It started with the financial meltdown last September. I hired Chris to help me take down the ziggurat I’d constructed 7 years ago at the top of the hill and use the railroad ties to enlarge the vegetable beds. They were soon filled with spinach, chard, kale and lettuce and I began hankering  for more territory to plant.

In early November I went up Stenner Creek Road with Lucas and loaded our Subaru, Jade, with serpentinite boulders I found abandoned at a turnout.  I dug up a dozen heavy carex clumps in front of the house and transplanted them to make a little retaining wall, spaded and levelled the adobe clay in an irregular eight by five foot patch that might catch a little winter sun, laid out a new path around part of it connecting the brick walk to the top trail, surrounded it with the boulders, and worked in leftover compost.

I decided to plant sugar snap peas since, like the leaf crops, peas would grow in winter on our north-facing, shaded slope.  Peas also enrich the soil  and grow large plants in small patches of ground.  Like tomatos, their expansive vines provide something to watch and fiddle with, and they yield an ongoing harvest of food that’s good raw or cooked, both the pods and the little treasures inside.

I couldn’t find organic sugar snap pea seeds anywhere in town in November, but New Frontiers put in a special order.  The packet was embellished with an an enticing illustration and invitation:

Once torn open it also offered information about the history and culture of the fruit.

I’ve always been a little intimidated by gardening, partly because I could never compete with my neighbors, Stan and Peter, back in the seventies, but also because of the patience required by its slow rhythm and its uncertainty of outcome.  With both anticipation and fear, I patted the little off-white marbles into the holes I’d punched with my fingers every two inches into the dampened soil.  After just a week of watering  the seedlings came up juicy and vigorous and curled their tendrils around the fence marking the row.  I’d gotten the thumbs up from the Great Outdoors, confirmed every morning as I watched their progress in the golden light of sunrise.

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My assigned twenty minutes of Ecolog is overdue.  I sit behind the pea patch in front of the house, the breeze riffling newly transplanted tomatos and cooling the back of my neck damp with sweat from digging and mixing soil.  Lots of that’s been going on this weekend, starting with buying three-foot seedlings at Cal Poly’s “Tomato Mania” Friday morning and putting them into the ground while Chris restored one section of the drip irrigation system I ripped out when the native shrubs no longer needed water five years ago. Now its required for the vegetables.

Saturday I bought three varieties of basil seedlings at the farmer’s market and sweet pepper, cucumber and summer squash seedlings at Home Depot. Jan transplanted flowers at Claire’s mobile home this morning during the Easter Egg Hunt,

and for the last two hours I dug in yesterday’s purchases.

Then there were the hikes: Tuesday with the Ecolit class into Poly Canyon, Wednesday with the Cal Poly Land class, guided by geologist Scott Johnson

the light and the green overwhelming after Tuesday’s rain.  Up to Felsman Loop on Bishops Peak with Lucas before his nap on Thursday, and up on the ridge between Los Osos Valley and Clark valley on Good Friday afternoon, botanizing with Matt, Hunter, Jen and Bridey,

And yesterday into Froom Canyon with Jan.

The force of April, that pierces “the draught of March… to the roote”and “through the green fuse drives the flower”  drives me like lust to dig in the dirt and wander the earth.  Writing down this  desire is as old as poetry, which I rediscover like Spring with students as we read Solomon and Vergil and Marlow and Shakespeare, and as we listen to the raunchy flute and entwining voices of sixteenth century airs.

Ecolit class hike number one.

Today’s rain, the first in weeks during this dry wet season, regreens the yellowing vegetation.  The air is damp, ready to unload again from scudding clouds overhead. Intermittent sounds of breeze: a vibrating groan from the sycamore overhanging the dome, a light rustle from the pepper tree to the side, a delicate breath from the oaks on the hillside.  The soil, which had become hard  and crusted yesterday is gooey or bouncy.

Over the ridgeline to the east, the grey veils part, displaying two blue patches and then quickly cover up, recalling the momentary revelation of sunshine, deep azure and billowing cumulus on the slippery trail up the canyon which lighted up a fresh carpet of wildflowers on the serpentine slope.

Birds twitter in the oaks near the bridge, goading us to leave this Golden Age and head back down to the world of work.

Short bright streak moving above the black mass of East Cuesta Ridge,  another one overhead.  The mountain wall turning dark dark green.  Deep blue sky fading to white at the wavy border with the ridge. Bird song from all directions no match for the roar of freeway traffic in the still clear air. Homer the cat meows for breakfast. A little color washes the hills to the north behind Poly where the skyline is smoky gray. To the east a line of tiny trees serrate the ridge. A trace of pink in the glow. Steam rises from what’s left in my  cup as the caffeine rises and clears my sinuses.

I stare at the bright spot that marks the entry point, the grand portal, tabernacle’s curtain, door of the tent.  That point has travelled ninety degrees north since December. No trace left of darkness.  The wait is impatient. Has the temperature dropped or have I lost all bed-warmth?  A small flock of birds scoots by. The newspaper sits waiting in the driveway. Bunchgrasses I transplanted yesterday to make room for tomato plants grow rootlets to take up water in their new home.

A bird in the topmost branch across the street silouetted against sky. A new vapor trail in the same spot above the ridge now hardly visible against the bright background. Maple leaves have grown from one inch maroon to five inches olive-green in two weeks. No more pink above the ridge. The volunteer oak on the lot corner below glistening light green, almost doubled in size.  Pea tendrils quiver. The windmill starts turning.  A quick look at the horizon leaves a mark on the retina and warmth on my forehead, but fingers stiffen with cold.

Can I sense the earth revolving eastward? Vapor seems to condense above the ridgeline or is it my tightening eyelashes? Two crows overhead.  A car alarm goes off. Its infuriating pulse persists.  But perhaps this is a chorus of welcome”horns of a procession entering the city gate.

Then it stops, leaving a moment of pure silence.

Flame tops the horizon in slow motion, frees itself from the land, and ascends, throbbing heat, needling eyes.  I put my hand up and squint through the slit of fingers glowing orange-pink at the full circle in the center of a luminescent web. The pea blossoms turn translucent. I cast a shadow behind me and the sharp shadow of the pen dances with the line across the page.  I don’t dare look longer at the naked body in the sky. From the bedroom I hear stirring.

click on picture for full-size image

more pictures from 2008 and 2000

quotes from a correspondance:

July 15 2002

I’m in the process of preparing to sell my rather nice
first-edition collection, regretfully but to the immense relief of my
heirs, I think.  It sits today in the dining room here, in 100 cardboard
boxes, each numbered, so I can’t even see the books, but it wouldn’t
surprise me if we’re in a bit of a bubble in firsts, which the popping
of the stock-market bubble could in turn pop.  I plan to sell to offset
my considerable marketing losses and hope it will assure I can stay on
here indefinitely without counting on an inheritance–a good idea, since
my mother may indeed be immortal, unlikely as that seems.  As may I.
But neither’s a very good bet.

December 24 2002

We’re a mess, but life is, and fortunately not just a mess.

March 8 2003

The war does seem all but inevitable.  Bush may have been right about its
necessity, but his lead-up has been a travesty.  It would arguably be
necessary (if you accept any rationale for war) if the war was to serve the
purposes of the U.N., which likely needs teeth to work well, but Bush from
the start has seemed to be intent on undermining the U.N., now seems likely
to go to war when the U.N. attempts to forbid him.  The NYT columnists have
been excellent from the start, Krugman best and Friedman, except that he
obviously would applaud an attempt at a just war to establish a moderate
Iraqi democracy (as though that was doable and as though a democracy has any
way of forcing its electorate to be moderate), very good.   But whether X
might wage a wise war, Bush seems very unlikely to, seems to be bent on
isolating the U.S. and assuring us a semi-permanent terroristic opposition.
He can win the war but the peace we’ve reason to think he’ll butcher.

…Mom uses my experience a lot, my early radical dependence on others in
effect pioneer work for her and you of my generation.  There are just more
and more things she can’t do, and she’s very good, or seems to be, at
focusing on what she can.  Also, at 91, she can’t help but wonder now and
then, as she did one day all day this week, whether a temporary aberration
won’t prove permanent, a wonder I’ve known myself now and again.

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An Address to Focus the Nation II Cal Poly
February 5 2009

The words of Bob Dylan’s 1964 anthem, “The Times They Are A Changin'” have never rung truer than during the last few years of apocalyptic uncertainty, threat, and promise. It’s been a period of sudden collapse–from the Twin Towers and the Global financial system to species diversity and climate stability–and of miraculous growth”from the Internet and biological research to community organizations and acceptance of diversity.

Change, when you’re in the middle of it, is mysterious, lacking adequate name or narrative. The package isn’t labeled, the story is still unfolding. In the sixties, before the words “hippy,” and “counterculture” were coined, we referred to our transformations of consciousness simply as “the Movement.” The positive change going on today remains unnamed. In his latest book, Blessed Unrest, Paul Hawken calls it “the largest social movement in all of human history.” He claims “noone saw it coming.”

But Hawken is one of the visionaries who have seen what’s coming and have provided it with various names and stories. His earlier books, The Ecology of Commerce, and Natural Capitalism, envisioned the present as one of “Restorative Economy” and “A Second Industrial Revolution.” E. J. Dionne calls it “The Revival of Civil Society,” Thomas Berry, “The Great Work,” David Korten, “The Great Turning.” I’m calling it the Sustainability movement.

One way to make sense of this movement is to place it in historical context.  As I look back at my own story, I remember childhood in the nineteen forties and fifties governed by postwar, coldwar, economic expansion, consumerism, suburbanization, homogenizing TV, and patriarchy. The sixties and seventies rejected all that in favor of peace, community living, spirituality and ecology. The eighties and nineties reacted again, privileging individualism, greed, branding and technology over nature. The new millennium took those tendencies to an extreme and then reversed direction toward where we are now.

Such a pattern of oscillations was characterized by Friedrich Hegel as thesis-antithesis-synthesis. He believed history was driven by the progress of the collective spirit of humanity expressed in science, art, and philosophy. Changes in ideas were then manifested as material progress in technology, economics and politics. Karl Marx famously turned the pattern on its head, claiming that economic arrangements, particularly the flow of financial capital, provided the base that determined the rest, which he called superstructure.

This dialectical pattern can apply today. The movement we call Sustainability seems to synthesize the sometimes unrealistic idealism of the sixties and seventies with the shrewd yet often short-sighted materialism that followed. Sustainability is grounded in science and deals with resources, technology and business, but it’s also grounded in consciousness and deals with morality, aesthetics, and religion. Its trinity of values”Environment, Equity, Economy”can be emblematized not as base and superstructure, but rather as a triangular recycling moebius.

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Back in December Claire got a job in a phone center marketing upgrades to web orders.  To support her efforts at achieving independence and paying rent, we have taken on babysitting for Lucas while she works.  He takes a two to three hour midday nap and otherwise is easy to look after and fun to be with.

We’ve been going to the Singalong at Boo Boo records, a fifteen year institution I happened to hear about last month from a lady in the City Hall Parking Structure elevator. It’s not publicized.

The woman who leads it is named Heidi.  She wears funny glasses and shoes and passes the hat afterward. I dont think BooBoo’s charges for the space.   An underground club scene Wednesdays  10:15 to 10:45 A.M.

We had  Phantom put down today.  She’d been meowing loudly on and off for several days, though still friendly and purring.  The vet said she had cancer and would soon  be unable to eat.

Joe gave her to Claire in 1992 as a replacement for Moonshadow, who was mortally wounded in a fight the day we left for our five month trip to Europe. Claire remembered feeding her as a kitten with milk dripped from her mouth.  She named him for the Phantom of the Opera.

Phantom was a great family member–independent, friendly with everyone, affectionate and tolerant with both grandkids.  She remained an outdoor cat her whole life and helped us control rodents.  We couldnt spoil her.  A scoop of cat chow per day was all she could digest.

Here are some pictures from various times in her life.

I woke up this morning with a cough, stomachache, headache and sore back.  No appointments today except babysitting, and I wanted to see the inauguration.   Jan needed the day to prepare for the long city council meeting tonight.  I decided to stay in bed watching on our snowy, cable-less TV as long as possible.  Claire got here with Lucas during the oath of office.  The baby was happy to sit next to me with his two Thomas train cars, though he kept looking at me anxiously when I cried, before, during and after the speech.

Obama carries the public pain of these last eight years along with the historical pain of African-Americans on light and supple shoulders.  The evocations of Martin Luther King and Lincoln mix with those of Michael Jordan. His language is exquisite. His sternness and smiles overpower me like my father’s when I was two.

What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility – a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

I believe every word of this. But I only feel that satisfaction sometimes, because I know how hard it is to give my all, and I cant always do it.

Last night I finished work on a speech for the Focus the Nation Teach-In on February 5. To juxtapose it with the President’s utterance today is  hybris.  But at various moments while I watched and wept this morning, pieces of it came into my mind and made me both ashamed and proud.

Sunset approach to the Valley

Joyful reunion. Amy cooks Elk steaks for dinner. New snow.

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