On Monday around 4:30 p.m. I left with Daisy for the mountain. I was bored, but resolute as we set off. By the time the gloaming emerged, and a giant owl had bugun hooting above and around me on a little-used offshoot from the trail, I was smitten and alive, sensitive to the impossibly straight trunks of the young redwoods standing like a handfuls of sticks in a gully. And to the way a mossy, fern-laden blanket, the earth’s skin, stopped abruptly at the edge of a cliff rising to our left, exposing hard schist in diagonal lines, snaked through by naked tree roots.
I was alive to a sudden, shocking pool of cold air that had settled in a low point on the trail where perhaps the sun never reached. The metallic scent of a cold nearby stream assailed my nostrils. On the hillside above, a magnificent oak, round of crown, spread her wide arms. She occupied pride of place on this gentle slope. No tree dared vie with her.
A woman wearing makeup, perfume, and earbuds passed, ignoring my greeting. A man with tense, narrow shoulders and a black dog jogged by. He wore white shorts, hard buns covered by underwear, the ridges of which showed through the shorts. He also ignored my greeting.
That’s okay. It’s not unusual. The owl hooted again, deep, sonorous, plaintive. I suddenly remembered the owl that flew over our heads when the kids were little. Luigi and I had packed a picnic into the forest over the ridge. The light was falling fast, and we had a toddler and an infant in tow.
We were hurrying back to the parking lot, alongside a broad meadow, when an owl with what appeared to be a seven-foot wingspan swooped over us, slowly flapping her wings. Tears came to my eyes, then, when it happened, and now, at the recollection.
As I walked I thought maybe I’ll write a short story a day, and my reward, my prize, will be a cocktail. One cocktail. Only if I succeed in writing a short story, no matter how ragged, no matter how bad. That just might work.
“Banner Day,” I called that idea. I even wondered if I could write a story about it. Maybe I’ll even have the tropical cocktail Natalie Love Cruz (my latest favorite Substack writer) recommends for the week. She even provides a video showing you how to build it along with a little track to get you in the mood.
Tight, white, round plum buds, one or two splayed open, yellow stamen ending in bright yellow circles at the ends. The chill of the mountain as the sun withdraws her mantle of light. The outstretched bone-white arms of a fallen deciduous tree in a clearing. The road is red, the road is blue, the road is silver, and black. The trees are stencils punched in the sky, the moon is a heel of bread, an elbow, an eye, an unblinking eye staring askance. The color of the moon is the blushest yellow. The lights of the city are sprinkled below.
On the car radio on the way home, I heard Blackbird by the Lynne Arriale Trio. It made me so happy. I’ve heard and loved other jazz renditions of Blackbird as well. Here’s another I bookmarked at some point: Blackbird by Hiromi. Oh my. I know which I like better, though I do love both. Which do you like better, dear reader? :) Seriously, I’d love to know!
And for all you Pat Metheny fans out there, I’ll leave you with San Lorenzo.
It’s Thursday, Feb. 10, and I’m back from the forest again. I tore out of here late today. I knew it would be dark for the final third of the hike. I brought my clear glasses this time so I wouldn’t be stumbling along in sun glasses in the black forest at night with a quarter moon like last time.
Tonight was very different. Daisy and I walked faster, the owls—there were two of them this time—waited until we were on our way back down the mountain to begin their chorus. I was stunned to hear one calling, incredibly, right above me. We stopped, stock-still, Daisy and I. I dared to look up, and lo and behold, there was the owl, smaller than I expected, perched in the top of a gangly evergreen. He swiveled his head round and showed me his dear, white, heart-shaped face. He called, and the hoot that erupted, hollow and haunting from his plumed chest, was louder and deeper than I could have imagined from a bird his size.
It seems wrong to even call owls birds… they seem to be other creatures all together, their own class of animal, or spirit.
A flying thing also flew into my face on our way down, in the gloaming. It was bigger than a moth, and I could hear the wings moving the air, but it seemed smaller than a bat. I screamed and brushed it away.
I wondered if it was a baby bat, and then I remembered the time at family camp when the kids were little, and we accidentally caught a bat when we were fishing at dusk, when we cast our rod. We managed to bring the creature in without drowning it.
A patient, gentle man, someone’s dad, appeared seemingly out of nowhere. He knelt down and carefully worked the bat free without getting bit and released it, and it flew away. Remembering this, I began re-writing my OKCupid profile in my head. I want that man, I thought to myself. I want the man that can and would do that, displaying kindness, empathy, patience, persistence, intelligence, great gentleness. And immense generosity.
As I walked along, I sang the theme song from Evita. The moon shined bright. A little bigger than a half-moon now, fuzzy on the emerging edge. She silvered the path before us, and the shiny oak trunks, and Daisy’s blonde fur. All was silver. Great shadows of the tree branches above us spread in lacy patterns on the trail. I couldn’t see elevation, rises or falls, or dips in the trail. All was flat, and beautiful, and I knew I was likely to trip. But I was loathe to turn on my flashlight, and I did not.
As I strode along, I got it in my head that I wanted a marachino cocktail when I got home, and sure enough, that’s what I’m having right now. It’s new to me, and I like it very much. It’s called Aviation, and it’s lovely and simple and delicious with tiny ice shards suspended in a faintly golden liqueur, from the lemon, the lemon I pulled from a Little Free Library today near the lake (Lake Merritt).
I had a “date,” and he took one too. Yes, I agreed to meet someone, so rare, I know, and yes I’m afraid I wish I hadn’t. He said I’m cute, and he wants to meet this Saturday. I will have to let him down (although it was very fun to be called “cute” at this age; it’s been a while, must say), and that will have to be okay. I must allow myself to discern, to feel, to intuit, and to trust my intuition. I have spent far too much time and far too many dates with the wrong men out of pity.
Yep. My son said that. “You can’t date men out of pity, mom.” I wouldn’t have put it so bluntly. I would have said something along the lines of, “I should see them again because I don’t really know who they are yet. It’s not fair to make a judgement so quickly…” But that never works for me. I get stuck. I get caught.
What would happen if I actually trusted myself, my feelings, my intuition, my process?
We talk about this a lot in the class I’m taking on Substack with the great George Saunders (see, I let it out of the bag now, when I didn’t want to; I was keeping it all to myself).
There’s this feeling emerging in our missives from George (yes, he encourages us to address him thusly), in our discussions, in the links he’s providing, that we can trust our intuition, that we can feel our way, that we can trust the process… That we not only can, we must. There is no other way.
It’s very scary for me.
Ahh, this Aviation by Jim Meehan is quite lovely. I will make it again. Here’s the recipe, for those of you who don’t have a New York Times Cooking subscription:
Aviation
Yields: One drink
2 ounces gin
¾ ounce lemon juice
¾ ounce maraschino liqueur
Shake all ingredients with ice. Strain into chilled coupe glass.
This is all very good. But what is it I really want to leave you with?
I feel hopeful today; that’s what it is, and I want to share that.
For you writer types out there, I want to share Lee Martin’s post on a collage approach to writing inspired by Joy Williams’ short story “Escapes.” I read the story right away, and I was deeply moved by it. I discovered I love this writer Joy Williams, a writer I did not know. She is unique, austere, spare, but deeply human, deeply heart-centered. She is cynical because she is hurt. She is cynical because she is sensitive. She is a revelation. I’m reading all of her stuff now. I discovered a book two inches thick of her short stories called The Visiting Privilege at the library, and I’m devouring her.
I just want to say one more thing about that. I don’t like a lot of writers. It’s rare when I find a writer I love. That’s the truth. Thomas Bernhard is one. Knut Hamsun is another. I could not get enough of Karl Ove Knausgård. I devoured him too. Mikhail Bulgakov, who wrote the revelatory The Master and Margarita.
So trust me when I say, Check out Joy Williams. And Evita. And Aviation. And the mountain. And the little heart-faced owls.