Housesitting for KitaKat, journal

Because I was kitty sitting, I missed last Wednesdays, writing segment, I was too distracted, and besides, my pen was out of ink, and somehow, procrastination was my best friend. I thought that I would get back to it, but no. New house, new things to see. Oh look, shiny.

I also thought I would do all this scanning on memorabilia, so I hauled boxes of memorabilia down to Fremont with me. Nope. I didn’t have the focus. But I did read, or, rather, I tried to read a letter from Rosalind Sharpe Wall which mentioned the Cherry Foundation, dated 1986 and she had suggested that that I apply for money. And of course I never did.

Rosalind also mentioned that she was still working on her book that I helped to edit when she lived in Petaluma. It’s called Pioneers of of the Big Sur Coast, so that makes it a valuable letter to decipher as archival material, not that it said very much.

I expected to get back to my writing prompts next day, but it didn’t happen. What makes moving to a new location so distracting to the point of exhaustion? Here I am sleeping indoors these days. I’m not cold there’s central heating. I lack for nothing. I even have a kitty to pet.

Here’s the thing, for the first time in months, I’ve been sleeping indoors every night. Something I’m not used to. While I was sleeping outside during the fall, I was battling record cold temperatures. One night it got down to the high teens, all that cold sapped a lot of energy from me. As Sinead said, you’re in a warm dry place. enjoy it. True. So I caught up on a massive backlog of sleep deprivation that I didn’t know I had.

Patrice Vecchione workshop: Write your life open, journal

Patrice Vecchione says to write with your heart, write with your eyes, and write with your life wide open.

What am I looking for within this writing life? To be open is to change, to not be static, to ask what if, and let’s see, maybe include curiosity and exploration, and especially trust. The closed fist and the open hand, the relief of trust and the infinite possibilities that we, as we sit at our work, will uncover truth. 

We are open, free, but not always able to speak about life as we feel it, but we mostly choose not to. So take my words, these words as strong as my mind. I would use my words to write near and far. In Galway the bird stands for all things and Saint Francis and the sea.

1. At the center of my life is my work, the calm within the urge to create. Everything revolves around it. It is how I define myself, how I see myself. I was one of those children who failed miserably at school, I learned late and I learned slow. As if in a fog. Reading outwitted me until the end of third grade. I can still remember the day I learned to read.

The overwhelming feeling I am left with at school was that I was hopelessly sad. But at the center of my life was the quest to explore distant vistas, discover secret valleys that led me up to the mountain passes where euphoria sleeps. John Denver called it Rocky Mountain high, but, for me, it was every mountain pass. 

Maybe it’s the exhaustion or a lack of oxygen, but where I feel most alive is when I am in the mountains. My knees know their relative age, so hiking is now problematic. There was a time when I hiked all the fireroads of West Marin road and the sky was the limit. 

And I feel that I am not writing what I should be writing about—par for the course. Sometimes writing is a shield and when I crow about my accomplishments, I feel guilty, I am so used to being slapped down. Is it a Catholic thing? Pride goeth before the fall? Or has it more to do with not tempting fate? Not tempting the devil to eke out his revenge on your success. Not tempting the furies to take it back a few more millennia.

CPITS teaching journal, AVS

Friday the 13th. Today I taught five classes, itself, exhausting, and I read their poems, and typed some of them up. I usually type up about 10 poems per class, or a page’s worth, double column. But there were so many fantastic poems, I probably typed up 75 to 100 poems. It took me until 5:30 PM to get through all their journals, but I did it so that I could have a long break. Otherwise it’s harder to get through them all if I wait until later. Probably my personal best in terms of getting through a sheer amount of work. Usually I tank after reading two classes. TG the classes are small. But it’s still a marathon. 

I’ve sped up the entire reading/commenting/publishing process considerably by dictating kid poems to my iPad, and then emailing them to my MacBook. And the iPad dictation process to Notes really speeds things up, but makes the strangest mistakes, so extra proofreading diligence is necessary at the other end. The Apple speech to text platform is much more accurate than Facebook. But, still it’s a huge time investment. Some really strong poets, but I’ve been working with these kids since kindergarten. Such fantastic writers they are. This year’s poetry book will be extraordinary. 

The work is sometimes grueling, but so rewarding. A crazy job, who knew it would become my life’s calling, but I absolutely love doing what I do. It’s like being in the epicenter of magic. A symbiosis of creativity. I absolutely love what I do, but the prospect of financial insecurity is always looming.

I think the quality of their writing is related to how I pair and mix up the model poems. Currently I am using Dorianne Laux’ Heart poem paired with Jimmy Santiago Baca’s Ofrenda poem, the recalcitrant heart and unexpected gifts—and the synthesis produces amazingly insightful poems from 3-5th graders—in both urban and rural populations. One girl wrote a poem to her dead rabbit, and she burst into tears because she felt guilty for not being there, and I said, No, you are not to blame. Getting real. Obviously it was preying on her mind, but she had no outlet. She achieved some degree of resolution by the catharsis of writing.

I am always looking for ways to teach students to find their own authentic voices vs. parroting back the model poems. Of course, I also like to use Emily Dickinson’s Hope is the Thing with Feathers too. My current teaching trifecta. There’s a lot of improv too. For example, I threw in Elizabeth Bishop’s The Fish because 3rd graders were raising steelhead trout to release into the river.

We’ve had a lot of Covid talk lately, the isolation, etc. What I’ve discovered across the board is that they’ve had no real platform to express their feelings around the isolation, and quarantine. So it arises. We keep it real. We share our stories and render it into poetry. The personal experience into the universal. At Berkeley, the next wave of Covid is rolling through the school, taking out students and teachers alike in droves. Sometimes just finding the through line becomes the lifeline. Sometimes we even find love along the way.

5/12/22 Alexander Valley School 

Drought journal

I awoke this morning to the unfamiliar sound of rain falling on the roof, the wind picked up, and the pine needles danced on the tin roof like a downpour. A sonorous lullaby, and I drifted back to sleep. What is it about the rain falling on the roof that suits us so? God knows we need rain. We’ve had almost none this year. Sure, we had a deluge in October. Luckily it filled the lakes in Marin County and other stockponds, but most of the state did not get rain. Southern California has gotten more rain this year than we have. 

Another drought year coming up, I post online. Someone says no, another drought decade. And I think of all the decades that we have been in this drought. My neighbor dropped off a logged tree. I counted the rings and you could see for the first 35 years of its life, the tree got plenty of water. But then the rings towards the outer bark were packed in so tight that you cannot count them. These rings our drought journal, the real drought journal.

Post Moderna writing

Three days after my Moderna booster shot I am finally ready to get out of bed. I slept the dreamless fugue of Lazarus during most of the first and second days, and I slept late today. I never sleep in. And every old injury awoke to remind me of its halcyon days, including my knee and back. My hands ached and every old injury joined in on the choral litany of pain. The night sweats were like an atmospheric river. I was drenched, couldn’t move my right arm, and the shot, a large angry welt. Getting out of bed required extreme balancing acts. I got dressed, navigating an errant foot through the leg of my knickers took finesse, like threading a needle, as I had pulled my lower back again, this time, the left side, while digging ditches for the coming storm, but I managed, and ventured downstairs for my morning coffee. Only by now it’s late afternoon. I will pay for that late cuppa tonight when I cannot sleep. But when one is in the throes of a boostershot altered state, all time bets are off. And so is time itself, for today is the solstice, the shortest day of the year. My first activity of domestic violence was to vacuum a portion of the carpet where I had spilled my morning oatmeal and perhaps a little brown sugar as well. But that act left me deaf and breathless, as did navigating the stairs, and making the coffee and all the myriad errands it entailed. So, before I even had a sip, I was done and spun for the day. Listening to Billy Collins read Christmas Sparrow I am moved back in time to when my grandmother said to let a bird into the house was to let death enter. In Irish tradition, a wild bird was a harbinger of death. That traitorous wren. Only in Billy‘s case, the cat did it. And it was a house sparrow. And today is the death of the old year. So, letting that small feathered poem in, and then letting it go again, was an act of releasing the old year, with a sliver of a chance for renewal. I am amazed by how short his poem is. There’s something about when a poet reads, how time suspends itself on a meat hook, in the hurt locker, where all manner of things are hidden, and yet are only alluded to in poetry. Ex tenebris lux. The dark and the light together as one thing. Is it because I had the vaccine, and because I knew I would have some downtime? I bought expensive desserts, tiramisu, and macarons for my coffee. Not macaroons but macarons, the French ones, as expensive as a box of See’s Candy. They are small meringue dreams that melt on the tongue like sweet clouds. I am having trouble remembering sequentially. So everything I do requires retraced steps and I am in and out of breath, piffing like a steam train, which only exacerbates the memory problem. Today is not a good day for multitasking. I can’t even remember what it was that I forgot to remember. I have to retrace my steps, making sure I don’t trip and reinjure my back, to find those orphaned trains of thought. They lazily float about the rooms like ghosts cobwebs. Today is a fresh pajama day. Time to shed my clothes and greet my pillow once more. At least the bedsheets are clean. It could be worse. 

12/21/21

We are the bitches who dig ditches (drought journal)

After digging rain ditches the past two weekends, I ache in places I didn’t even know I owned. It’s a long dark night of 3 AM aspirin calls and an endless stream of gummy lemon square care bears. My cousin calls us the bitcheswhodigditches. Because the related menfolk never think to lift a finger to help us unless we practically shame them into action. Who wants to do that? It blows up in odd ways later. So we carry on. Like with the weekends when we cleared brush. They did nothing. It was maddening. We were racing both the clock and the incoming storm. As I dig ditches and watch the water seek new courses, I think, this is how people become engineers, by rerouting all those puddles. Gawd, how I loved getting soaked to the bone  as I helped my granny channel all that water. The driveway is a swamp. A quagmire. When I was young, we used to dig little roads along the bank above the main water ditch for my brother’s matchbox cars. We elaborated on that transportation theme with tiny trains and even railroad tracks. Unfortunately those drainage ditches have been in disrepair since my grandmother died long ago, and the last atmospheric river—aka Pineapple Express carried an epic amount of water down the hillside. So we restored the old drainage ditches, and helped save the driveway, thus draining a couple of quagmires in the process. A bonus, I found two wheeless matchbox cars with caved in roofs in the gravel. The renovated ditch is ready for the next round of the atmospheric river, the Pineapple Express, which seems to have mysteriously evaporated. Go figure. You really can’t really dig those ditches during the dry season. The impacted ground is like concrete. You need the dirt waterlogged so you can move it, though it weighs a lot more when it’s wet. But it is a work of art to divert and channel and tame that much chocolate colored water, and then to watch it run clear, then tend to the miniature rapids and eddies like a farmer irrigating a field—just like a real creek bed but in a diminutive format. The main source of runoff is coming from a gopher hole in the upper garden, so it’s draining an entire steep hillside like an artesian spring. I write on my Facebook page, Now my left lower back hurts. A lot. I didn’t hurt until after my Covid booster shot. Someone misreads it as a leftover back. If it was my leftover back then I could just leave it behind—along with my behind. Sure, I hurt a little bit after digging ditches, but the strain really slammed me hard after I had my Covid booster shot. It was similar to, but nowhere near as bad as the last time I strained my back scraping old wax off the floors in August. The common denominator for both events is not so much the strain, or work itself, but sitting in the car, or a chair for long periods of time afterwards. A friend advises, Chocolate Cake helps. Works for me. I ask, Do I smear it on my lumbar region? Perhaps with a little ruby portofino on the side? Mark answers, Yes. Devour it with lots of chocolate frosting. Guaranteed to work on your whole body not just the lumbar region. Trust me baby. Hoo boy. Sounds bitchin’. Sounds like good advice to me.

from a Facebook post

Breaking the spine of the drought (drought journal) (photos)

before the deluge

Dec 11, 2021

Dec. 16, after the deluge.

Breaking the spine of the drought. Winter light on Elephant Mountain, the Nicasio reservoir is still way too low—even after last month’s deluge. And all those Mt. Tam reservoirs are overfull. The good news is that water will finally fill Kent Lake and spill over into Lagunitas Creek, which means an actual real salmon run after years of no fish.

The old bridge is underwater, but the old road isn’t 

But both Nicasio and Soulajoule reservoirs are still way too low… Haven’t seen Stafford Lake, but I suspect it too is still low. The drought ain’t over yet. Nicasio may be a shallow reservoir, but in sheer acreage, it’s huge, so, if there was a lot of rainfall all over Marin, it would have filled up fast. But it didn’t.

There is less than 23” of total rainfall in San Rafael, a little over 21” in Fairfax, and 11” in Novato. And less than 13” total rain at Dillon Beach. Not all the stockponds of West Marin have filled. Some are, yes. 

We have been more or less in drought mode since 2010-2011, with two exceptionally wet years in 2014, and 2016—hence all the wildfires. We’ve had more drought years than deluge years since 1975. See how the water is up to the old bridge, left of center. Now, we’re up to the usual low-water mark level of winter. No longer extreme drought conditions. But we’ve still got a long way to go to break the pattern. See that tree line above the water? That is the shore of the lake.

Home again, jiggity-jig (Florida Journals)

Last night was the first night I slept in my own bed since Oct 21, I fell asleep at 7 PM, as soon as I got home, and then slept 12 hours—but not straight through. Woke up at 12:45 AM, after a furiously hard sleep, wondering where the hell I was, surprised that it was only a little after midnight. I also woke again at 4, which would’ve been the time I needed to wake up in order to check in on Justa, then I fell asleep again until 6, & struggled to stay asleep until 7 AM. But I sure racked up some missing hours. I think I’ve finally reset my circadian rhythm clock. TG!

I’ve been back in CA for a few days, but since I needed to work in Marin, I stayed there, rather than drive back and forth, thus not wasting both time and gas. Sticker shock on gas prices, BTW. It was $3.12, to $3.29 in Maimi. Anyway, I hit the ground running, working right away as soon as I got back to Marin, right off the plane, literally, and then I worked all weekend, and Monday, too. All this, sans Cuban coffee. 

Now I know how Cubans navigate the day, on strong Cuban coffee. They have these little tiny toy teacups they knock back throughout the day. Pure rocket fuel. Half sugar, half quad strength espresso. Which also explains why they all talk so fast!  They’re wired to the gills! No time for those rolled rrrs, or sibilant esses. And Ls are swallowed as well. I’ve learned to speak a passable Cuban Spanish, but my Mexican Spanish seems positively languid in comparison. 

I love how they make time for their cafecitos. At Publix, a girl comes through several times a day with a small carafe of coffee, and small plastic one oz. shot cups to give the checkers their cafecitos. Very sweet. The checkers knock them back in one gulp. Mainlining the stuff. Yet they always have the time to graciously take care of me, the awkward gringa in line.

I would’ve loved another outing or two, but I at least got to see Key Largo, and Miami Beach. A day and a half of touristing is not much but it’s better than nothing. We went to South Beach near the pier and all went swimmingly, except for the actual swimming. But getting home was a nightmare that took hours. We went down Calle Ocho but the Café Versailles was having a 50-year anniversary bash so every Cuban in Miami was out partying. They were dozens of cop cars everywhere. By the time we got to Coral Gables, I could care less, but the houses were pretty awesome. I noticed oak savannah. I wasn’t expecting that. Kirk wanted to barbecue and I just wanted to sleep so we settled for pizza and salad, totally doable. A good thing too as I nearly fell asleep in my salad plate.

I am grateful that my school meeting is via Zoom. I don’t think I’m up to driving down to Berkeley for a meeting. Can I zoom in my jammies? I might need a cafecito or two to make it through the day.

Florida Journals:

• • Home again, jiggity-jig (Florida Journals)
  • RIP, Buddy the Cat (Florida Journals) (photos)
  • Re-entry is a bitch (Florida Journals)
  • Flying home (Florida Journals)
  • Inside-out & backwards interview (Florida Journals)
  • Key Largo snorkel tour (Florida Journals) (photo)
  • Maimi Beach (Florida Journals)
  • Disconnectivity happens
  • The color of blood (Florida Journals)
  • Facewashing the cat (photos) (Florida journals)
  • Fasciated bananas (photos, drawing) (Florida journ...
  • A new day beginnith (Florida journals)

• • Buddy the Cat (more cat pix) (Florida journals)
  • Losing the plot (Florida journals)
  • Mi vida loca (cat pix) (Florida journals)
  • Maimi Majordomo (Florida journals)
  • Justa’s story (Florida Journals) (folklore)
  • Florida Journals: caregiving for Justa
  • Airborne
  • Hurricane Charley, Mile Zero, Highway One (photos)
  • 2004 Florida journals
  • Confessions of an iPod Roadie
  • Letter from Fort Jefferson, Dry Tortugas, journal
  • Missive from Fort Jefferson, Dry Tortugas, journal

RIP, Buddy the Cat (Florida Journals) (photos)

The wind was blowing the whirligig, but Buddy couldn’t hear it.

RIP, Buddy the Cat, who at age 19, was nearly old enough to visit the local bar, that’s something like 133 in cat years. I tried to warn my friends that his time had probably come, as he was pissing on the hall floor. I was always stepping in it barefoot. No odor, renal failure, I knew the drill too well. My favorite cats, Cheetos and Jack, both orange bhoys, died of kidney failure. Poor little guy slept on the couch the last few days. No more midnight yowling. And of course, no one wants to hear that their pet is dying. At least he didn’t die on my watch. 

Whenever I was on the couch, Buddy the Cat liked to parallel park along my calf, snoozing hard, it’s a tough life being a cat. Whenever I went outside, he hovered nearby, like a constant shadow. He was deaf as a stump but responded to percussive sounds.

But he also kept me sane under impossible circumstances. He was my constant flame, my fan club, and my tormentor. He had a hellacious medianoche howl. He was able to reach a much louder velocity than what I was able to record on my iPad. He would throw his head back like a little wolf, and he kept me awake most nights with his yowling. So much so, that I needed to visit the bar. Drive me to drink, he did. He always shut up and made baby squeaks whenever he saw me coming, he knew he wasn’t supposed to howl. And he went running off whenever he saw me, he knew the score. So I had to sneak my iPad around corners in order to catch him in action. 

I only knew Buddy for three weeks, while catsitting. Not too sure how long that is in cat years. First, there was the cool cat whothehellareyou and whathaveyoudone with my master beloved, I’ll keep my distance and be terribly aloof—week. Then there was the OMG you are my entire universe wherehaveyoubeen allmylife week. And then the lovefest commenced. But I could see how he was beginning to falter, and I knew him well enough to recognize the signs of renal failure. I tried to tell my hosts when they returned, to say their goodbyes, but it was news no one wants to hear. 

A stone-deaf pale flame Siamese colored Persian with a lion haircut, he pretty much followed me everywhere once he realized I was not only the catsitter, I was the gravytrain, the head scratcher, the face washer, the ear massager, and master tail-butt itcher all rolled into one. A few nights after my friends returned home from their concert series, the yowling magically stopped. Even they were surprised. Something was up. Buddy’s card. Gonna miss that little guy, but not his particular rendition of the song of his people.

When I moved his bed outside to the back porch, he was a happy camper.

Re-entry is a bitch (Florida Journals)

Why is re-entry always so hard? I’m all thumbs & heels & plagued by dueling time zones. Maybe I should nail my shoes to the ground, or I might just float off again. 

What would astronaut Col. Chris Hadfield say, as he’s experienced the ultimate timeshift continuum, not to mention a profound lack of gravity—for reals, whereas I only flew three time zones across North America! But it feels like some of my personal molecules are still airborne. When Chris played Major Tom in space, he couldn’t get traction on the fretted downstroke of his guitar and he floated up with every stroke. The music lifted him, literally. An apt metaphor. Much better than my having my blouse on inside out for a videotaped interview and poetry reading. You can edit out people’s ahems, but you can’t edit out the fact that my shirt is still on inside out, and will be for an eternity.

Still in transito. I’m so glad I changed my ticket back. Southwest airlines rerouted me to Timbuktu and back on my original ticket. As it is, It still took me nearly 10 hours to get back with a long stopover in Denver. But the original ticket was worse, and it routed me through Baltimore, then Dallas. And you know with that leads to. Grassy knolls and Q-anon conspiracy theories. All those whackjobs converging on Dallas to see the resurrection of JFK.WTF?

Flying west with the sun, we had the longest sunset ever. It was like being in Scotland or northern Canada in summer. One time when I hitched and ferry-jumped up the coast to Prince Rupert, there was no place to stay, so we camped out on the hill facing west over the Sound, I had a similar experience. It may have been a graveside park, as there were memorial tombstones. But I remember watching the sun set, and it went on and on and on and on. I totally forgot about being that far north. I couldn’t figure out why the flies were out and crawling all over me sluggishly. They too were missing their beauty sleep. Daylight savings on steroids. 

And while we’re at it, can we please do away with the concept of daylight savings time? Why are we still doing it? What purpose does it serve? We are no longer living in 1943. Or whenever it was started. It’s absolutely barbaric. Was unnerving to arrive in Oakland in the dark and realize it was barely 6 PM. 

Also I am emerging from another culture, where English is rarely spoken. My Mexican Spanish was not entirely useful so I had to switch dialects as well. When you are constantly within another language, it exhausts you. And I re-entered having to work. I got off the plane, and as soon as I was in Marin, I was busy cleaning up for my care person. Ditto that for the weekend and Monday. Even tho care provider help came in while I was gone, there so much work still to do…

Old Florida blogposts

• Hurricane Charley, Mile Zero, Highway One (photos)
• Confessions of an iPod Roadie
• Letter from Fort Jefferson, Dry Tortugas, journal
• Missive from Fort Jefferson, Dry Tortugas, journal

Flying home (Florida Journals)

Waiting for takeoff, I managed to board with all my goodies and my Keylime pie, my yogurts and surprise, my papaya and banana breakfast, so I can have real food versus pretzels on Southwest where they starve you, and greet you and then feed you pretzels. So I discovered that I can get through TSA with a flask of milk for medicinal reasons—ulcers—that’s good to know for future reference. 

I must admit that I am glad to be going home, I’ve been away from home for a long time and it was tearful saying goodbye to Justa. What makes it so hard to say goodbye to choose to was the realization that I will never see her again alive. She kissed my hands and I returned the gesture. I’ve grown quite fond of her. And we had some good laughs.

The plane faces a long climb through the cloud layer, we dance toward the sky. My ears object to the long steady climb. I have to remind myself that I’ve been much higher than 10,000 feet. Above the cloud layer is a Ukiyo-ë realm, subtle pools of light and darkness. My sunglasses provide respite from the intense glare. Not much to see, other than clouds. Hopefully when we approach Denver, there will be something more to see. Still I am happy to have a window seat finally even if there is nothing to see. I am popping my ears constantly, especially after yesterday‘s snorkeling. 

My right ear was bogarting seawater, as I swam too close to the crest of the reef and a wave plowed into me. The Grecian rocks reef is quite a ways offshore from Key Largo. It is, in essence a barrier reef. The coral and seaweed were spectacular, and I only recognized a few kinds brain coral fire coral etc. they were gorgons and tuna kids and hydrazone a rich plant animal life a Textron garden. I gave up on the go Pro camera and took a page from Ram Dass: Be here now. The sea garden was a rich nursery for small fish.

We seem to be overwater, over the gulf, the sun from my left and I see Fort Jefferson and the Dry Tortugas. Another snorkel bucket list. Maybe someday. I’m just happy to see blue skies above the cloud layer. There’s nothing to photograph but I am at the ready.

The aspirin I took an hour ago was finally getting a toehold. Denver is four hours away. I will need another round by then or before then. I was awake at 4:30 AM and I’m now so groggy but there is no way I am planning to drink the community coffee.

We are traveling a liminal boundary between the cloud layer and blue skies. We are neither here nor there. Ghost tendrils of clouds above and below. The gulf below reflecting the sky. The edge of the cloud cover is like an endless prairie of sorts. Below me is the sunken coastline of Florida, and the barrier islands, like ancient calligraphy. Soon we cross over into Louisiana, and then follow the serpentine traces of Old Muddy north toward Denver. All that water on the landscape, reflecting myriad eyes of the sun.

I cannot bear the thought of pretzels. I don’t like them on a good day, but that’s what’s for lunch on Southwest. Maybe I’ll be brave and spelunker into my magic bag and raid my provisions, papaya and banana for breakfast.

I’m listening to the first book of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. I’ve seen the BBC series, but Alexander McCall Smith is such a delightful writer, one has to also view him in print. In this case, by audiobook. However number one in the series is a bit somber and nowhere near as funny as book 21, How to Raise an Elephant (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency) which had me snorfeling in the aisle, literally.

We land in Denver, the jaunty white party tents of the airport mimicking the Tetons. I pass a busy hour in the Denver Airport while waiting for my plane, it’s unbearable. I cannot stand being around all these people and find myself sneaking into corners to escape the crowds. I certainly don’t want to wait in line for food. I eat a yogurt for dinner. Denver to Oakland, the long light over the land, an endless sunset to the west coast, and a cloak of darkness descends over California. Home again, jiggity-jig.

Old Florida blogposts.

• Hurricane Charley, Mile Zero, Highway One (photos)
• Confessions of an iPod Roadie
• Letter from Fort Jefferson, Dry Tortugas, journal
• Missive from Fort Jefferson, Dry Tortugas, journal

Inside-out & backwards interview (Florida Journals)

Last night in Miami, I thought my interview with Fire Haus Projects went well, but when I got home, I discovered that I had my blouse on inside-out for the entire videotaped interview and poetry reading. You can edit out glitches but you can’t edit out the fact that my shirt will be on inside-out forever. I guess it could’ve been worse, I could’ve had it on both inside-out and backwards. Hopefully no one will notice. Only problem is, that it has these cute little maroon satin strings attached to the shoulders so that I can hang it off a hanger. 

After a full day, snorkeling offshore at the Grecian Rocks in Key Largo, I guess I’m allowed a little eccentricity. Talk about metaphor in action. My host, Lilia Fontana, who originally hailed from Havana, was a lovely hostess. We got on like a house afire.

When I got my first CAC grant to teach poetry I had many early morning classes. At that time I was a night owl and I remember getting to class to teach and looking down and realizing I had my stylin’ shirt on inside out. Thing is, it had shoulder pads. Hard to laugh that one off as a style statement. Oh well. Carry on.

Maimi Beach (Florida Journals)

South Point Beach was a little too cold, a little too windy, and it was a little too late in the day for swimming, so the water was chilly. An intermittent drizzle made it a rather liminal affair with little distinction between water and air. Scud clouds, like a lace tablecloth, draped over the edge of the sky, and a rainbow plunged into the meniscus of the ocean like a deep sea spear. I waded in, tossed about by small outsider waves, and attempted to surf into shore on a bigger wave, but it didn’t have the power to carry me, not like the Pacific. I sank like a stone. The Atlantic is considerably warmer than what I’m used to, but I was still chilled to the bone. The citadel of Miami Beach shone like a white castle in the afternoon sunlight. What really made my day, or rather, afternoon, as it was late and the sun sinking down behind us, was a pair of frigatebirds circling overhead, and I considered it a blessing, not an omen.

The color of blood (Florida Journals)

This is a photo of my thumb over the camera lens. Ergo, it is also a photo of the color of my blood—truly alizarin crimson. My stomach went south again this morning after I took a blood sample, but at least it worked! I’ve had incredibly bad luck taking blood sugar samples from my care person. We have decided that if I stab my patient three times and still can’t get a reading, that we pass on the concept. Well, I have passed on the concept more often than I have had success, usually it says, Error!, so I’m very excited to say her blood sugar is normal. Not mine. Hopefully my biliousness stomach will start rocking on a stormy sea of queasiness. Yes, I have stabbed myself with the stupid little needle trying to reload the little gun. I do rub her finger as if I were milking it before I stab it. She really needs to drink more water and she refuses because she doesn’t want to wet the bed. And yesterday’s care provider quit. I am running out of coping skills. I now know that I do not want to do a job like this again. I knew it would be difficult. But not like this!

Facewashing the cat (photos) (Florida journals)

I just cleaned Buddy the Cat’s face with eye drops and a wet toothbrush—he loves it—plus eye medicine. He helps me scrub his little face. I did his ears inside and out too, as they were not very clean. And he went apeshit, he was cross-eyed, and groaning with pleasure, trying to stick his hind feet into his ears and everywhere else. Right now he is grooming his head. He is about 19 years old and his hygiene is sadly lacking. If he wasn’t so old I would give him a bath ASAP.

Buddy the Cat in ecstacy, falling over backwards for a little noserub. He decided I might be alright after all. Gonna miss the little guy. He is a lovely creature. When I scratch his back at the base of his tail, he licks his front, especially his bib. It’s very clean. Since he needs to brush up on personal hygiene skills, this is good. When I first scratched his spine at the base of his tail he didn’t like it, now he thinks it’s wonderful. Lots of head butts. Right now, he is washing my elbow, as well as behind his own ears. Who knew that my elbow was so dirty?

Buddy the inside cat is studying for a PhD in quantum mechanics. That is how he can be both inside and outside at the same time. He also has a minor degree in cat opera, and has the lungs of a Pavarotti. I keep stalking the cat to record his hideous meows, and he always cottons onto me. Imagine this yowl at quadruple the volume, and a sustained yodel, with more vibrato, longing and saudade to it—carrying on for five or more minutes at a stretch, going off like clockwork all through the night. 

Meanwhile, the back porch raccoon decided that the food scraps I put out for her needed a good washing—including the old bread I put out yesterday. Nothing worse than a bad cook making bread soup with cat kibble.

Fasciated bananas (photos, drawing) (Florida journals)

La sonreia de los bananas. Yesterday Ana, the good care provider, brought me a large bunch of bananas from her garden. I think they’re bananas, but they could be platanos. Yesterday I bought what I thought were small bananas at the store, they turned out to be tiny platanos. Ugh. Bitter in the mouth. Ana brought me 15 bananas, and one is a double, so 16. Fasciation. Fascinating.

A new day beginnith (Florida journals)

And so today I feel perfectly fine. This time I made sure I had plenty of tea in me before I began the cat food ritual. And I was not greeted with cat barf, nor by lively cockroaches waiting to be dispatched to the next world. I felt queasy most of the day, yesterday. I bailed on lunch. I had to force myself to eat dinner. I must admit it took willpower to eat my dinner. It was a chore to eat, but then, I felt fine afterwards. No trouble at all with eating my dessert. I’m sure the pan de boudin pudding helped. Go figure. And so now, everything is fine. Except for the new care providers coming and going like the tides. 

Losing the plot (Florida journals)

Too many surprises this morning—after having to feed the cats stinky canned catfood, before my tea had kicked in, and my stomach went south—and that was it. One atrocity I could prepare for, but not three in a row. The crowning glory, I found what I thought was a dead cockroach snoozing in the middle of the dining room floor. I went to scoop him up with a large post-it, and he scurried off. 

I have to keep reminding myself of palmetto bug is not a German cockroach. He’s a member of the cockroach family, a.k.a. an American cockroach. I did not see any evidence of red MAGA hats. And I don’t know if he voted for Trump. but he did flip over on his back and danced the the whirligig watusi before he scurried off. He didn’t say much of anything as he headed off towards the bar, wildly waving his long antennae, perhaps looking for a stiff drink. OK then. 

Fighting a little revulsion there. Now I need a stiff drink. Oops, I discover an American cockroach is not native, it hails from Africa. Another immigrant. At least it did not speak German. So, now I don’t know if it was a native palmetto bug or an unAmerican cockroach. Just didn’t have the heart to step on it. Besides I was barefoot, and I haven’t yet had my morning tea.

So, a little sucker came out from under the bar for another visit. This time I was prepared. Flyswatter in hand. Whap! That’s one dead cockroach. How many more million to go? I feel queasy, oh, so queasy am I. Urg. So much depends upon my weapon of mass destruction, a red fly swatter on the table, next to the fruit bowl. 

I am gaining so many new skills. When I went outside to feed the cats—I mean, it’s bad enough to have to face dirty cat bowls, or cans of cat food in the morning on an empty stomach before having my cup of tea—I was greeted by cat barf. My stomach is winning the queasy battle. Bilious stomach score 3, equilibrium score, zero. Add jet lag and whacked circadian rhythms to the bilious mix. I could do without the vertigo and headache. Tomorrow I will be fine.

Unfortunately, once it arrives, there is no way out. When I was young I had to ride the bus to school, and if I ate breakfast, it was all over (me) for the rest of the day. Similar to the twin maladies of carsickness and seasickness, the finicky stomach rules the day. I didn’t get enough sleep, which didn’t help, and all the grossities of the morning bested me. If I don’t pay attention, then I rue the day. In this case, it had to do with a combo of unpleasant things before I was fully awake. And jetlag.

But yes, I do get terribly carsick unless I’m driving. I have been queasy while on the ocean but it’s rare. Usually because I’m in a sailboat and the breeze helps. Motion sickness is a real thing. One time my former partner did not believe that I get carsick, he thought it was all in my head, and so he ignored my urgent pleas. Ulp. Sitting in the back of a car is treacherous. I have to sit in the passenger seat and pretend I am driving. Drugs don’t help. Dramamine makes me comatose. A valium and I am on the floor drooling out of both sides of the mouth. 

The only time I completely lost it and got the dry heaves was when we were salmon fishing and I made the mistake of going to the bathroom. And that was it. I lost sight of the horizon and I could not convince myself one way or the other which was which. 

What was funny was that I was doing a story for the paper on a contractor who took people from the Forestville halfway house out on the bay to catch fish every year. I did catch a salmon, but somebody else had to help me reel it in because I felt so bad. I remember being off Potato Patch Shoals watching the Marin Headlands lurch up and down. Once I lost the side of the horizon I was done for.

I think I need to lie down with Buddy the cat who comes over for a little scratch and a head butt, he is scent marking my iPad with his goopy eye, and he wants to snuggle, this is a first. I guess I am finally being accepted. Even the gris-gris cat outside wanted a scratch. If only my stomach would settle down. An opossum came during the night, leaving strange little starfish paw marks on the patio tiles. At least the raccoon cleaned her bowl. Small mercies. I think I may need to resort to a PeptoAbysmal chaser.

Mi vida loca (cat pix) (Florida journals)

 Mi vida loca. Ana, the weekend care provider arrives today, she is an angel, the other care provider is terrible, plays on her cellphone all day, cada día. Pero Ana se limpio todo la casa. She takes care of my musician friends’ mother, Justa. I am a majordomo orchestrating the house, and I am also responsible for a bevvy of cats who understand todo en español Cubano! Este lenguage es muy rapido, no Rs, no Ss. Todo inmersión. 

Meanwhile, Buddy the Cat yowls his bilingual two-note aria, he is searching for his mortal beloved. I cannot tell him that no matter how many doors he visits, Kirk no esta aqui. The cat has taken to howling beneath my window every night to show his displeasure. I need earplugs and a full night’s sleep. Mi mente explotándo en tongues. Buddy, a declawed flame Persian with a ridiculous lion haircut, is the victim of a careless owner who wanted a plush toy, found safe haven here en la casa de los gatos. He is yodeling in the stairwell, which is an echo chamber. I know he is senile and deaf, I wonder if he can hear himself better there. 

He is 19, which is the equivalent of 133 human years. He has a chronic eye infection, I wonder how much he can see, because sometimes he tumbles down the stairs, and uses his paw like a blindman’s cane. He doesn’t seem to have teeth either. The four feral outside cats, the opossum and the raccoon are blessedly silent. Thank God there are no longer any cockatiels in the mix. But a cloud of escaped zoo parrots from Hurricane Katrina fly across the sky chattering up a storm.

Maimi Majordomo (Florida journals)

Your assignment seemed simple enough, make sure your friend’s bedridden mother is taken care of. But she speaks limited English, and you speak limited Spanish, and certainly not Cuban Spanish, and then, the care provider quit on the first day, saying that you are too old to be of any use. She thinks I can’t understand her; the next care provider is thick as a stump, and possibly cruel, she let poor Justa crap herself, rather than help her to the bathroom, because I wasn’t there to help out. She told Justa to wait for me. Cruel. I had all of an hour off to shop for food. To make matters worse, I got lost, in a strange car, in a strange city. Google Maps gave me crazy directions, it kept telling me to turn right, into the burbs, before I cottoned on that Google was winging it, it was not talking to its cell tower. The third care provider, an angel albeit with limited time. She is my teacher. She is an angel. She too does not speak English, but I ask questions about cuisine, how to fix the blood sugar lancet, etc., and we make do. Steep learning curves ahead. Somehow we will survive this nightmare.