Suprasternal

The birds are singing me back this morning to last year and an apartment filled with slanted light, their song on air through plastic blinds, the drift, a breeze and quiet. I found a Buddha necklace curled in a little box on my dresser, pulled it out and remembered it falling apart, worn by water and too many knots, but I loved it so. The chain is fabric and beaded and fell apart in my hands even now, leaving the medal with its tiny notched saint sitting cross-legged in my palm. I threaded a pink ribbon through it and tied it around my neck. He (she) sits slant in the shallow hollow between clavicles, the suprasternal notch. That sounds like the moon or a star, a hand at my throat, smooth dark places that take touch. I sing words, let go notch. Aster a flower, the n celestial, something with wings, sound in body, shadow and light.

Four Things and a Quote

Pacific Ocean, The Port of Los Angeles, Snow-topped Mountains

He slid further down as it reached his shoulders, in a kind of nirvana not based on freedom from desires but on attainment.

James Salter, from his novel All That Is 

 I.

It was a rough week because of Sophie and isn't it usually about Sophie and while I've written here in (on) air for years about these days, these rough days, I came up for it (air) today lying on my back rocking with the boat my face to the sun. The word rock. The word lull. The boat rocks and lulls me, the expanse of gray, a bit of blue. Once we'd passed the lighthouse, the slick seals on the buoys, the drone of the motor and the wind in my face, my hair whipped, I'm whipped, god but I'm always so damn whipped. I held the hand of the man that I love, he gives to me (air) and the whales do that thing with air, the word blow, and we stand there (in air) and wait for the rise of it, the arch of gray over gray (a bit of blue) before it slips back under, last the tail. The word fluke. 



II.

Two men in a donut shop drinking coffee and eating crullers. You know what war is? the older white one asked the younger black one. The other man knew it wasn't a question for him to answer. He waited. It's the failure of imagination, the man answered.



III.

I read this somewhere and wrote it down, without attribution. I'm sorry for that. Birding is a way of heightened, finely tuned seeing.


IV.

Labels. I pulled into a crowded gas station at sunset tonight in San Pedro, made room for a man leaving. Your lights! I said. Thank you, baby, he said. He was bald. He was black. The woman at the tank next to me was cleaning garbage out of her car. She wore a head scarf. She was Muslim. A man walked up to her and remarked on her scarf. Insulted her. He was bald. He was Hispanic. I said Knock it off. He looked at me, cocked his head and walked away.  She nodded her head, got into her car and drove away. I have long dark hair. I am white.

Notes On Whale Watching

I was literally awestruck on Saturday when I went out on a boat for a seven-hour whale watching tour with some friends off the coast of Ventura. I don't think any amount of writing could do justice to what I saw, so I'll post some notes I took off and on, in-between sunning and rocking and gazing out into the blue. I took over 700 photos, so I'll post a few of my favorites. We saw at least 18 humpback whales, one blue whale, one Minke, multiple sea lions, more than 6,000 dolphins,  countless birds, including several rare species and a bait boil where birds flew around feeding amongst a pod of dolphins and multiple humpbacks. It was wild.

The tell-tale (tail?) stench of whale breath: invisible, fishy, something rotten
The story of Jonah who was swallowed and coughed back up.
Had he displeased God?

On the ocean, my capacity for wonder is as large as the blue whale -- the largest creature on earth.

Memories of sitting with Sophie as a baby under the blue whale in the main lobby of New York's Natural History Museum. Back in the days of constant crisis, the shadowed space below the hanging whale was one of the few where I felt at peace, where Sophie quieted down. We both looked upward in blue light. 

Twenty-one years out, and I'm in the ocean with one.
.
Four breaths and then the tail and then the dive back down. Ten minutes later, four breaths and then the tail and then the dive back down. 
Over and over

Cloud hovers low over the arches and monoliths of Anacapa Island

How does condensation take so many forms and so much emotional weight?

Van Morrison's "Purple Heather" an echo 

A lonely wooden tower, there you go, lassie go

This morning. Gray blue light of dawn bleeding into room. 

Hesitation. The rhythm of what will come is set by passivity. 

I am drawn to patience. Like held breath

like water

The color blue

cerulean

sky into sea

blue bleeds into blue

Does blue bleed? 

So I don't forget

I can contain my desire despite it seeming uncontainable

The rocking of the boat is constant, and I am never sick.

It's like love

the making of it.

The female body as container.
Desire
The space inside that is filled.
The whale tail and the female uterus

Slick as a dolphin
No amount of cliche could contain it
A container for desire

 

The audacity of the sea lion

The body as water

The body as vessel, as container, as passageway

The grounding of rock and ancient arches 
My tilted sense of wonder