years someone has placed stuffed animals and flowers, a secret altar in a sandstone cupboard whose original meaning we can only guess at -- although I am often tempted to add a flower, and I do have a theory or two.  

At the beach by the pier a handful of treasure hunters with metal detectors were meticulously combing through the post-storm sand in search of coins and jewelry.

There are others who scour the rocky outpourings of streams for artifacts more ancient and elusive: arrowheads, pestles, bowls carved out of stone. I think these objects call out when they choose to be found. (Last time I went looking, I found a friend instead.) But oh, what a rare and wondrous thing it is to come upon something formed long ago by human hands, still filled with the energy of its maker.

Treasures abound. Golden chanterelles await discovery in the mossy earth beneath the oaks. A flawless feather is snagged in the brush. A bit of cobalt blue beach glass will one day wash up on the shore.

But my thought as I pedaled along on Sunday was that we -- people, that is -- are forever leaving traces of ourselves, whether deliberately or otherwise. And at the same time, we are forever looking  -- not just for coins to fill the pocket, but for fragments of stories almost lost to time, or maybe for some comforting proxy to fill in pieces of ourselves lost and missing.

 On the subject of shrines and holy places of the local variety, my favorite is a certain cave not far from here, and I went there yesterday, solo. I walked up a steep hill through thick brush and slippery mud, and then I crossed a creek bed and climbed up on the rocks. Of course I was thinking the whole time about poison oak, ticks, and mountain lions, and more than once I scared myself with the imagined sound or shadow of a stalking beast.  But I felt quite convinced that I needed to go there, and at some point in the journey you might as well keep going.

The place -- it was waiting like a promise fulfilled. It’s a sanctuary, a room with a view, God’s lodge. There is a small table of raised sandstone where other pilgrims have left shells and pebbles of transparent quartz, but the only other evidence I saw of recent visitation were the prints of paws and hoofs. The rock around the entrance to the cave was wet with the week’s rain, and clear liquid beads slowly formed and dropped like tears.

I added my own prayers, thanks, hopes, and imaginings to those of all the centuries still ringing from these walls. The hills and sky and sea beyond were framed and held still, and I felt a sense of shelter and belonging here, as I always do.

Found. At least for the moment. 

Empty Tanks But Unabated Thanks

 The sun has come out and of course it alters everyone’s perspective. The world is sparkling, freshly washed; it speaks of new beginnings. Now if we could only figure out why we have no water. Ironic, isn’t it?  Days of downpour, and I turned the tap on Friday morning and nothing came out. Fortunately, Monte was able to drive over the infamous Gaviota Creek crossing later that same morning and return to the ranch. (He had been out working in the real world during the storms. Or is this the real world? I forget.)

 But anyway, as often happens, something we had come to expect and rely upon simply failed to materialize. We trekked up the hill to the tanks through knee-high weeds and mud pot-holed with cow tracks, some of them pooled with manure soup. Monte climbed a ladder to the top of each tank, lifted the lid, and looked inside. Empty. 

Then we mucked around for an hour or two looking for evidence of a significant burst, or even a leak, not just by the tanks but all along the water lines. It’s tough when the ground is already so wet, but we didn’t see anything unusual. Now our quest is to determine how it came to pass that both storage tanks, filled with recently and regularly pumped water from a very adequate well, are drained.

The inconvenience is character building, I suppose. It’s happened before, giving rise to new awareness of all we take for granted and a bit of thought to the staggering deprivations others routinely endure. Which is not to deny that it’s a pain in the butt, and whatever is going on, it will no doubt be expensive to repair. Still, the world has become small enough for me to maintain perspective on this little problem of ours. Take Haiti, for example. Even petty kvetching seems inappropriate right now.

And you will have to come back another time for the conclusion of this particular tale. Closer inspection is currently taking place and various experiments are in progress involving pumping and turning different valves on or off. Meanwhile, we have removed the canvas window coverings I mentioned in my previous post, and the house feels light and airy again; the sky is sigh-blue. When I step outside, I am greeted by the rain-revived scents of rosemary, lavender, sage, and chaparral, and those bare root roses are already sprouting glossy little red-leafed shoots. 

The Sideways Rain Has Come

 

Now we are getting some serious weather, after days of warnings and dramatic predictions. Batten down the hedges! Here we go! El Niño! On Saturday we clomped around in our rubber boots, clearing some broken pipe from the creek below the house, then checking gutters and windows, making sure drain channels are unclogged. Yesterday Monte put up the big canvas coverings he mounts over certain windows when we are likely to get strong southerly winds from the sea -- that’s when the rain comes straight at us, horizontal, as it is right now. The fun part of the preparations is going into town, preferably Trader Joe's, to make sure our pantry is stocked. You never know when you might crave some salt and vinegar potato chips, cocoa with mini-marshmallows, or Italian wedding soup. One must anticipate all whims and be prepared.

I heard the rain beginning in the night, just a sporadic drop and drip, here and there, now and then. Gradually, though, there came the steadier drum of it, and then the pounding, and the thrash of wind. The ranch is already transformed. I look through a screened window densely beaded with glassy droplets and tiny meandering streams trickling downward like tears. Beyond, the world is a mirage of green, as green as jungles, and wet, and in motion. The leafy treetops are more than just swaying; they are rocking about, bowing and waving in a frenzied sort of dance.  The sky, or what I can see of it, is a luminous sort of gray, but there is a band of white light in the distance above the ocean, which from here is just a charcoal smudge.

It’s a noisy storm, its howls gusty, raucous, and incessant. Who knows what rotten old oak may be felled today, where the muddy hills will slide, which crossing may collapse? Jeanne and I had talked about going out for one of our exploratory rain walks later today, but at the moment, it seems harsh and forbidding out there.

There’s a standard greeting around here when a storm is coming: Make sure you’re on the right side of the creek! It’s a reference to the notorious Gaviota crossing by the state park (pictured above a few years back), which, given a day or two of unmitigated rain, will flood into a rushing muddy, branchy mess, guaranteed. That’s when you are either in or out, because the only passable connection to the 101 is the railroad trestle, and I tried that once. I knew for sure the trains were not running, but it was terrifying nonetheless. Trestle crossing? Not for me.

In the meantime, I am happy in this house. It’s warm and comfortable and Monte is home, and there are books to read, music playing, and the marvel of this laptop access to the whole wide world beyond. 

Rain Walk

 

Today was our first rain walk of the season. The hard steady rain of yesterday had abated and instead we had what weathermen would call “showers, heavy at times” with windows of sunlight between and concurrently. 

 My very first thought, of course, was that we must go outside and look for rainbows. Jeanne and Pi joined us and we strolled down the muddy road towards the beach. Sometimes the sea was a gash of shimmering silver, the sky shifting tones of gray-white light.  

But then the sun would appear, shining through the droplets of rain, and all the trees were strewn with diamonds and every blade of new grass sparkled, and big white clouds sat squat upon the hilltops.  

Now and then we encountered neighbors and friends for a sundry assortment of roadside conversations about whether the grass will sprout, when the rain would stop, and if the green will stay. We talked about new fences and fat dogs, needing a shale base and competing for Ruffino, painful changes and reassuring cycles. 

Monte and I hadn’t worn our rubber boots, so Jeanne had the important job of stomping out a channel to divert the water that was pooling in one place. Pi, meanwhile, was sniffing out some hidden critter in the grass. His concentration was impressive.

 We were walking towards the sun and towards the sea, but we were bound to see a rainbow; not a one of us doubted that we would. And when a sudden shower swept through with a swoosh and sound like tambourines, we turned to look through its crystal-beaded curtain. And there it was: a gauzy rainbow arched in bright bands that echoed the curve of the hill and seemed to end at our house. 

No pot of gold awaited us back home, but there was good music. And lunch.

Too Much Excitement

We were in a lull between rain storms, and Jeanne and I were walking with her dogs to the mailbox. The air was a bit chilly but conditions were perfect for puddle splashing and post-storm investigation, and the sky had excellent rainbow potential. 

Charlie happened to be driving by and he paused to say hello to us. We were right near the place where the carcass of a dead cow was beginning to draw a lively convention of turkey vultures.

"So have you seen the dead cow?" we asked.

"No, but I'm starting to smell it," he said. "I've seen the leg, though."

"Yeah, it's hard to miss the leg. It's been in several locations up and down the road."

"Lot goin' on around here..."

I guess you could say that's a Ranch conversation.  We do our best to keep up with all the excitement. 

As if that wasn’t enough adventure for the week, I was on the deck enjoying my morning cup of coffee the next day when I noticed a bull chomping at the grass by the orchard. I don’t know how he had gotten onto the parcel, but he seemed to be making the best of it, tramping noisily among the trees beneath dangles of fragrant and unseasonable macadamia blossoms, nibbling at the tender green shoots of various things attempting to grow, and stepping gingerly along a rocky channel to within a few feet of the house, where he stood for a while and returned my gaze. He was a rather large bull with a yellow tag on his ear that said 349, and a pink scar on his flank presumably from a brand not-quite-healed, and he was fully equipped, gender-wise. I felt uneasy.

I called John McCarty, the head of the Cattle Co-Op, to see what he would advise. (I mentioned the dead cow as an aside, but John already knew about that.)  

“I’m gonna have to come over and get the bull outta there,” he said.

“Is he dangerous?” I asked.

“Not at all, unless you make him nervous. Just stay out of his way.”

Quite happy to stay out of his way, I stealthily crept down to the garage to tend to other business. When I looked up, I saw that he had wandered to the cattle guard and was delicately placing a hoof on the first rung, eager to get out to where a bevy of bovine black beauties and their babies had gathered together, mooing anxiously as though calling him. His foot slipped, and he had the agility and presence of mind to step backward from the cattle guard and return to the parcel, but now he’d lost his equanimity and seemed agitated.  

In fact, there appeared to be a great deal of fretful cow communication going on back and forth between parties on either side of the cattle guard, maybe variations on the themes of worry and frustration. Sure, 349 was a big guy, but he suddenly seemed vulnerable and stressed. One might even say nervous. I loitered in the garage and regretted having worn a red fleece jacket, surely not a politically correct color among bulls. I hoped he would not take offense.

Fortunately John arrived with a flatbed truck and two handsome border collies poised as patiently as bookends but yearning for a job. This, however, was not a chasing matter. All that John needed was a shovel and a wire cutter. He found the best place to make an opening in the fence, coaxed 349 to the other side, sealed things up, and was on his way. Cowboys seriously are my heroes, or at least this one is.

Anyway, I dutifully checked the whole fence line to see if a gate was open someplace through which our visitor might have entered, and of course I ended up slogging around in the mud and building up a six-inch platform of clay beneath each shoe and staggering down the hill like Frankenstein trying not to slide. I concluded that the bull had probably come in through the front entrance like a gentleman. Yeah, he’d made it across the cattle guard going in, but lost his nerve when he lost his footing while attempting the slippery exit.  That's my theory anyway. 

So, that's the Ranch for you. I hope you're not swooning from all this excitement, but don't think that was the last of all the big happenings I have to report. Gosh, I haven't even told you yet about the wonders of the low low tide or the way my paper whites and irises have erupted or how those macadamia blossoms fill the air with a fragrance that is almost cloying, almost too intimate, like scented lingerie,  and the irony is they have come too soon and the first cold night may ruin their hopes of progeny. 

And I forgot to talk about last week's crazy moon and the mysterious package someone left for me at the gate that I am not allowed to open until Christmas and it's sitting right in front of me, calling. More important, I neglected to mention that it has been an epic week for clouds. 

Meanwhile, the cow leg has continued its travels along the side of the road, now picked clean but for the hide above the hoof, and a bushy-tailed coyote was seen leaping from the carcass that is already beginning to resemble an open cage of bones. And the cows are still standing around by the creek ruminating, and 349 is looking right this way to the other side of that scary crossing where the grass is always greener and he seems to have some memory but can't quite pull it up.  

 

One More Small Voice

There is a community of the spirit. Join it, and feel the delight of walking in the noisy street and being the noise. Rumi

This is a dispatch from nowhere, really. Here there were no streets to dance on, no shoulders to rub against, and nothing but sky to look up to.  But we knew it was going to happen, and I wanted to be with others when it did. My friend Julie agreed to pick me up along the main road, and the picture on the left shows what I saw from where I stood: just a road sign, the moon, and a sky still streaked with lavender clouds. I waited by the road in a prayerful state of mind, and everything seemed hushed and pending and momentous. We drove along winding roads to the west end of the Ranch, then up San Augustine to the house of our friends. There we gathered in front of a small television set, its picture snowy and erratic, but the slightly outmoded technology somehow imparted a gritty sense of history. I pictured families intently tuned into their radio broadcasts during the Second World War, and I thought about the summer day in 1969 when a tiny television screen in a Long Island living room revealed a man stepping onto the moon. I remembered, too, that the friends with me now had been sitting with me in a local restaurant in March of 2003 while a television above the bar showed Baghdad being bombed live over dinner and wine, and our leaders called that shock and awe.

So now we were watching votes coming in and states turning blue and the best manifestation of a living democracy, and this would be a night of celebration, marking an event so hopeful and affirmative that I still cannot settle down. I am giddy and tearful and grateful and proud.

It has been SO LONG, so very long.

The day before the election, I’d had a telephone conversation with a faraway friend, a person dear to me whom I have known for forty years. I told her that I had been making calls for Obama and I thought he was the right person to lead us in this time of change. I told her I believed our nation would have a renewed sense of itself if he won, a sense of hope and unity that has almost been beaten out of us. 

“I think you’ve really romanticized this,” she said. “He’s a smooth talker.”

I’m always a little baffled when someone can look at the same reality and draw such a totally different conclusion, particularly when it’s someone you thought you knew very well. It also occurred to me how often Obama’s eloquence and exemplary ability to communicate have been mentioned derisively, as though they were flaws. When did we become automatically suspicious of someone on the basis of a facility with words? When did the ability to inspire through speech become an undesirable quality for a leader to possess?  Must truth be inarticulate?

But even more important, I decided at that moment that if indeed I have romanticized the Obama candidacy and what it could mean to our country and even the world then I am proud to join the ranks of romantics who share this beautiful perspective. Because you first need to imagine what could and should be, and imagine it in all its shining possibility, before you take the steps to make it real.

And I have yet to hear anyone say it will be easy.

In the meantime, my head is full and my heart is teeming. Even my inbox suddenly contains poems by Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes, links to songs of celebration, images of gatherings I wish I could have attended, words so moving I may just collect them all and share them here another time. Much has been written about the election already by people smarter and funnier and more insightful than me, but I feel compelled to add my voice. 

A few of the reasons for joy:

First, the election of Barack Obama helps resolve the shameful moral contradiction that was stitched into the very fabric of our Constitution. It is a contradiction that eventually tore us asunder and all through the years has strained our union, rendered hypocrisy a fundamental fact of American life, and impeded dreams and possibilities that might have changed the world. This election begins a real healing. All may sit at the welcome table. Hallelujah.

Yet the exquisite paradox here is that this election was not about the color of the candidate’s skin; President-Elect Obama did not run on race or anger or divisiveness. This election was about competence, judgment, temperament, and issues, and he always showed restraint, reason, and a positive, post-ideological kind of openness in which all were welcome to participate. He simply would not be lured into nastiness. He understood the real things that matter to the American people and he modeled a kind of dignity, calm, and clarity of thought that brings out the best in all of us.

Not the least of our reasons to celebrate, of course, is the fact that the American people have unequivocally repudiated eight debilitating years of the Bush-Cheney administration in the most meaningful way possible. And God, it feels good! (To be sure, Dubya and his cronies will leave quite a few turds in the punch bowl, and they still have 70-odd days to do more damage, but that particular nightmare is nearly over.)

The teacher in me wishes to reiterate, maybe because the words read like music. We have reaffirmed: democracy, community involvement, voter participation, idealism and eloquence over cynicism and name-calling, inclusiveness over anger, hope over fear.  

We have begun to reclaim our good name, to be better versions of ourselves. 

Yes, we heard the word sacrifice and we know it will take time to get out of the mess we are in. We can handle it. Americans are tired of condescension and lies. No need to hide the coffins and distort the news and expand imperial executive powers; we know what's going on and we're all beginning to hurt. We are willing to step up and do the real work that needs to be done. We want our young people...many of whom helped elect Obama…to face a future with hope.

 A yearning has been quenched. Can you feel the optimism, the will, the determination? 

I just read FDR’s 1941 State of the Union address and was struck by these words: Since the beginning of our American history, we have been engaged in change--in a perpetual peaceful revolution--a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions…

Two days ago we saw momentous evidence of that peaceful revolution in progress, and whether quietly or noisily, we will adjust ourselves to the changing conditions and work hard to shape those conditions in ways that will foster opportunity and quality of life for the citizens of our nation. (And our world, seeing as how we are inextricably linked, and seeing as how we will have a president who actually seems to possess a global sensibility -- imagine that?) Only the foolish and fearful can deny the sea change; the rest of us are going to roll up our sleeves and get started. We are officially transformed and we happily admit it. 

 

 

 

It Rained

It rained, and all the forgotten fragrances of orchard, earth and chaparral were suddenly revived. Ripening persimmons blushed in their trees, a stag paused beside the road and stared at me for a good long moment before he ran away, a row of mailboxes stood like silent sentries, one with its mouth wide open. 

It rained, and stocks were falling and boomers everywhere re-imagined their retirement and fingers pointed and anger bloomed. The fruit from a thorny cluster of cactus dropped to the ground, exploding like cherry bombs, each oozing its magenta jam. Coyote sang like Caruso beneath my window and left his berry-beaded scat in the driveway.

It rained, and everything was in the air: monarch butterflies and dragonflies and a boisterous covey of quail and the tiny jeweled hummingbird who loiters at the sage and the great rolling clouds and the high-stepping dreams and the things we were promised and the things that we feared and the things we are hoping for still.

 

The View from Back Here: May Reason Prevail

The other day as I rode my bicycle up the winding dirt road of Coyote Canyon, I found myself directly behind a herd of cattle being moved along from all sides by a couple of cowgirl friends (and, I hasten to add, a cowboy) along with two clever dogs. I jangled my trusty handlebar bell, not certain whether to turn around or ride on through. 

“Just stay behind and follow us for awhile,” said Kathy. “We’ll be turning and heading up the ridge about a half mile up ahead.”

And with these words she bestowed on me the (perhaps dubious) honor of watching the rear view of the procession at close range from the saddle of my bike. To be sure, there was a lot of dust and dung back there, but the cowboy thing still holds a bit of novelty and romance in my mind, and it’s always fascinating to watch competent people do what they do, and anyway, it was hot riding up that canyon, so I paused for a bit and then pedaled along, feeling quite content to contemplate those bovine buttocks for awhile.

Sometimes I need to learn patience. Sometimes I need to slow way down and consider where I stand and how I got here. I am a city girl by origin but I live now on a ranch, and my life has been that way: a series of surprising outcomes and unlikely convergences, a collection of truths that don’t always mesh comfortably but somehow coexist.  I am not a member of an organized religion, for example, but in some private way I am a person with faith, and I think church is great for those who choose church, but I hold no principle more fundamental to our democracy than the separation of church and state, and I am appalled and concerned about the erosion of that barrier, particularly in this election season. 

I am dismayed, in fact, by the kind of intolerance that reared its head in St. Paul last week, and the nastiness as well. It's alarming when a candidate demeans community organizing and grass roots effort, trivializes the debilitating downward spiral that so many have experienced over the disastrous course of the Bush administration, and tries to sell us the same party and the same failed policies by slapping on the word ‘change’ and trotting out a plucky prom queen who believes the war in Iraq is our special task from God – oh, it’s a chilling choice for next in line to a president who would be starting out already in his seventies. This is a woman who despite empirical evidence remains unconvinced that global warming has human causes, thinks the personal choices of others are her business, drove a city of 5,000 souls into debt while mayor, and as governor of Alaska is respected for being good with a gun and putting Alaskans first...but Alaska is real close to Russia, so that's sort of like foreign policy expertise. I suppose it would be funny if it weren’t so disturbing.

But with or without her, anyone whose primary calling cards to the future are “drill” and “fight” makes me pretty nervous. I feel deep unease when a prisoner of war story is played and replayed as evidence of a candidate’s character to the exclusion of his more recent history of misjudgment. He's had a lot of years in Washington to demonstrate what he's about: consider Keating Five and all it implied, the telecom legislation and its benefits to big business, the insane rush to invade Iraq -- and he pushed for it hard, and a 90 percent endorsement of the policies of George W. Bush, despite the media mythology that the man is a maverick. 

Which brings me back to cattle, I suppose, and the competence of those cowhands, addressing their task from all angles but functioning as a team, doing the work of season and circumstance. When I slow down to pay attention, even from the dusty irrelevant rear, I see with new clarity the breathtaking incongruity of my being here, and I sense in turn astonishing facts in all our varied lives. I remember the bigger cycles, too, and how we ready ourselves for what is to come by working and thinking and making sense out of things, learning from what happens, and recognizing complexities and challenges -- and when it’s clearly time to change direction, we rise to the occasion, as now we must.

Notes from A Cloud

It is one of those still, white mornings that give me the sensation that I am floating in a cloud. The gray sea is barely visible, the fog is wending its way up the canyon like a whispered secret, and a tiny hummingbird is hovering about the Mexican sage on our deck. 

I may be in the fog right now, but I'm feeling clearheaded and energized, and it isn't just the coffee talking. I happen to be thinking about enlightened leadership for our nation, and how welcome that will be. Watching the Democratic National Convention that culminated Thursday night reaffirmed a sense of possibility that the last eight disastrous years have nearly beaten out of me. God, it's been discouraging, no need to count the ways, and we’ve got some steep holes to climb out of and some sticky webs to untangle and no one expects it to be easy, but oh, how good it will be to get our country back! 

Now we can only hope that the deeply stitched threads of racism and hate will not dominate the fabric of our nation, that we will refuse to let our course be shaped by fear, and that we will stand up at this pivotal moment in history and say yes to the change we so desperately need. This is one election we cannot bear to lose, and it's disturbing to realize how close it may be, but right now we have a chance and today is a beginning.

I don’t even consider the above sentiments to be political, by the way.  It feels so much bigger than that.

----------

But now let’s zoom in on some small moments, since I haven’t been much of a blogger lately.

A few sundry glimpes:

Sameer and Emilie have moved into the canyon with their beautiful son Ravi, and a couple of weeks ago I was riding my bicycle in that brief window before dusk when the light is low and burnished gold, and they came along in a car, driving slowly, and Emilie put her finger to her lips and whispered, “We’re trying to get him to sleep…” 

All the remembered tenderness of having a little one came back to me in that moment. Ah, yes..trying not only to get her to sleep, but to keep her asleep…walking in circles, or pushing a stroller, or that slow kind of driving, hoping you don’t come to a red light because one brief cessation of movement would jolt her awake and all would be lost. 

Such a sweet and poignant time…

And then suddenly that child grows up and leaves you far behind. 

I guess I'm still reeling with that.

Speaking of red lights…’cause I did mention one somewhere along the line; didn’t I? Well, I just wrote out a $400 check for my traffic infraction, and believe me, it hurt. But what is probably going to hurt even more will be the eight brain-numbing hours in traffic school, yet to come. Can’t wait to tell you about that.

And speaking of friends in the canyon, I went with Jill and Peter the other day to pay a visit to Jeanne’s chickens, a delightful gaggle of girls and one proud rooster named Wayne. More about the chickens in a subsequent post, I hope. 

Oh, and here’s a little something else I’ve recorded in my journal: A few days ago while I was taking a shower, I looked out the window and saw a rainbow snagged in the branches of a tree by the house.  It was a globe-like shimmering shape with the colors of a prism, glinting in the sunlight. I thought I might be imagining it, but I looked away and there it still was, again and again. When I went outside to investigate, however, it was gone, just a sweet little mystery, a bit of magic, maybe a tiny fairy who had lingered past dawn before darting away. I mentioned it to Monte. “You don’t suppose it might have been a droplet of water or a bubble on the window pane, do you?”

Sometimes he just makes too much sense.

And that’s not all: I had my proverbial fifteen minutes of (minor) fame last week! It was an authentic, old-fashioned book launch at the Book Loft in Solvang, one of the last of the independent bookstores. I read from my collection of essays and signed copies afterwards, and it was truly exhilarating and heart-warming, reminding me once again what a wonderful community I live in. (The book is out in a very limited edition, has received excellent reviews, and is easy to purchase online.) It was quite a heady experience hearing applause for words I had written, feeling that sense of having connected with others, and afterwards looking up from a table and seeing a line of people waiting for my autograph.

But I think I am done being famous.