Lately my eye has been drawn to images of loneliness. Like this guy who sits on our railing and coos all day long. For a long time I thought I was hearing owls but then I caught him in the act.

According to the experts, owls hoot for a variety of reasons but the mourning dove, well, he’s just horny. According to my husband, who also loves to postulate about animal behavior, this guy’s beloved mate was chased into a window by a hawk. She broke her neck and died and he’s not horny; he’s in deep mourning and will be for the rest of his life.

These two guys are not cooing at each other. The man on the left is wondering if the man on the right is the person responsible for upending his well-ordered life. Not on purpose but as the result of poor timing; the wrong word said at the wrong time. In the above scene, for over four minutes there’s no dialogue or music. Just scenes of a wasteland through the eyes of a doomed man. And then Cary Grant (as Roger Thornhill) crosses the damn road and the action begins again.

Next to our house is a vacant lot with a lone birdbath. When we first moved in there was a teepee village next to the birdbath only we never caught a glimpse of any children at play. But we had nine to five jobs and teen age children to keep us hopping and thus no time to get to know the neighbors.

Then one day I was gardening when I heard a child’s voice: “You’re not supposed to go barefoot in the garden.” I looked over to see a girl of about eight draped in the fence. “Where’s Betty?” she asked. Betty was the previous owner of our house. I explained that Betty had remarried and moved away. “I liked Betty,” she said in a way that made it clear she could never warm up to someone stupid enough to go barefoot in the garden. I didn’t find out until years later that the little girl’s mother was dying of cancer and that Betty was someone she could confide in.

I never saw her again. She abandoned the teepee village. Years went by, the teepees fell apart and someone started dumping tree trimmings on the lot. The swimming pool behind the house next door filled with algae and the property became run over with weeds and overgrown bushes. However every summer someone comes by to trim the weeds around the birdbath and where the teepees once stood.

At some point this little maple will probably grow large enough to disguise the rather odd architectural feature behind it. Right now, it just looks lonely to me. Which is okay. Far by better to be lonely and know you have a purpose than surrounded and lost.

All great and precious things are lonely.”

John Steinbeck

When told he is always welcome to return home to live, my charming son makes a face. “That would be like returning to the pits of meaningless despair.” I can’t say it makes my day but I can understand.

If your childhood home came up for sale and you could afford to buy it, would you? I know two people who inherited a childhood home and decided not to sell. They’re actually living in the houses they grew up in and neither had what I would describe as a “happy” childhood. Divorces, premature deaths, alcoholism, insanity. The works… all enclosed in cramped houses with faulty plumbing, aging wallpaper and moldy basements. Perhaps they wanted to return to the familiar, no matter how filled with sour memories. Or perhaps they hoped to form happy memories to drive away the demons.

Recently my nephew was in the market for a new house. One of the listings that he found and shared with his father, was the house we’d spent the majority of our childhood in. Even though my nephew had been there when he was a child, he hadn’t recognized it. Will he buy it? Who knows.

I know I’m in the minority. From the quotes I found on line, most folks think of home as a welcoming, warm place full of wonderful memories.

After you leave home, you may find yourself feeling homesick, even if you have a new home that has nicer wallpaper and a more efficient dishwasher than the home in which you grew up.”

Lemony Snicket

“You can’t go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory.”

John Steinbeck

“You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, back home to romantic love, back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame, back home to exile, to escape to Europe and some foreign land, back home to lyricism, to singing just for singing’s sake, back home to aestheticism, to one’s youthful idea of ‘the artist’ and the all-sufficiency of ‘art’ and ‘beauty’ and ‘love,’ back home to the ivory tower, back home to places in the country, to the cottage in Bermuda, away from all the strife and conflict of the world, back home to the father you have lost and have been looking for, back home to someone who can help you, save you, ease the burden for you, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time–back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.”

Thomas Wolfe

Whenever I hear about a mass shooting, particularly a mass shooting in a school, or church or even a grocery store and then I read about all those politicians who defend owning military grade assault weapons as if it’s a god-given right, I feel so damn old. God plopped you on this earth, naked and defenseless with absolutely no rights.

I guess that’s why this song by the Beatles (George Harrison) always resonates with me at times like this.

It’s been a long, long, long time
How could I ever have lost you
When I loved you
It took a long, long, long time
Now I’m so happy I found you
How I love you
So many days I was searching
So many tears I was wasting, oh, oh
I could see you, be you
How can I ever misplace you?
How I want you, how I love you
You know that I need you
Hope I love you

It’s a simple song, written for the so-called “White Album” toward the end of the Beatles. At that time, George was coming into his own as a songwriter while Paul and John were feuding and pouting and pouting and feuding – which is understandable considering the stresses they were under..

Thus I was surprised to read that one night, in the midst of all that craziness, somehow all four Beatles managed to make it through 67 takes of Long, Long, Long without killing each other. 67 takes! That must have been some night. The result is a piece of music that critics have praised as “a touching token of an exhausted, relieved reconciliation with God” with a “weird spectral ending.” (They accidentally recorded the sound of an empty wine bottle rattling on top of a speaker and decided to leave it in, along with Harrison’s “palpable spiritual wailing.”)

George was talking about the life force we are all a part of. Animals, plants, the oceans and rivers. We can’t break the connection but it’s easy to misplace and if that happens, time drags on forever.

You’ve probably seen the above image many times but I really don’t think it can be shared enough, do you?

**”The music of deep silence,” is how one Rolling Stone music critic referred to Long, Long, Long

We had a whopper of a storm yesterday which lingered into this morning. The winds sounded like jumbo jets flying low over house and the rain went on and on and on.

Around three in the afternoon we lost all contact with the outside world. The power went out as did the internet. It’s happened before and it’s something we’re prepared for with plenty of battery and solar powered lamps. And when I say plenty of batteries, we buy them Costco bulk style.

Luckily we own one of the oldest Wolf stoves in the world. We have to light the pilots with matches (also something we buy in bulk) but it sure is nice on a cold, dark and stormy night to have a hot meal. Mr.Wolf Stove can’t do anything special and is a bitch to clean but I’m not getting rid of him until they make me.

The most unnerving thing that happened during the storm was losing cell phone service. I didn’t realize how much like the old transistor radios those things have become. I was a fool to get rid of the ones we had.

I probably wouldn’t have gone out this morning as many trees are down in my neighborhood and on the local highway but it was my last regularly scheduled physical therapy session. Hurrah! I wasn’t about to miss that! And when the clouds did part, boy oh boy was Mt Diablo a glorious sight. A symphony of greens.

A Poem by Duke Miller

You’re in a shitty African hospital with wet, moldy walls or is it bombed out Bosnia
No it’s somewhere on a bad road, and you are hurt and have lost track of time
You make it out of bed and throw up on the floor
Lean against the wall
You’re dried up like fish fillet in the sun
You notice somebody in the hall looking at you.

His face is twisted and blank like he’s looking for a mask
He walks away with a sheet covering his body
You think it must be Halloween
Then you leave your room and see a light at the end of the hall
You walk in the dark, a candle or two around, and the place is quiet
The night is hiding from the war
At the end of the hall there’s a room and you look inside and see a new friend
A companion in this fucked up place

He raises his head and his eyes light up
You are hope for him, a way to get better, a conversation about something peaceful
You touch his arm, he’s burning up, and he mutters backward words, echoes swirling away
You see things in his face … his parents, a town, a girl, a different life
They are in the very back of his eyes, living in soft light, like the softness of your heart, and it is all there at the back of his eyes, and you know he is never going to get out of bed

You are hollow, tired, an old man beating his fists against the wall
You walk back to your room, step in your vomit, climb into bed
You dream, as if you were someplace else and things are soft, grey mush, and you attach your hand to the soft beat of your heart and the soft breathing of the guy down the hall, and in its own way, the dream is timeless, formless, and unlike him, you will live another day

A poem by Duke Miller … pictures by Jan

As I’ve mentioned before, for someone who’s not religious I have in my possession, a lot of Bibles. I know how I obtained most of them. But this one just kind of dropped out of the sky:

In case you’ve never seen one before, this is a Gideon’s Bible. A Gideon’s Bible contains only the New Testament, Psalms and a WHERE TO FIND HELP, When section. The actual story of Gideon is in the Old Testament which is a little strange but whatever.

The initial goal of the Gideon’s (a group of Protestant men who must be over 21 and either a businessman or a professional) was to distribute these bibles to hotels, hospitals, jails, reformatories, schools — any place where there might be a soul who needs saving.

The Gideons were founded in the late 1800s by a couple of traveling salesmen or so the story goes. Their purpose was to provide solace for those far from home and on their own. I could applaud their efforts except for this:

Why is the American Flag inside the cover? I’m one of those folks who firmly believes the United States is not (and should never be) a “Christian” nation. We should adhere to certain core values of Christianity – charity, honesty and compassion – but those are the core values of most other religions. I wish they would have said “The Bible was written by groups of men claiming to have had revelations from a supreme being who’s called by many different names. Many people find comfort and strength from various passages of this book. May you be one of those people.” Not “you’re a sinner but here’s your chance to be saved.” The Gideon’s are still around but there aren’t too many of them. I suppose not allowing women, Catholics or union members to join might have something to do with that!

Meanwhile we are having a brief break before a string of storms (the atmospheric river) moves in. When the sun does break through and hit the green hills, it’s gorgeous. However, those hills are closed to hikers … too many mudslides. I hope wherever you are the weather is a wee bit dryer! I feel like I’m about to sprout gills.