Grace's Warbler

Grace's Warbler by Carl Jackson
@mo_better_birds

to Carl

My love, my Bird Photographer, is a black man and not a day goes by that I don't think about the danger of his being a black man, filing it away the worry in the dark with my night vision honed by twenty-five years of worry about Sophie. I am nothing if not good with this kind of coping. But is it coping or is it complacency? Is there something more to think about, to do, to work towards, something beyond the obvious? How to be scrupulously honest with ourselves, we white women? We white people? How to begin how to continue and how to do so despite the cacophony.

Carl wrote this on his social media page, where he generally posts some of the most gorgeous photos of birds you'll ever see: 

A Memorial Day reminder of just how risky it is to be a black photographer. I’ve got too many stories from my time out alone shooting in Southern California, as well as every state I’ve gone to observe/photograph wildlife or birds. The systemic racism based upon skin color by the police and the justice system could turn a birding trip into an arrest or even death, not even accounting for the threat of others who hate based on skin color. “Birding while black” has many layers of risk.

We can pass along memes and express our outrage. We can talk about privilege and supremacy, inner and systemic racism. We can defend dogs and debate endlessly whether Ms. Cooper should will when how much is enough receive the punishment she deserves. The word opprobrium. How much energy is wasted even in this the writing the need to wrestle meaning to string together in what direction? What direction? 

When I first met Carl he took me out for a walk in a park. He walked so slowly that if I hadn't been falling in love with him, I would have felt irritated. He is so very very quiet. He stopped periodically and pointed. I'd look where he'd point and see nothing. I'd tilt my head and gaze down the long line of his finger, one eye closed struggling to see. To see what he saw. And then I did see what he saw a brilliant blue bird so blue that I couldn't possibly miss it, yet I had. In the days and months and now years that followed then, I saw them everywhere, these birds, all sizes and colors their markings intricate and startling even as they blended in with the browns and greens of the trees and flowers and shrubs. Their calls, too, each distinct and something to remember -- a chirp, a warble (is there a more beautiful word than warble?), a low rumbling creak. They have always been there.

I had to slow down and look. 

I had to be quiet and listen.

And yet. 

I still walk fast. I'm impatient and blind, perhaps willfully so to what is in front of my eyes. I can't hear, don't listen and I forget the names.  

And yet. 

Carl still walks slowly. He points them out, these birds that are everywhere. 

He tells me their names.

Brown Violetear 

Summer Tanager

Cedar Waxwing

Vermilion Flycatcher

Grace's Warbler

You know where I'm going. 

Look. 

Listen. 

Say the names. 

#BirdingWhileBlack

#BlackLivesMatter

Day Whatever

It rained for days here in southern California. Tomorrow it's Easter, the day that our POSPOTUS predicted would be a fine day for all of us to pack the churches. My aim is to not come right out and condemn/blame/call out but to note things, observe things, state the facts, ma'am. The facts include nights of very weird dreams, including one the other night with James Dickey characters, the threat of death in the back-seat of a truck, joints passed around and me smoking for the first time in thirty-five years to avoid whatever torture was coming my way and then the cab of a school-bus moving in slow-motion right into the truck with me. What the hell?

Reader, have you been cooking a lot? If so, what? Last night I made roasted chicken thighs and carrots. They were seasoned with Za'atar, lemon, salt, pepper and olive oil and when still hot dumped on a bed of greens. So, so good. I think the recipe was from the New York Times food section, something that I'm a tad obsessed with --

Reader, have you been reading? I just finished Lily King's new novel Lovers and Writers and am now reading Louise Erdrich's The Night Watchman. I also read Glennon Doyle's Untamed and will read Gabriel Garcia Marquez' Of Love and Other Demons that I think I read back in the last century, but I can't be sure. In other book news, I've started a project of cataloguing my books. My sons are horrified, but it feels to me as if it's the closest I'll ever come to being a librarian, and that's one of my main regrets (along with not learning to surf and vaccinating Sophie with five vaccines when she was two months old). The Bird Photographer made me an Excel sheet with categories: Classics, Fiction, Non-Fiction General, Poetry, Memoir, Biography, Art and Cooking. Also Location: Bedroom, Dining Room, Living Room, Hallway, Bathroom, Kitchen. I read an interview with Fran Leibovitz last night who was described as living in a NYC apartment with 11,000 books. This thrilled me.  I've also been slowly catching up on articles in "The New Yorker" and highly recommend the issue about the pandemic, especially a strangely comforting one written by a guy who was quarantined with his family in China during theirs. I'm finished with spring break this weekend and begin teaching online again next week. I am so grateful to have a job right now. So, so grateful.

It's a weird, weird time, and I find myself only able to watch two episodes of any given series on the TV in any given day. I did watch all of "Unorthodox" which, of course, reminded me of my days teaching at the religious school. I feel rising bile in my throat at all organized religion, though, and I have to calm myself down even when I see it/god invoked for people dying. Prayer works, they say, or I will pray for you, him, her, and here comes the acid. I am old enough to know I must observe this impulse toward hatred/disgust/contempt as being more about me. Why does any mention of religion right now bother me so much, make me feel so angry? I think I have enough Catholic in me -- however shredded -- to feel guilt and even shame that I just don't believe and then there's just plain, old-fashioned longing.




It's weird how when you're wearing a mask and smile at someone walking toward you, you don't know if they know you're smiling, but Oliver and I experimented and realized that our eyes smiled and that we could just tell.





Speaking of The Bird Photographer (earlier), I want to tell you a little story that he told me the other day. He was walking down in Santa Ana at a beautiful point that overlooks the Pacific, a place where falcons nest and fox kits frolic (I'm not kidding), and everyone at this point is wearing masks and social distancing and so on, but as he was walking, a woman walked by him yakking on her phone, and she said, Well, it's because The Blacks don't ever go to the doctor, and he said that he couldn't believe he'd just heard that but he knew he wouldn't/couldn't say anything because it wouldn't have been good. A black man can't berate a white woman. I said, If I'd been there, I would have picked up the closest rock and sharpened my tongue and then just lit into her. 

Also, read this.

Here's a poem:

Miracle Fish

I used to pretend to believe in God. Mainly, I liked so much to talk to someone in the dark. Think of how far a voice must have to travel to go beyond the universe. How powerful that voice must be to get there. Once in a small chapel in Chimayo, New Mexico, I knelt in the dirt because I thought that’s what you were supposed to do. That was before I learned to harness that upward motion inside me, before I nested my head in the blood of my body. There was a sign and it said, This earth is blessed. Do not play in it. But I swear I will play on this blessed earth until I die. I relied on a Miracle Fish, once, in New York City, to tell me my fortune. That was before I knew it was my body’s water that moved it, that the massive ocean inside me was what made the fish swim.

Ada Limón (2015)

25 Years and a Surprise

Sophie turned 25 years old yesterday. I'm sorry I didn't post about it sooner, but I just couldn't figure out the words. I was going to say what I've said before: time hasn't flown at all, and I've felt every single one of those years.

That picture above is testament to my working philosophy: never set goals and never answer questions like where do you see yourself in 25 years?

Yes, I did make that cake, but I will take no credit for the beautiful young woman that has graced my life and shaped who I am in ways that I have only begun to articulate.

She's never been much of a smiler, but when I sang happy birthday to her in bed yesterday morning, she actually did smile. A slow gentle with a touch of smirk smile. This girl knows absolutely everything, and I am overwhelmed by her strength and beauty.

Guess what else?

Henry is home for spring break! Oliver went to Mexico on his spring break, and I've tried not to imagine what was going on. This morning The Bird Photographer woke up at the crack of dawn to go do his thing and then head to his home behind the Orange Curtain. I was feeling the post-25 years blues, so I asked him in the darkness to tell me something good. He said that he was sure it was going to be a very happy day. I went to work. I taught my magical students and had a lovely lunch with Henry.

He dropped me back off at work, and I continued to teach my magical students and then walked home. Then this happened:

If you can't see old schoolmarm acting dumbfounded, go to my Instagram account and check it out.

Reader, Oliver never went to Cabo! He surprised me and came home! I'm such a dope that I had absolutely no idea even though everyone else apparently did. I feel like the luckiest woman in the world to have her two beautiful sons at home for a week.

Onalaska

I've traveled up to rural Washington to write for a week and wander around with the Bird Photographer. I was invited to this bucolic setting by a new friend, the artist and writer Mimi Feldman, who asked me over wine one night, What's up with your book? I probably sighed and rolled my eyes and made some sort of excuse or another, and she said, Why don't you come up to our house while my husband and I go on a road trip?

So I did.

Mimi and her husband Craig have created this incredible home in the middle of rural Washington. They have three goats, a cat, a barn with a studio that Craig built with his own hands, and views of rolling green and heather-flecked hills and regal pine trees. The home is filled with collections from their travels arranged artfully on beautiful, warm furniture. Their art hangs on the walls. Craig is an extraordinary abstract painter and carpenter. Mimi is an extraordinary painter as well, but I met her through writing and our shared experience of mothering and extreme parenting. She has written a magnificent book about her experience raising a son with schizophrenia. Until it's published, you can read her writing and see some of her art at her blog, The Asylum of the Universe. It will take your breath away. She's a badass.

Last night we talked about books and Bob Dylan and caregiving and men and women and children and life, the whole full catastrophe. This morning, Mimi and Craig drove off on their road trip adventure. Carl and I settled in and then wandered around a bit.

Now I've got to write.

Hummingbird

The Bird Photographer brought that tiny carved hummingbird back from Costa Rica recently and gave it to me, so I hung it above my bed. Honestly? My favorite thing to do is lie on my back on my bed and while away the minutes, do absolutely nothing but stare at the ceiling and watch the late afternoon light play across the walls, and now the hummingbird who drifts a bit, rotates round. That and reading.

I've been exercising these days. I've been going to a dance class called Kardio Krunk. Don't laugh. Or, rather, laugh all you want. The class is taught by this beautiful man who is also working with me one on one as a personal trainer once a week. I bought myself five sessions with all that money I got back from the POSPOTUS' tax reform. I had my first full blown anxiety attack when I went for my initial assessment. I'd love to regale you with the details, but suffice it to say that at one point I was curled into the fetal position on the floor of the beautiful man's studio with an ice pack under my chin. It wasn't the assessment that did it to me -- I swear I'm not that pathetic and out of shape. It was this weird feeling that literally overtook me. One moment I was lifting weights up over my head and the next my entire shitty life was passing through me, and I mean shitty. I had in a sort of simultaneous rush just about every superficial thought you can imagine -- from how fat and ugly and out of shape I was, how insurmountable the goal of losing weight and being fit to how unfair it was to be a caregiver of a child with disabilities for more than two decades and still not have shapely arms.  There was some divorce in there, too, and the state of my stomach, and seizures, of course, and just all of it. Cue: laughter. The Kardio Krunk guy was very patient and very calm as I went through this, and while I didn't voice anything but moans and I swear to god I've never had an anxiety attack before!, I actually cried, and he assured me that he'd seen it plenty of times before. I found this hard to believe, given that it's Los Angeles, but he was nice to say so. He believed my sudden swoon to be a surge of adrenaline and endorphins, coupled with an anxiety attack. Aside from the few moments on the floor when I didn't care if I died or not, given how bad I felt, I was more curious than embarrassed to be so betrayed by both my body and mind. They honestly worked together that afternoon in spectacular concert which is actually pretty cool if you think about it.

Since then, I've been back to see him a couple of times, and I'm doing better. I've taken two Kardio Krunk classes where I attempt to keep up with the class doing intricate dance moves, including twerking, as very very loud hip hop music plays, all while avoiding looking at myself in the giant mirror that runs the length of the studio. If I so much as glance up at myself, I lose my count or the step or the beat or the twerk and want to just lie down on the floor and give it all up to the lord.

When I get home, I lie on my back on my bed and stare at the ceiling, my mind drifting with the tiny wooden hummingbird floating above me. My face is red and my legs are quivery. I can hardly unbend my arms, but I don't feel miserable. I feel exhilarated, like I'm already fit and light, like my life is endless and there's still time.

Everything real, with gratitude

Sophie's humming again. To distraction. This is good because it means that she's alert, not seizing, trying to figure things out, to communicate. Verbs like muscles. Verbs are muscles. You like me honest so I'll say that the humming can either be a hammer or a song. We're either our thoughts or we're not, and the living is in the vagary.

The Bird Photographer took that photo, and because it's not particularly sharp is why I love it and he probably doesn't. He brought me a bunch of roses this weekend that were honestly astounding.

Hamilton

I know, I know, I know! So much has happened since I last posted! I got a surprise birthday gift from the Bird Photographer, I was blocked on Facebook by another high school classmate whom I dared to challenge (surprise, surprise!), there was a total eclipse of the sun, the POSOTUS held a rally in Arizona, part of which I watched, open-mouthed, on the teevee before grabbing my rosary beads and whimpering pray that I die, pray that I die, over and over like my Italian grandmother did in her senior years, and I'm currently helping MY SON to pack for college. We're leaving tomorrow, so I just kept the black dress and rosary beads and am praying to the Virgin Mary to sustain me through the transition.

But, Hamilton! Let's just dwell a bit on Hamilton! Anyone who knows me is aware of my curmudgeonly dislike of musicals (admitting that is akin to admitting that one hates animals or something, so I rarely voice it except here, for the world). But, Hamilton! Given all the hoopla, I admit to being curious about it and maybe even wishing, a teensy tinesy bit, that I could go.  Carl is to musicals as I am to musicals, but he surprised me with an early birthday present (I will be flying back from dropping off my son and will be wearing my black dress and rosary beads on my actual birthday this Sunday). I opened the card on Saturday night and gasped.

If you didn't already know it by now, The Bird Photographer is -- well -- the man, my person, my love, my friend, and now he's given me another gift that moved me to tears. Because this musical quite literally moved me to tears. The music, set, choreography -- all of that -- is fantastic, but to tell you the truth, that wasn't what really moved me. I kept sitting there thinking that someone had conceived of this, that someone had put this cast of beautifully diverse human beings into roles that would ordinarily have gone to white men, and that in doing so had quite literally brought America -- its very conception -- to life. I know that I'm not going to be able to do it justice, and I know that many people already have done so, but I was moved in a way that I have never been before as an American citizen. It was beyond radical and even sublime. To watch it now, given the shitshow that is Dear Leader et al,  is to be moved to tears. That's all I can say, and I hope so much that you get a chance to go, that young people get a chance to go, that young people of color get a chance to go, that the spineless of Amerikkka will wake the fuck up, that Dear Leader will disappear and that we can begin to heal from the national nightmare and make this place a truly equal country with liberty and justice for all.

That's my update. I need to continue with the mad packing, rosary bead chanting and existential dread.















P.S. I watched the partial eclipse at my friend Rain's house with her and Carl, and it was fantastic, but not as fantastic as seeing Hamilton. It was certainly as existential as having to drop my son off at college and the rest of his life, though.

Going to the Fair with the Fair People I Call Mine

We went to the Orange County Fair last week, ate a lot of fried foods, rode some rides, played some games, won a fish and walked about one hundred thousand steps.

And guess what?

The Bird Photographer took an Honorable Mention in Nature Photography for his exquisite photo of cedar waxwings sharing food. Honestly, it should have taken first place (and there were a lot of astounding and beautiful photos there), and I am -- as you know -- a fierce and discriminating critic. Plus, I'm not biased at all.

You can see more of Carl's photos here:

Website: www.cbjphoto.com
Facebook: carljacksonphotographer
Instagram: @cbjfoto

Monterey Breach: A Drone Short Film

These two have been friends since preschool.

Once upon a time, a little boy named Oliver made a whole lot of money selling lemonade on the corner of our street. He worked diligently and saved nearly all of it and began bugging his mother about spending that money, all at once, on a drone. His mother declined because that's a ridiculous thing to spend money on and you need to save that for college until, years later, it was clear that Oliver actually did want a drone and intended to do great things with it. It's my money, Oliver said. You're right, she said with a sigh. He bought the drone.

Oliver and Joe have been making incredibly inventive films for years. Oliver is game for acting and doing the bidding of Joe who is a preternaturally talented filmmaker and editor. You really can't believe how good Joe is until you see his stuff.

The Bird Photographer took Oliver up to Monterey this week to do a little drone photography and some whale watching. I'm not going to say how jealous I am (for obvious reasons), but Oliver -- on his first real whale-watching trip -- saw just about everything a person could dream of seeing on a whale-watching trip. Breaching whales, lunge feeding,  Great White sharks, dolphins, etc. etc. I have yet to see a whale breach, and I've gone out about eight times which is privilege enough. I just love this state I've adopted as my home. It is truly glorious, and I'm so glad that my children are California-bred.

Oliver and Joe made this short film that they titled Monterey Breach: A Short Drone Film. It blew my mind so much that I think I'm going to have to lie about how I tried to get Oliver to buy that thing for years because I just knew he was going to make something great of himself with it. I told Joe that when he's a famous filmmaker, I'm going to tell everyone that he made short films with Oliver in my little bungalow long ago.

Make it full screen, turn up the volume and be wowed: