There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California. — Edward Abbey
Not in any particular order, I have been or currently am a scientist, professor, student, pourer of wine, wife, mother, writer, and artist. I am always a reader.
I am drawn to books that address the aspects of my life that are out of balance. And my balance of busy with stillness is terribly askew.
Smirk is one of my favorite words. It gets at the quirk of a sensation that holds conflicting emotions in the same space with a modicum of joy.
My route strokes along the side of the Pacific along the sides of Sunset Cliffs. Every time there’s a different texture to the trip: marine layer fuzzing the horizon, Santa Ana’s making the air knife sharp, the sweep of clouds catching the light silver or flame, and the blue—so many hues. Beauty’s true color is blue.
That is one of the not so great things about our technology. We’ve divorced ourselves from the pattern of light where we wake and sleep with the sun. And we are a species of light. We are solar powered, so these long moments of dark are times when our biology rebels against the need to keep working all night with the lights one.
The flame opens its maw, engulfing the tree, swallowing it bottom to top, licking at the night sky now roaring.
You can feel winter in the change from the smell of desert rock to ocean brine in the air; the shift of southern sun not quite able to ward the chill from your house’s bones; the orange red mornings and pink dusks like lenses thrown over a picture; the way the Pacific seeps into the air, causing rivers of fog to flow along the canyons. All these and more are winter here.
The truth is that there’s a little bolthole in winter break that doesn’t let me accomplish but rather renew . . .
A new decade calls for reflection on who I am now and who I want to be going forward. So many of my 2019 intentions are coming with me into the roaring 20s: be kind to myself, nurture my kid into a solid human, and live always in love.
1. Just after rain against a washed-clean sky, a cloud mountain bloomed luminescent behind the Point. It feels exactly like …
