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

An Incongruous Mermaid***

I started Early - Took my Dog -
And visited the Sea -
The Mermaids in the Basement
Came out to look at me -

And Frigates - in the Upper floor
Extended Hempen Hands -
Presuming Me to be a Mouse -
Aground - upon the Sands

But no Man moved Me - till the Tide
Went past my simple Shoe -
And past my Apron - and my Belt
And past my Bodice - too -

And made as He would eat me up -
As wholly as a Dew
Upon a Dandelion's Sleeve -
And then - I started - too -

And He - He followed - close behind -
I felt His Silver Heel
Upon my Ankle - Then my Shoes
Would overflow with Pearl -

Until We met the Solid Town -
No One He seemed to know -
And bowing - with a Mighty look -
At me - The Sea withdrew

Emily Dickinson, c. 1862




***I posted this years ago, and I just love it so I'm posting it again.

More Notes

Helicopters are circling and the night breeze is gentle on my bare shoulders. There might have been an earthquake an hour ago. I do love Los Angeles.

It would be nice if I could lie down on the floor, kick and scream, like a two-year-old, if I could spit it's not fair like a seven-year-old, if I could sneer my life sucks like a fifteen-year-old, or moan pray that I die like an eighty-five-year-old. Instead it's all breathe in, breathe out, rueful smiles, looking for angels in trees, being mindful of the goosebumps on my skin, reaching for ghosts.

Death and Sex, Tigers and Tightrope Walkers

The first dead person I saw was my grandmother in her open coffin when I was twenty-five years old. That doesn't count the shadow of a dead person I might have seen when I was sixteen years old, the flash of blonde hair through the windshield, the eyes, before our cars were irretrievably smashed together. Like I said, I'm not sure that I really saw this or imagined it, afterward, as I recovered. That is another story. I walked up to my grandmother's coffin holding my father's hand tightly. I've never seen a dead person, I said to him, right before we reached his mother and bent over to kiss her cold cheek. I know he wouldn't have said it then, but at some point afterward my father said, How could you never have seen a dead person? I probably saw scores of dead people before I was half your age! That photo above is some dead relative of mine. The little girl, perched on the stool, is my aunt, the woman behind her my grandmother.Perhaps that is my great-grandfather. Evidently, posing with your dead relatives was a common thing in southern Italian culture. And my father apparently posed in much the same way as my aunt, many times during his childhood. They were accustomed to death.

When I show this photo to people, they peer at it and wonder if it's real. Death. We don't like to think about it very often, we do our damn best to avoid it, and when it comes we're shocked, shocked. Sex and death. We're shocked by both. And we certainly don't write about it until we do.

I am an animal today, pacing my cage or circling the tightrope walker above me. She doesn't see me, doesn't remember how she shed her tutu, plunged from the wire, naked, and wriggled into this skin. How do I get back? Where is the Master of Ceremonies? Sometimes we need the proverbial provocation -- the stick, the prod, a crack of the whip, the leap, a roar, talons unsheathed, the naked body devoured or devouring the beast.

It's hot

When you're squinting even in sunglasses and the temperature's in the triple digits, when the wind is blowing hot and dry and you're feeling angry for no reason, it's time for something to happen. In the south you'd lie down someplace cool or in the shade, sweat beading on your neck. Languor. Out here, in the desert, you bare your skin and feel flayed. You want to make trouble, kick up some dust, strip the steam out of steamy, expose yourself. Even the crows are silent, leaving you to murder.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being***

to Sandra

So, in lieu of elaborating on just why I'm in the glummest of all glum moods (Sophie is sick and I'm at home, the constant sound of construction on my street as people build mega-mansions and apparently dig for oil because the ruckus is outrageous, and the unbloggable), I'm going to cut and paste an email I got today, one of many that I get nearly every day pertaining to -- well -- see for yourself.

Hi!

We have an article about balancing pregnancy and a healthy sex life. Is that something you would consider for your site?

There is also an upcoming adult sex education event that focuses on a 50 Shades of Grey lifestyle.

Thanks!

Sarah

Reader, would you like it if I hosted this article here at a moon, worn as if it had been a shell? Could this be the universe responding to my intentions? Yours?

Responses welcome.























***One of my dear friends asked me what the source of my glum mood was today or whether it was just the unbearable lightness of being. That question made me laugh, then remember my beloved Daniel Day Lewis as Tomas in the movie version of Kundera's novel and then inspired this goofy post. And I'm a little less glum. So thank you, S.

Skinny as a pencil

I need to get back to reading more intensely because it's only through reading that writing flies.

An article in a magazine on the plane about memoir and sex led to an afternoon in a hot apartment in Nashville, being pushed back onto the closet floor, the hems of my dresses brushing his head, my face. A bed is a boat, and we drifted. Another bed, white, in a bungalow on a Caribbean island, and when I opened my eyes, butterflies were a reproach to when I had closed them, angry. Asian whores on your day off. A drive-in movie theater in upstate New York showing a porn film, moans blasting out of speakers twisted. Mosquitoes ate us alive, laughing until we finally rolled up the window. We rolled up the windows, slapped the sluggish, blood splat on my thigh, your shin, screams (the ecstasy) muffled. At one point there were only windows to remember, the one at the end of a black leather couch where I knelt, naked: branches stripped bare under a lead sky tracing the panes. Oh, I forgot. Much earlier, a hotel room, and you, skinny as a pencil -- every part -- quick!  planes taking off, a piano, a telephone out of reach, a pulsating flag, stoned.

Enough, for now.

French intellectuals, lesbians, red vines and me

So, I don't think I'm ready for a lesbian relationship, yet, but the movie was pretty decent for a French intellectual one. Just in case you've forgotten, I was a French major in college and while I found myself ever deeper into the commitment of it -- advanced linguistics! idiomatic expressions! medieval poetry! the existentialists! Pascal! Baudelaire! -- I was unable to extricate myself even as I found all the reading and the writing miserable. French literature never did get me, or pull me in or dig down deep into my soul, with the possible exception of Sartre's Nausee that I read while swinging in a hammock on the front porch of the shack I lived in at the time in North Carolina. That book actually made me feel nauseous which I guess is as good a reaction as any to a piece of literature. As for French movies, with the possible exception of Jules et Jim and those Manon des Sources ones, as well as an early infatuation with Gerard Depardieu (who's gone utterly bonkers, evidently, but when he was young -- oh, when he was young!), I'm hard put to remember a single one that didn't make me squirm uncomfortably. Maybe it's the peasant Italian in me or something, but the intellectual pretensions of the French irritate the hell out of me, and and even sexual couplings, in French, leave me cold because they seem so conscious and studied. Even Last Tango in Paris appealed to me because I adore Marlon Brando and there's no real talking in it other than get the butter. Does that make sense? In any case, Blue is the Warmest Color has some of the most graphic sex scenes that I've ever seen in a movie theater (I won't tell you about the time I went to a porn drive-in with a boyfriend and batted away mosquitoes that kept flying through the car window that we had to leave open to hear the moaning of the actors on the big screen), and it was weird to sit and watch them, alone, with a big bucket of popcorn and some Red Vines. The two stars were beautiful and really good actors, the story was intensely romantic (the French did invent the expression coup de foudre), but there was an air-brushed quality to it, too, and I was aware the entire time that a man filmed it. Because one of the women characters was an Artist, there was some requisite art criticism which I find unbearably painful in any language, but there was some great smart talk about literature, too. But those sex scenes -- whew! Long and -- well -- long. There were many lesbians in the movie theater, and I felt like a big dork, to tell you the truth, but it would have been worse if the theater were filled with a bunch of heterosexual males.

Anyhoo. That's the extent of my review of Blue is the Warmest Color, and I think I'll stick with the Javier Bardem fantasies.

As an aside, the photo above is Oliver and Henry who took a Metrolink train down to Orange County to visit some friends yesterday while their mother went to the French intellectual lesbian movie and ate a bucket of popcorn and a package of Red Vines.

Again, Life is a Loaded Gun

I've posted this before and was in need of it.

Fan yourself.

A Rambling Post on Sex, Seizures, Medical Marijuana, High School, Dyslexia, Driving and Death

I think I might have stunned everyone, including myself, into silence with yesterday's post. Musing on sex, marriage and relationships just isn't included in my subtitle, and while there were a whole lot of readers, there were very few comments. Just so you know, it might have been true and it might have been fiction. David Sedaris calls it "realish."

Today, I've been driving all over the dang city -- down to Long Beach for Part II of Oliver's foray into the Irlen Method. What you see above is Oliver trying out different colored screens that will be fitted over clear lenses and will, hopefully, help him to read and address some of his learning problems. I nearly teared up at one point when he began reading quite fluently from the text in front of him. He was the happiest I've seen him in a long time, and we both have high hopes that this school year will be much improved. He picked out a badass pair of Ray Bans that will be fitted with the colored lenses, and as soon as we get them, I'll take a photo and show ya'll the new O. I might even assign him the remainder of War and Peace that I never got to before my fiftieth birthday.

On another note, Henry has enjoyed his first four days of high school, and when I drove up to the school to pick up the carpool this afternoon for the first time, I was struck by so much youthful beauty parading around the campus that it was nearly blinding. The girls all seemed impossibly long and smooth-legged, the boys wide-shouldered and ridiculously handsome. It was 100 degrees in the valley today, and by all appearances, high school is smokin' hot as they say. I don't know what the hell has happened since I was in high school, but I do not remember this at all.

Sophie has been home for a couple of days with a bad cold and cough. She had so many seizures the other day, before she showed symptoms of the cold, that I wondered if her relatively useless medications (Vimpat and Onfi) had completely plateaued and were now utterly useless. I also wondered if it was the Blue Moon, and then I wondered if it was the beginning of the end, and then I spent a fair amount of time irritated that I'm no closer to getting and trying the high CBD tincture of medical marijuana which leads me to truly dark and despairing thoughts that, after having had them off and on for nearly twenty years, causes me to completely dissociate from any emotion attached to dying, death. Does that make sense?

How do we do it? We just do.

Saturday

Oliver is selling lemonade at the corner today for $.75 a glass. He squeezed the lemons last night at 11:00 and made simple syrup with The Husband. He wondered if Henry might go door-to-door and take orders and then deliver, but Henry, being Henry, said, Nah, I don't like working like that. So, he's in his room, playing video games or watching violent movies with lots of sex.

Just kidding.

Sophie is having a sleep-fest which she does periodically and which I believe is her body's way to cope with a period of particularly brutal and multiple seizures. I periodically poke my head over the door and watch to see whether her chest is rising and falling, and then I feel somewhat sheepish to still be doing that and then I realize that it's perfectly reasonable given our situation and Sophie's troubles and then I wonder, for a bit, if I'm irrevocably damaged and then I realize that we all are in one way or another but that life just keeps on blowing its breezes and throwing its lemons and pushing out mint.

It's another beautiful day in Los Angeles. I'm going to finish The Interestings and start on The Mouse-Proof Kitchen by Saira Shah. It's a novel about a couple living in southern France with a disabled child, and I believe the writer herself has a child with seizures. I know that someone (maybe here?) told me about Saira Shah a long time ago, and I pre-ordered the book on Amazon. It was downloaded to my Kindle the other day, and just this morning I read a review. I also might finish spray-painting two metal chairs that I picked up at a yard sale and that I'm working on, slowly, ever so slowly, because, really, I'm more like Henry when it comes to that kind of thing and would rather say Nah, I don't like working like that. As for sex and violence, I prefer the former.

Reader, how is your Saturday shaping up and what are you reading?

Parenting, The Internet, Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll

I know it's probably not in good taste to post a photo of myself in front of the vodka display at my local grocery store, however facetious, but I just wanted to let ya'll know that this is what I look like after an emotional discussion with my teenager** about the internet, Facebook, bad language, sex, drugs and rock and roll. Those of you who have a child with severe disabilities AND a child or two or three or more without might think with a teeny tinesy part of yourself that you're going to get a pass, perhaps, on the more uncomfortable parts of parenting a normal teenager. There might be a teensy tinesy part of yourself that thinks the Universe is sometimes ordered or that you have a divine sort of perspective, especially given the shit you've been doing or going through as an extreme parent. You might even think -- with a teensy tinesy part of yourself -- that the good lord above will give you a break and your non-disabled children are going to be a piece of cake. At least I did. Well, a teensy tinesy part of myself.

Call me silly, call me naive -- hell -- call me an incipient alcoholic.




**No need to feel alarmed. All is well and neither of my boys are in any trouble whatsoever (other than the damn laundry basket filled with their clothes is still sitting on their bedroom floor and not put away).

A walk to the sea

I turned left and walked to the ocean this afternoon. This is what I saw:

It was so beautiful -- rugged and lonely and really just perfect. I glanced to the right of that driftwood and noticed, quite suddenly, that two people were lying on the beach, and I peered a bit closer, looking much like this:

and realized that they were -- well --

ahem.

Yes I said yes I will, Yes.

Reading at The Hotel California

So, summer is in full swing around here, and we're in pajamas until noon and also feeling guilty that we're not at the beach or outside or something. I'm going to have to call the kabosh on reading War and Peace. I just can't. I thought about hauling it to Canada next week, but my hardback copy of Colum McCann's new novel Transatlantic is far more seductive. The thing is, I'm having a very hard time even reading the Russian names in War and Peace, and even harder the vast passages of military -- well -- stuff. I am skimming those vast passages, much as I did the ones about the physiology of the whale in Moby Dick, and I keep waiting for the good stuff to happen, for romance to flourish or for some Russian pathos to evolve. Quitting it nearly two months before my fiftieth birthday gives me time to maybe pick it up again, doesn't it? I am a fickle lover, I suppose, and like I said Colum McCann is crooking his seductive Irish finger at me, as well as Edna O'Brien. I might just want to take the cigarette out of her pretty mouth and take a drag on it myself. I think an Irish menage a trois is far preferable to flying a Russian solo, don't you?

Reader, what are you reading?

Boy Conversation, Number 2,349,671

I picked up The Brothers and My Carpool Kid this afternoon early from school because it's Tuesday, and for some reason that I don't yet understand despite having been a part of the almighty LAUSD in some capacity or another for nearly fifteen years, there's always one day a week in the LAUSD where the kids are dismissed early so that the teachers can work.

Anyhoo.

The Brothers and My Carpool Kid were in a jolly mood, given that it was an early out day and summer is just ahead. They launched into their usual scintillating conversation during which I stay silent, behind sunglasses, and act as cool as a nearing fifty years old, moderately over-weight and slightly bittersweet woman can.

That means I'm silent. Totally silent.

Younger Brother: Did you know that they found a mermaid for real?

Older Brother: Who did?

Younger Brother: THEY did. I don't know who they is, but we heard about it. A real mermaid.

Older Brother: That's stupid.

Carpool Boy: Cool. I guess a fish mated with a human.

Younger Brother: So, a fish and a human humped?

Older Brother: That's impossible. Gross.

Younger Brother: Nope. It can happen. All you need is a hole.

Here's what I looked like:

Cool, right?

Life is a loaded gun

Start fanning yourself.

Dorothy Parker and More Sex but No Politics

I've posted this poem before, but it's one of my favorites so I'm going to post it again -- the perfect pick-me-up after picking up my Sophie from yet another seizure and trying my best to look on the bright side. This is how we do it, folks. I particularly like the last line.


Success Story
My clothes are perfectly contoured
to my body. my shoes & socks
fit just right. My cat is a delightful
intelligent animal. My apartment
is great. The right location,
cheap rent. I eat the best food.
My friends love me. I adore them.
My lover is terrific & beautiful.
The sun is shining. There are trees
even in the slums in Washington.
I have tons of money & a gorgeous 
air conditioner. Great art hangs
on my wall. I live a spine-tingling life
of delirious sex & intense happiness.
                           
 -- Terence Winch

Far Away Literary Magazine - The Sex Issue

Yes. I'm veering away from politics into sex. The beautiful Christine Johnson of Far Away Literary Magazine honored me by asking to include one of my blog posts in the newest issue, hot off the press today. Go check out all the other writing, too, as well as beautiful photography. The sex part? Mine is mostly inferred.