SOBRIETY SOLITUDE AUSTERITY LONELINESS
After a season on the borderline of excess and crushing melancholia it was time not to push it any further. Drinking myself to death was not an option. There would be no breaking point. Enough damage had been done. This is not meant evoke concern or as a yelp for assistance. It's merely a reflection of my poor mechanism for dealing with the deaths of several people close to me in a rather short period of time. Although time is meaningless when confronted with visceral pain. The least I can do is be clear-headed about it.
Another year done. How many more to go I won’t even bother to guess. I’m beginning to recover from a year that was less than wonderful as well as from the nonsense of the holidays. Although they were good this year, full of fun and food and way too much drink. NYE was a pleasant event with close friends. But I’m glad it’s all over. The last few days have been austere and peaceful. I’ve been living on salads, water and detox tea, having a cleanse of sorts. Its done me well so far. I’m starting to achieve a bit of clarity of mind, at least it almost feels that way.
A few marvelous days of harsh storms which shortened my morning walks. The ocean is ferocious and the high surf lulls me to sleep at night. Listening to the wind and rain has been a tonic.
The nights have been cold, for me anyway. The heater kicks on at 64. I’m comfortable enough.
Got caught in a squall about a half mile from home this morning and was drenched. I took a hot shower and shook off the chill and refrained from having a whisky. Spent the rest of the afternoon reading and napping. Luxury. Dark comes early but today the sun briefly shown through the clouds just before setting. The sky turned orange then purple then lavender. I heat up some ramen adding mushrooms, green onion, kale, radishes and lobster. Not a bad dinner for a semi recluse. Jan Garbarek plays softly in the background. And the wind howls.
More rainy blustery days. But I certainly don’t mind. Books are piling up and I’m devoting more time to reading. The stack includes Martian Rees, Saul Bellow, Stephan Fry, Horace, and the ever present Montaigne, Blyth and Emerson.
Another day of walking in the high wind and intermittent sprinkles with the occasional downpour. I stay relatively dry. The waves at high tide are deafening. The beauty of the noise doesn’t escape me. Birds, mostly gulls, are whipped around by the gales. A lone osprey watches the water from a swaying tree branch at the edge of the cliff.
There have been rainbows over the city and out on the water. One before sunset a few days ago was particularly vivid. From my vantage point the city looked like a jewel under its arc of colors. The white houses and buildings set against the mountains fading to silhouettes were intersected by the bright blend of the tiny prisms made by the raindrops. It remained visible for over thirty minutes. The next couple of days saw some more, but less sharply focused and they dissipated quickly.
Another cold stormy day. I read this haiku by Joso this morning,
Sleet falling:
Fathomless, infinite,
Loneliness.
My never ending project of thinning out my stuff is slowly going forward. I have a bag of clothes ready for the thrift shop, two boxes of books for The Book Den and two boxes of CDs for Salzar’s Records. A tiny dent in my overall clutter but progress of a kind I guess. Books are the hardest to part with. But I figure if I haven’t opened them in ten or more years it’s time to get them out in circulation and let someone else enjoy them. The last two boxes I filled in November were just in time to donate to the Planned Parenthood book sale. A most worthy cause.
From now on I plan on not buying any new books or clothes until I get rid of some of what I already have and don’t expect to read or wear again.
After three days of rain I’m stir crazy. As much as I enjoy this weather I miss my five mile walks. So, armed with my giant Lucky’s umbrella and wearing Dad’s old work jacket from the bank, the one with the Jimmy Fund logo, I wander over to the beach. A solitary Cooper’s Hawk perches stoically on a telephone wire dripping water from its beak.
The wind is wicked and tries to yank the umbrella out of my grip. The sea is the same color as the sky, iron grey. It doesn’t take long for me to get cold, and wet. I spend all of five minutes staring out at the ocean before I splash back home. The heat is on and I brew some tea in my iron teapot. Strong, potent black tea that Pak gave me. Before I know it the chill is gone. I feel a nap coming on.
Outside it’s now raining harder. They are evacuating the areas near the mudslides of a year ago. Those poor people, it’s just horrible and heartbreaking what they’ve been through.
Reading through some old journals today I find that I’m still pondering and meditating on the same things I always have; entropy, impermanence, and the mystery of time. I’m doing the same stuff I’ve done for years; walk the beach, watch birds and rainbows, drink whisky and sit at the window reading philosophy while it rains. I’m still dreaming of Yosemite, Sea Ranch, Japan and Ireland. I’m even drinking Pak’s strong tea like I have for years and years. I haven’t really changed much on the outside. Even after this past painful year of tremendous loss. My inner life is more somber and contemplative. There still is the wonder of it all. But.. finding meaning is often tricky. I know the cardinal rule, that there is no meaning to life unless we bring meaning into it. We are in charge of our own purpose and our own happiness. Easy to say, harder to live it though.
Yet another drizzly day. Strangely it cheers me up to walk in the light mist. I don’t venture far from the house in case it starts to pour, which it does, off and on.
A sad day, the 17th. The great poet Mary Oliver died this morning. Her poems are always ringing around in my mind. She has been a favorite of mine for a very long time. I am constantly gifting her books to my friends. It’s an old habit. I didn’t have to reach far for Devotions, it has been either on my desk or my nightstand since it came out about a year and a half ago. After finishing it I simply couldn’t put it on the shelf. I consult it often. Before breakfast today I read:
You listen and you know you can live a better life than you do, be softer, kinder.
And,
So come to the pond,
or the river of your imagination
or the harbor of your longing,
and put your lips to the world.
And live
your life.
And,
Maybe the world, without us,
is the real poem.
And, so beautiful,
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
I’ll spend the next few days rereading many of these poems. And I just thought of someone to send this marvelous book to.
The rain stopped this afternoon but I waited a until just before dark to take a walk. The surf was grand and about twenty surfers were out braving the swells as night was coming on. I watched some really good riders unfazed by the cold and wind. These were the biggest waves of the year so far. As I walked back home the moon was slowly becoming more visible as the cloud layer started to thin. Later, right before I went to bed, I stepped outside, cup in hand, to a sky full of stars and a bright moon, almost full.
Much, much later I’m still wide awake. My insomnia has been acute these past weeks. Tonight I blame it on the moon. Yes, I’ll admit I’m just a common lunatic. Luna-tic. I even lower the shade for a better view and my bedroom brightens considerably. Why not?
I read until almost four AM. Hopefully I’ll get over this bout sometime soon.
A few beautiful days and I’m back up to walking six or seven miles again. It feels good to be moving both physically and mentally. I do my best thinking when sauntering. Like Nietzsche, Emerson and Harrison. But, for some reason, my insomnia is still plaguing me, causing some brain fog in the mornings. However late at night my mind is sharp, whirring with ideas and memories and anxiety. I can’t blame it all on the moon. Go figure.
The skies cleared the other night just in time for the Blood Moon, also, for some reason, called the Wolf Moon. I walked over to Shoreline just as the eclipse was getting started and I stayed, shivering, until the first slice of light caught the moon’s edge. It was a sight. The moon glowed eerily and hung over the ocean looking closer and more three dimensional than usual. Watching our little part of the solar system go through its motions is always exciting and reminds me to live with more cosmic humility. And to remember that this has been happening long before we were around to watch it and will go on long after we are far gone. Beauty does not need an audience. In fact, it’s my belief that most moments of beauty go unobserved. Whether we should pay attention more is not really the problem. It’s that there is just too much out there. Most of existence is ungraspable. Which is a hard line for me to appreciate. I always want and expect to have a more substantial grip on my awareness of things. And to find beauty, even a small moment of it, every day.
Today sunset and an extremely low winter tide coincided. Walking in the sand as the light faded was soothing and restorative.
In my never ending enterprise to elevate the discourse at The Pickle Room I easily slip into my bad habit of drinking great whiskey. It helps lubricate and mildly numb my frayed nerves. It also makes it easier to tolerate the banality of the regular bar banter. I try to slip subjects into the conversation like the Bill Frisell concert or one of the books I’m reading but everyone wants to talk about the Super Bowl. They all think that because I’m from Massachusetts that I have more invested in the Patriots than I really do. Plus no one will bet me.
So we get pleasantly drunk on Saturday night. I listen to some of the same old stories. We turn up the music and the night flows to its inevitable end where we put people in cabs and lock the door. We have a nightcap, count the money and go home.
Its late, after two am. My ears are ringing and I’m too wound up to sleep. Typical. I toss and turn for a few hours and finally give in to my insomnia and get up and read. I’m too foggy to concentrate so I put on the Beats headphones and listen to some jazz; Lloyd, Jarrett, Getz, and manage to doze off for another couple of hours. The next few days are a bit hectic, a few parties, friends calling, too much socializing and by late Monday night I’m a bit frazzled and ready to spend the next several days ignoring my phone and not going near the liquor cabinet or wine rack.
My exercise in sobriety has been working pretty good but my sleep patterns are still off kilter. Oh wells. I was up early again this morning, way before sunrise, so I took a walk on the beach. The waning moon was shining through the light wispy fog as were Venus and Jupiter. The less bright stars appear faded. The water was calm and after an hour I’m feeling fatigued. I get back home just as the eastern sky starts showing the first hints of light behind some low clouds. I manage another two hours sleep and wake to a misty morning with clouds hugging the tops of the mountains. I take another walk and am consumed by odd thoughts.
There is something that there is only one way I’m ever going to find out what really happened. When my Dad was dying and unconscious a doctor said to talk to him because he could hear us. Other doctors over the years have told me they’re not so sure what happens in that painful situation. But I did talk to him, and so did Mom, Mide, Paul and Mark. Very close to the end, minutes really, I whispered in his ear. I told him a few things I thought were important to both of us. Quietly, and though my tears.
Could he hear me? He never so much as changed his breathing which was getting slower and slower. Moments later it was over. The only way I’ll ever know if he heard my final words of love is if someday I’m in a similar condition and somebody incredibly important to my life and my heart (Ellie?, Marcus?, one of my brothers?) softly tells me something I’d love/die to hear. Until that, hopefully, far away day the mystery will stay lodged in my turbulent mind. Such are my thoughts as I shuffle past the harbor.
A loud loud loud day here on Barranca Ave. First early this morning, eight AM, several garbage trucks parked in the street outside my window for over an hour with engines running as they compacted the trash from the surrounding blocks. Then there was some work on the gas line going into my house. Banging and scraping of heaven only knows what. Then, of course, the several leaf blowers my neighbors feel necessary to blast at a minimum of every other day. And it seems like they coordinate their times. One goes off from 9:45 to 10:30. Then one from 10:30 to 11:00. Then one from 11:30 to 12:00. And it always works out that when my gardener has the time to leaf blow my yard it is usually right when I sit down to relax and eat lunch. He, with his giant soundproof headphones, happily waves to me though my window after paying extra attention to blowing a huge cloud of dust back into the neighbors yard from where it came earlier in the morning. Naturally, I have to close all my windows and on those times I’m not at home when he shows up I return to a house full of dust.
At about 1:30 some tree work a few houses away started with two chain saws battling it out. And then from the house behind mine there came about two hours of hammering, perhaps they were building a fence or maybe an entire garage. What good is it to live a block from the beach and not be able to sit in your own yard and read or even open your windows. Even a nap was out of the question. So I went over to the beach and took a very very long stroll. The tide was going out but the beach was uncrowded, the afternoon was cool and the light was diffuse. True, beautiful and seductive winter light like you’d find this time of year in the Berkshires. The sun providing no real warmth. But I was comfortable enough in my black fleece as I took my time walking in the sand. I watched seals and sandpipers, pelicans and the local osprey. There was nobody sitting outside at The Shoreline Cafe and I was tempted to stop for a glass of wine but then changed my mind.
I walked up to the marina just as a few urchin boats pulled up to the docks to unload. Cranes lifted huge nets of the spiny uni up and dropped them into the back of waiting trucks, most which would be shipped to Japan. Our local treasures command a high price over there which also raises the value here as well. I’m often frustrated late at night at my local favorite sushi joint when they are out of uni.
The best uni I ever had was up at Sea Ranch. Mike Carpenter and Kevin Kechley spent a morning abalone diving in a cove that was walking distance from the house we were renting. They returned with a few urchins and before they even took off their wetsuits they cracked them open, rinsed them in Perrier, Pak splashed a little soy sauce on them and we devoured this amazing delicacy before lunch. If memory serves I was drinking gin. A rare and delightful combination of tastes.
I’m also lucky to have the Santa Barbara Fish Market a ten minute walk from my house and besides having the best and freshest seafood in town they almost always have uni right off the boat. A perk I often take advantage off. In fact, I’m due.
My walk got me home around dark and the neighborhood was once again silent and peaceful. But the ache to move somewhere with more solitude has been growing stronger and stronger lately.
The last day of the month started, for me, with a crash of thunder at four AM. I jumped wide awake. For the next two hours lightning flashed and thunder rumbled. The entire neighborhood kept lighting up so bright that I could read the license plate of my jeep on the street. The bolts must have been hitting the water close to shore. It was that loud. And the rain slashed violently against my windows. It was beautiful. I stayed in bed and listened to the storm until the thunder and lightning let up and only a steady downpour continued throughout the morning. After noon the skies cleared and patches of blue appeared over the ocean but the mountains stayed covered in clouds.
I walked down to the beach, my ankle a little tender from slipping yesterday off a rock slick with wet seagrass. But somehow I still managed to walk almost to the Boathouse, 5.1 miles. The air off the water was brisk and refreshing. It’s expected to be in the forties tonight. And that wraps up January.
Ok, here’s one more from Mary Oliver,
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things;
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go;
let it go.
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