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photo from google earth
Yesterday as we drove home from town, a weak sun was cutting white shafts down through the clouds above the western hills, golden vineyards laid out below them. For a few moments I am able to stop thinking "nasty monoculture that messes up the land and water" and just enjoy the beauty of a late autumn day.
A couple of hours ago, I awoke and stood by the bedroom window, watching the crescent moon rise above the eastern hills. It is already light 3000 miles and three hours east, where I was born, in a city that long ago stopped having any emotional pull on me. In 48 hours I'll be there, helping my mother get organized to pack up and, in a few short weeks, move. When she does, there will no longer be a reason to go back.
In my mind's eye I can still walk certain routes (by now probably considerably changed), in Montreal, in Brooklyn, Manhattan, San Francisco. But it is a form of mental exercise, not a voyage of nostalgia, because the emotional content of this or that moment has long ago dissolved away.
When I came to this house in this town, I found home.
My mother has spent her whole life in three homes, each within five miles of the other two. I hope I can help her find home again.
Like many of my friends, I have a lot of things I need to do and even more things that I want to do. Ah, if there were only more time....So I was thinking, if I didn't need to work at a day job any more, but also wasn't rich (that knocks out the daily massage, dang!) what would my ideal week look like? Here's what I've come up with.
Every morning would mostly be the same: Play with cats, catch up on email and facebook, read the New York Times with Stu while enjoying a hot drink and a muffin. Three times a week, tending to the garden. Once a week, a long birdwatching walk. Saturday, the Farmer's Market.
Afternoons would be more variable. Monday and Thursday, I'd stay home and mostly sew or paint, breaking for weapons practice. Tuesday, since I wouldn't be working a job as a nurse, I'd volunteer someplace, working with people, then go to Spanish class. Wednesday, I'd have lunch with friends then take a very long walk with Stu and maybe with friends, too. Thursday, I'd spend a couple of hours as a volunteer with animals and then alternate between being part of a life drawing group or a sewing cooperative. Friday and Sunday would be be for day trips with Stu. Saturday would be for budo. Every now and then I'd break the routine by taking some workshop involving the use of tools to make something interesting, or by going to San Francisco to visit a museum.
Evenings...Monday and Thursday, aikido! The rest of the time, quiet dinners with Stu and sometimes with friends, videos and reading, playing with cats, catching up on blogs and facebook and email....
So tell me: what would your perfect week look like?
Here is a first look at our new gravel path, from the back of the house to the ramp to the upper yard. It is already getting lots of wheelbarrow traffic, as fall planting season is upon us.
Today at the Farmer's Market I picked up starts of spinach (the nice thick leafed curly kind I grew up with back east, not the pallid, thin leafed stuff they call spinach out here!), broccoli, red cabbage, dill and curly parsley. Got them all safely planted.
At Mendocino College's fall plant sale, things were their usual wonderful prices ($5 for gallon size plants, $2 and $3 for smaller plants). I came home with a bunch of things for the new planting areas in the lower back yard: Salvia "nuevo leon", Berlandiera "chocolate flower," Rudbeckia "goldstorm" (a black eyed susan), Artemesia "David's choice" (a great California native), blue fescue, Tanacetum densum "Partridge feather," "Parry's penstemon,' Penstemon "margarita," Ceretoides "winterfat", Rockrose "sunset," Gaillardia "blanket flower," and Spirea japonica "goldflame." Got multiples of some of them...four plants are in the ground and the rest will go in over the next couple of days. There is a small mail order coming as well of small perennial xeric plants that I expect late this week.
Dig we must!
Tonight I was offered two wonderful gifts at the dojo: time to work with a beginner and time to work with Sensei. It struck me on the way home that they are two sides of the same coin. Each serves as a reality check of my assumptions, a challenge to pay attention, and an opportunity to stretch my brain.
The beginner is a middle aged man with the stiffness of body and level-headed determination that older newbies often seem to come in with. I've worked with him a little 1:1 on rolling and very basic weapons but this was our first opportunity to pair up for technique. It was shomenuchi ikkyo. Like a lot of dojo, our protocol is that the senior student is nage first. So I figured if he was going to start off as uke, that's the lesson he needed, more than how to do the ikkyo. We worked on the shomen cut, the idea of a slow but committed attack with intent that would slice through me if I didn't move. We worked on the idea of staying together through the middle sections and how to safely make the transition to going to the ground. When it was his turn I reminded him to start with the same shomen blocking exercise we do at the start of every class, and that I'd slowly go into the shape of the ukemi so that if he stayed connected with me he'd get the ikkyo. I knew that theoretically this "leading by ukemi" is supposed to work but in practice I'd never had it actually work very well, so the truth is I didn't have high expectations. Well, either he's a very good student or I've gotten a lot better!
Sensei came into class a little later and had us work on a jo nage, holding the jo in gyakkutai and offering it to uke. It was a very simple maneuver she wanted: using the hand at the center of the jo as the fulcrum, let the grabbed end tip down, then lever the end you are holding down to raise and turn uke and send him back in the direction whence he came. And as with all so many "simple" maneuvers, I insisted on making it more complicated. I couldn't seem to avoid incorporating a slight turn of the jo here and a bit of a spiral there. Very pretty, I suppose....but not at all what was being demonstrated and asked for. I finally figured it so I can practice it at home and make it my own.
Working with juniors makes me very aware of what it is I know, what it is I don't know, and where my weaknesses lie. It reminds me of what the implicit training assumptions of any given dojo are. It makes me think about what I am doing and why I am doing it - and helps me examine what parts are essential and what might not be. Not wanting to overwhelm a person with corrections, it helps me develop a sense of priorities. And it helps me exercise my empathy and compassion.
Working with seniors shows me how much room for growth there is in my aikido. It shines light onto any bad habits of posture or positioning I've fallen into. I'm challenged to push my boundaries a little harder and not take any shortcuts.
Small town life is death for some people - heck, I've had friends for whom San Francisco is too small and slow; they enjoy visiting there but are happy to get back to New York! - but for a puttering homebody who is pretty self-contained and, to be really honest, usually content with brief periods of human contact, it doesn't get much better than this (especially with the New York Times on the driveway in the morning and high speed internet on the computer).
When we lived in San Francisco and came up here maybe ten times a year for two to five days at a time, people would ask, "what do you DO up there?" At the time there was no vegie garden, no sewing or art studio. And the sheepish answer was "mostly we sit and look at the grass and trees out back." We have a lot more to do around the house now: vegetables, land, and cats all need to be kept happy and healthy, plus we each have our projects we are working on. And no matter where we live there are so many books, magazines, and movies....! What has been surprising is not the lack of things to do in Ukiah, but how many things go on that we don't get around to doing (missed the Friends of the Library book sale today and still haven't gotten to the current show at the Grace Hudson Museum).
All my life I've heard "Wait and see: it gets harder to meet people as you get older." And all my life I've defied this by simply smiling and saying hello. I'm not the most warm and fuzzy person, but if accepted for the badger I am, I'm pretty undemanding. Stu and I are happy if we have just a few people in our lives for taking a walk, watching a movie, or sharing a meal with, and that isn't so hard to find. The weekly antiwar vigil, my twice weekly aikido training sessions, my Spanish class, plus having a couple of arts-related things going on serve as more than enough "community" for this non-joiner! Actually, there is another thing that may get added to the mix: a cooperative sewing group has just gotten underway and I let them know I'll be popping in in early October and may be willing to lead some short demos/workshops.
Things I'm looking forward to this fall include the plant sale at the college, getting the backyard set up with native and non native drought tolerant perennials, getting our first winter vegie crop planted, having my mom visit and taking advantage of her visit to finally take the Skunk Train, and doing a Day of the Dead installation (because one of the things I really miss about San Francisco is the Day of the Dead celebration in the Mission).
I can smell it, like a bird who looks skyward and launches south, like a small mammal snuffling for richer foods to sustain the hard months ahead....September always made me restless, sad, wistful, and cranky, and more so since it has been my dad's death month. Even though it is only dim, not yet dark, when the alarm clock goes off on work days, the change in the light is enough to make me need more sleep. It is a good month for me to take a vacation from the day job, have fewer social obligations, and burn up energy on walking, biking, yardwork and aikido.
Out front, the dahlias, roses, and black eyes susans bloom on oblivious; the roses here often bloom right on to the new year before taking a deep breath and going dormant for a month or two. Out back, the apples fall in from the tree in ever greater numbers each day, larger and with more red on them. The tomatoes are finally ripening steadily, the beans are almost done, the fall brocolli rabe and radishes are just sprouting and the tomatillos, well the tomatillos make me laugh and think of Dizzy Gillespie, Mario Bauza and Chico OFarrell kicking ass on "Exuberante."
This weekend is the antique car show in Ukiah and the county fair in Boonville. October 3 is the plant sale at the college. I'm ready.
photo from google earth
