morning trek

6:30 am ..I check out the news and weather online. Watch Hayley Williams sing on YouTube. Feel my spirits lifting. Have coffee and a smoothie on the deck ..watch my thoughts pick up speed. Put the top down on the alfa and zip to the shore. I start at the bird refuge by the lagoon  ..adjust my trekking poles and take long strides to the bluff overlooking Butterfly Beach. I pass through azalea, bougainvillea and lantana. Watch a hummingbird freeze in midair to check me out. I can feel the breeze from its wings on my face. I thank her for the kind gesture and she passes. I look out over the edge ..glassy conditions, emerald green water. I think next time I’m wearing my swim shorts instead.

Lucidity Festival

Rainbow Girls
Lucidity Festival

Santa Barbara  CA

Shoreline

I down a smoothie and go walking in the early morning fog along the shore. It’s my favorite time ..just before burnoff. Very soothing. I pass by tai chi and yoga classes in the park. Very cool. At the end of the wharf where there’s nothing separating me from the water I watch low flying pelicans appear out of the mist then disappear again. The water is smooth and olive green. Very full and very still. Massive. Leaving, I promise to rent myself a three-wheel bike next time. I’m in the market for one anyway.

Urban Trek

A big walk begins at my doorstep. The first stop .. a stone passageway that runs around back of the high school stadium. It’s not only a short-cut ..it has rails that are the same height as the bar in a dance studio. Perfect for stretching my piriformis and softening my ride. On Figueroa Street someone honks and gives me a thumbs-up. I wave but have no idea who it is. I narrow it down by women who know I’m recovering and have a bright smile. Pat springs to mind. I pass by Andrea’s place but I know she’s at work. Must remind myself to send her an IM. At Wells Fargo they have table and chairs and bottled water. Good place for a pit-stop. I tank-up ..begin writing this screed and plan my next move. The men’s room at the court house. I’m sitting in the mural room chatting with a girl and her parents from LA . They’re on a college tour ..Mount St. Marys ..Occidental ..UCSB. Her preference ..University of Utah. I gather she wants a little more distance between her and her parents. I return by way of the high school ..stretch and sit in the stands. A tune fills my head ..recovery is going well .. feels like downtown is getting closer and closer.

Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf

We’re sitting outside the Coffee Bean on State Street at noon on Friday. A taxi pulls up and an attractive young Asian lady with smart Samsonite luggage gets out and heads south. I was sitting here last Friday around this time and watched her do the same thing. I didn’t give it much thought ..figuring she just arrived for the weekend ..possibly on the Amtrak from LA ..caught a cab downtown and was heading to a nearby hotel. (I frequently meet friends from LA at the train station on Friday afternoon). Now I’m like wait a minute ..there are no hotels nearby. The closest one is the Californian two blocks away. Why wouldn’t she just take a taxi there ..? I point this out to Anna who suggests the possibility of a romantic rendezvous. I stand up to see where she’s going but she’s already disappeared. “That’s odd” I go “..she couldn’t have gone far ..and we would have seen someone pick her up, no?” Anna says she could have ducked into Pascucci’s. Sure enough, I pass through and spot her having coffee with another Asian woman. O.K ..I figure her friend will take over from here and return to the table. We revise our theory to “visiting her sister ..perhaps a sorority sister.” Every Friday at the same time though ..? Seems like something more work-related. We consider the possibility she’s an airline stewardess on a layover. 

“Why don’t you just ask ..(?)”
 “No way ..you ask.” 
 “Not sure I want to get in her face.” 
 “OK ..we’ll meet here same time next week and see what happens.”
 “Deal.” 
“Someone is probably watching us right now going ‘are they co-workers ..? husband and wife ..? lovers cheating on their husband and wife ..?’ ” 
“And what do you suppose that someone is up to?” 

Now we’re speculating on the subject of what aliens, looking at us through a high-power telescope, must think we’re up to.

da Vinci code

zen fortune cookie: I try and act as if everyone is a teacher who has something to offer. I get this from Leonardo da Vinci who once said: “It should not be hard to stop and look into the stains of walls, or ashes of a fire, or clouds, or like places, and, if you consider them well, find really marvelous ideas.” So, I know a writer  at UCSB. Her work is brilliant. Her ideas are fascinating and she’s hell of a lot smarter than me. Yet she’s a terrible speaker. She rambles incoherently and interrupts constantly ..repeating things like “uh, you know” and “like, I mean”  Now I’m not trying to be critical or anything .. it just makes me feel like I want to reach out and help. But I decide against it. I’m no great speaker or writer or anything. So I remind myself to clean up my own speech. Try changing that instead of her.

muddy waters

All I want is you / will you be my bride / Take me by the hand and stand by my side /All I want is you / will you stay with me? / Hold me in your arms and sway me like the sea.

Downtown

Breakfast at Pacific Crêpes then next door to the Lost Horizon bookstore. I find the complete set of diaries by Anaïs Nin. Score! Next we duck into ‘Just Play Music’ where I can’t find anything by Sigur Ró. Oh well. Now I'm chatting with Marcel at the Hemp Store. He says Serena’s sister went to visit her in Colorado ..and I’m thinking that it must have been a while ago since Serena’s living in Flagstaff now. The Territory Ahead has vanished and nothing appears in its place. The Church of Scientology is still around the corner though. Something’s missing. There used to be a colorful fountain with a waterfall at the entrance to Paseo Nuevo by Banana Republic. There’s a Brat House with German waitresses now. Admission is playing at a nearby theater. We duck in. It was OK. I enjoyed watching Tina Fey.

At sunrise

Cloud  Hidden
Whereabouts  Unknown

way home

Come down off your throne and leave your body alone / Somebody must change / You are the reason I've been waiting so long / Somebody holds the key / Well I'm near the end and I just thank God for time / And I'm wasted and I can't find my way home          ~   Blind Faith

Josie Hyde

Lately I’ve been noticing how things that come to mind are usually the most likely, useful or routine things ..definitely not the ‘world of possibilities’ I would like to see. Walking along State Street today, I watch a woman in full burka enter a fashion boutique with her husband and child. “They’ll be out in a flash” I suspect. What happens ..? They walk out ten minutes later carrying packages. Farther down the road, I hear what sounds like a Mozart piano concerto. Must be coming from Bloomingdale’s or a coffee shop. Turns out to be a waif sitting on the sidewalk playing an electronic keyboard. I sit and listen. When she’s done I tell her it sounds like she’s ‘classically trained’. I mean it as a compliment. “No, I play by ear.” She says “You mean you learned to play like that by listening to CDs  ..?” I ask. “Also by channeling” she replies. She tells me she’s been playing this way since she was four years old. Tonight I’m attending a multi-media performance by Josie Hyde describing her experience at an ‘ayahuasca’ ceremony in the Andes. However, this is not just about her experience ..this is the experience itself !   I feel intoxicated. Like a hole has been punched through the night sky and I catch a glimpse of a  universe of possibilities.

California moon

moon through the eucalyptus over my deck last night

winter coast

The sun is shining 
I step into high tide 
below Shoreline Park 
to see a pod of dolphins 
playing out in the kelp 
and it’s moments like these 
when I don’t believe things 
can get  a lot better than this

Beatrix Kiddo

I take a pleasant 4-mile trek from my house to the Martial Arts and Family Fitness Center where I’ve come to see Jen D take her test for the black belt in Hapkido. I arrive and take a seat beside a mat that covers an entire floor of a large industrial-looking room. About halfway through the adult program .. Jen takes a blow to the solar plexus while sparring that staggers her. She taps-out and leaves the mat where she quickly recovers and returns for the next drill. After an hour and a half of takedown drills and spinning kicks designed to disarm her opponent ..her final feat is a flying sidekick, which you have to be there to believe. She takes a running start to gain forward momentum .. goes airborne over three barrels ..and kicks a board that’s three inches thick with the sole of her right foot .. breaking it in half with a resounding crack. It’s not like she has feet made of steel or anything ..but she’s learned to deliver ‘energy’ - created by her weight and momentum - to the soles of her feet at the exact moment of impact. She passes with flying colors. Her Grandmaster tells her to drop the red belt she’s wearing and then he ceremoniously wraps a black belt around her. Now, Jen conveys feelings mostly through her face, which at this moment is beaming red with ecstasy and a smile so large it lights up the room. 

Jen D aka Beatrix Kiddo

The path

to Haskells

record collector

The Santa Ynez Valley

 /  But my blue eyes cannot see  / That their real hue's probably green / I should keep records of these things   /  And I'll know what yesterday brings

Sunrise

from Lizards Mouth trail ..!
Santa Barbara

Crime Scene Investigation

I’ve got my trekking poles and I’m heading down side streets to Trader Joe’s on Milpas. I pass by Tom and Michaels’ but I don’t see them around and I don’t want to stop and break my stride. I see women’s softball practice at the high school and I do stop and break my stride. The shortstop has a mean throw to first. Farther along I see a poster for a play at the Marjorie Luke Theater saying Crime Scene Investigation – Fairy Tale Unit ‘where the justice system is represented by two separate but equally ridiculous groups’ ..which makes me laugh. Sounds pretty satirical for middle school. I drop by Vera’s salon and say ‘hi’ just before a group of kids come bursting through the door. Puts a smile on my face. I wind up buying more than my pack will hold at Trader Joe’s so a crew member calls a taxi. Now I’m standing at a bus stop waiting for a taxi, the irony of which is not lost on me. Next time this happens I’m taking the bus!

Further on

The remaining members of the Grateful Dead are playing at the Bowl tonight. Fortunately they’re the key members. I can smell ganja from my deck. I grab my hiking poles and head toward Anapamu to watch the revelry. Now I’m part of the revelry. I’m sitting on my neighbor’s lawn with some kids from out of town ..Andy, Emilie, Jeff and Zak. Andy, 25, has shoulder-length hair and a beard. He looks kind of like George Harrison in the day. He's been following the reformed Dead since 2005. He knows a lot more about them than I do ..including their inception-to-date history and current constitution. He tells me who’s playing tonight .. how he first saw them on tour with a guitarist from the Allmann Brothers band ..and who the members were when I was following them in the early seventies. He also knows more about the neuro-active properties of hallucinogens than I do. Something I kinda’ thought was my area of expertise. I tell him I’m looking for marijuana that’s high in cannabidiols (CBD’s). He tells me I’m looking for Cannabis indica. It’s got a higher CBD-to-THC concentration than Cannabis sativa. He asks me what I used to do for a living. I tell him I once worked in the field of regenerative medicine. He tells me how current studies show that psilocybin facilitates neuro-regeneration by flooding the brain with information. Sounds reasonable I say. Then Zak tells me about studies that show how it was probably part of our evolution ..responsible for the development of the neocortex. Our ancestors ingested the ’shrooms they found growing on piles of dung. I’m impressed. I tell them I think kids like them are the future of this planet. Before I leave they hand me a package. At home I open it and I find a pipe packed with hashish. Well, bless their sweet little hearts ..!

Crazy cat peekin through a lace bandanna / Like a one-eyed cheshire, like a diamond-eye jack /  A leaf of all colors plays a golden-string fiddle / To a double-e waterfall over my back.

West Coast E Street

 

She’s still surfing Lower Trestles ~ Orange sunshine always burned in her veins ~ Now I hear she's got a house in Fairview ~ And a style she’s trying to maintain ~ Well, if she wants to see me ~ You can tell her that I'm easily found ~ There’s a spot beneath the bridge ~ Under the  tracks on the edge of town