Tag Archives: walking

Like bread, or the sea.

nature, other gardens, quotes, , , , , ,

After I left my car at the mechanic’s shop for its routine service, I set off walking down the road to the bus stop. After only a few steps I stopped to admire plants along my way; I did that a few times. The California Buckeye startled me as it always does, looking like the dead of winter in early fall. The large conker peeking out redeemed the scene.

It was fun, walking for ten minutes through a sort of industrial park, where all the people arriving for work gave their energy to the atmosphere, and lots of pickup trucks lined the road, bare of sidewalks most of the way. The air was crisp but not harsh.

On a bench at the bus stop, I looked briefly across the frontage road at the seedy mobile home park whose sign was missing some letters and read “Taylo.” A mockingbird’s song came to me from somewhere, surprisingly not drowned out by the heavy traffic noise. And then my gaze rose, hungry, to the sky.

I recognized the remains of a jet stream (or chem trail?) as one element of that picture above, but there was so much else going on up there! I began to think about what Emerson said, that “The sky is the daily bread for the eyes.” I mused on how sometimes we are given all sorts of fancy bread, but at other times the sky is plain blue, or white, or gray….

After a short ride on the bus, I got off and started walking the rest of the way home, along a boulevard where I had plenty more of those big spaces to wonder at. I was struck by the realization that I was the only human on earth to whom each particular picture was given, because I was the only one at that GPS location, at that moment in the constantly changing arrangement of images.

If one lives in the big city, with skyscrapers hogging the sky, usually a little bit at least will peek through; I like to get my bearings occasionally by looking at whatever patches are available for viewing. Being in prison, though… now that would be hard. I guess they do often let at least some of the prisoners outside sometimes, but they might not feel safe and relaxed enough to feast on their daily bread in that setting.

Twice now I’ve started reading The Marvelous Clouds, and shared some quotes here. I reread some of Albert’s comments that I included in one post about the book ; he passed on some excerpts from an article about it, which is about media. One thing the author said was that “Clouds illustrate media ontology. [They] exist by disappearing.” 

I gave that book away a while back. It’s very thought-provoking, to be sure, but I think if I had continued reading it I would have just been page by page arguing with the author over various things. I don’t like that he uses clouds for anything. I’d rather receive the gift of clouds as bread for my eyes. This arrangement of clouds below looked like it was pretending to be mountains in the distance:

The author of that book, John Durham Peters, also said that clouds are the original white noise. If you want to follow that thought, read the article linked in that more recent post of mine. But I think it’s more profitable for the soul to go out and look at the sky, whether there are clouds in it or not. When there are no clouds, or they have merged into a less enthralling picture, watching them might be like staring out at the ocean. It’s always moving, but it can be boring at the same time. Sometimes we need that plain bread. Feasting all the time is not good.

While my thoughts were on the clouds, my legs carried me into neighborhoods closer to mine, but I took a less familiar route and saw this beautiful plant that I found out is called a Common Lionspaw. I got distracted from the sky and started thinking about where I could fit one of those in my garden.

My cloud show seemed to go to intermission for a few minutes, with the actors going off stage — but quickly it started up again, as the sun began to break through.

Then, I was home again. It was time to start the rest of my day, and figure out what to eat… but my eyes had already had a big breakfast.

I walk myself into a state of well-being.

health, quotes,

Pippin sent me this picture and quote that looks like she found it on Facebook. The picture reminds me of one I took of my other daughter, Pearl, once when I was walking with her in the autumn. I cropped off the quote and copied it here:

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Every day, I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, and the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.

-Søren Kierkegaard 

It was last fall when I last revived my walking habit. The days are so gorgeous, it seems the only proper thing to do with them — although garden work serves nearly as well, as long as one doesn’t rush, and takes plenty of moments to breathe deeply and look at the sky.

African Blue Basil

bees, my garden, nature, , , , , , , ,

This morning I switched my walking route to the less-frequented, unpaved path by the creek, and I was alone down there. But for a minute I could hear above me on the paved path, behind the trees, a woman talking on her mobile phone. She had it set on speaker, and I could hear both sides of the conversation. The woman near me said, “How is your diet? Are you eating the right things?” and I caught the Woman-on-Speaker saying, “I just can’t eat salad,” after which Woman No. 1 said, “I know people think Special K tastes like cardboard, but I eat a bowl of it every night before bed. It helps me sleep good!” And then they were out of range….

Bristly Oxtongue

That conversation is slightly connected, by being about things we do or do not eat, to the title I almost gave to this post, something about “Bristly Oxtongue” — but it was a little too rough. Now that I think about it, I do see why the plant was given that name, though when I have cooked beef (ox) tongue, I never thought of the bumps as bristly. And the botanical one I saw on the path was in its glory, such as that is, with prolific flowers on a 4-ft high plant. I have identified it in the past, but lately don’t tend to pay attention to the various thistly and bristly plants out there.

Another plant that is not my favorite, and which I wish I could keep far away from my garden, is Bermuda Grass. When I was growing up, the birds brought its seeds to the lawn my father had planted around our new house, and from then on it was a Bermuda Grass lawn, which has a lot to say for it in the dry and hot Central Valley of California. It needed watering less than weekly. It was a scratchy and coarse kind of grass to play on, and in the winter it goes dormant and brown, but it’s very hardy in every way. This plant has been encroaching from my neighbor’s back yard to mine for as long as I’ve lived here, and I am forever fighting its advance.

Today I realized that one reason this stretch of path is surprisingly green, is that it has a healthy crop of Bermuda Grass growing on the sides.

I saw quite a few other plants along the way. Curly dock reminds me of the rural bus stop of my childhood, where that plant was always growing.

Back in the home garden, my cultivated species are filling my cup of contentment. I have strawflowers for the first time, which the skippers love. If I didn’t have the ability to put a big digital photo here, I wouldn’t be able to see the long but miniature tongue the skipper is dipping down into that flower. Drink up, little skipper! Be my guest!

African Blue Basil

The plant you have been waiting for is the African Blue Basil — at least, that’s what the tag on the little pot said, that I brought home from the nursery. I just read about it online, and it says that the leaves are purple when they first sprout, and mine aren’t… It also is supposedly a perennial, which would be nice. It’s magnificent, and I saw two species of honeybees among the dozen or more were working it. It’s the latest dish that the pollinators are tasting on the smorgasbord in the Glad Garden.

Let yourself get soaked.

nature, poetry, weather, , ,
“Rain Bird” woodblock by Hirokazu Fukuda

The poem below is part of a collection of “Himalaya Poems” on the “Asymptote” website, where that magazine’s name is explained like this:

“Asymptote is the premier site for world literature in translation. We take our name from the dotted line on a graph that a mathematical function may tend toward, but never reach. Similarly, a translated text may never fully replicate the effect of the original; it is its own creative act.”

I originally read the poem on a blog that didn’t tell what century the poet was writing in, so I had to hunt around to find out that he is a contemporary Korean. On his own website he writes something that I can relate to: “I long not to finish my life as a poet. In other words, I wish I could be a poem at the end of the poet.” 

If Ko Un does manage to set off and “walk on and on until the sun sets,” and not just write about that kind of activity, then I think he stands a good chance of turning into a poem. Especially if he gets drenched! Lately I have done a lot of walking in the rain myself, and I have begun to look forward to those wet outings. I keep wondering why that is…

One friend said something about “the ions,” and online I found numerous articles about the “health benefits” of walking in the rain. Every article counted a different number of benefits, ranging from four to nine, one number per article, and that coordinated numbering was the most interesting thing about them.

I try not to take an umbrella on my walks, because of the way an umbrella usually takes my attention from the wind and water assaulting me, and forces me to give my all to one more instance of wrestling with technology, especially if it’s the pop-up type. (However, umbrellas seem to add cheer to dark and rainy paintings.) If the day is very wet, I do merely a loop around a block or two, and change into dry clothes afterward. That’s not a pilgrimage, but it makes me feel that I am walking in a (short) poem.

YOUR PILGRIMAGE

A slower pace, a somewhat slower pace will do.
Of a sudden, should it start to rain,
let yourself get soaked.
An old friend, the rain.

One thing alone is beautiful: setting off.
The world’s too vast
to live in a single place,
or three or four.

Walk on and on
until the sun sets,
with your old accomplice,
shadow, late as ever.
If the day clouds over,
go on anyway
regardless.

-Ko Un

McGee Creek Trail in the Sierras