Into the twilight zone

We were going canoeing but that plan changed at the eleventh hour. As usual.

Then, chasing the Hood Canal Bridge closure, May 1, we decide on a hike on the Olympic Peninsula. That plan morphed into a Cape Flattery trip as we dallied over coffee and bagels in Hurricane Coffee Shop, Sequim squinting at a map. Then we found a pebble beach to wander. Then another with reflections and sea stacks.

Eventually with some rocks riding shotgun in the back of the truck we got to Neah Bay and the Makah Tribe reservation way late in the afternoon. It seems you need to buy a recreation permit from the tribe to do anything in Neah bay. There's a fuzzy logic to it, but it was too late in our day to clear the hurdle. Westernmost point of lower 49 and the Cape Flattery trail was just going to elude us, it seems. Story of my life right now. Missing it.

En route back we wandered unintentionally close to the Twilight Zone, joining the highway just north of Forks, WA, setting for the vampire of the moment teen-cream. Read the book, see the movie, if you must. I intend doing neither.

Next, a late afternoon hash brown evaluation stop at the Hungry Bear Cafe on HWY 101 at Beaver, Washington, between Forks and Port Angeles. Scorecard: terrible hash browns, very twilight zone ice machine. Total experience more Twin Peaks than Twilight in atmosphere."Take bag out before buying" says the script on the machine. Shades of the 90 day warranty theory?

Messing about in boats

Friday, after loading kayaks in a misty dawn, the fog burned off to reveal a chill clear blue above and below. Took Lionheart on his first seakayak paddle. Launched very locally from Old Man House park, to mess about in the clear salt waters in front of Haleikeokekai, paddle under Agate Passage bridge, admire the waterview of the totem pole at the casino and resort hotel, to Kiana Lodge for a rest stop in the garden of the gods, then back.

Nothing too adventurous. It was on the cold side, but sunny with calm water and some minor passing motor boat traffic to provide small swells. We paddled against the strong current both ways....hmmmm....planning? Was tough on my arms so early in the season, but the men seemed fine with it so I put my mind to it, lost my tongue and paddled.

Lunch and storytelling between the men in BellaLuna afterwards to recover. Seems I am out of the picture a lot these days. The unseen seer.As before: If you want more pictures, and are one of my family of friends, then see the flickr site. Yes, I know I am posting a few days behind. Busy life with company in the circumstances is my excuse. Love y'all etc.

A totemic kind of evening: different strokes

We happened to find ourselves at Bremerton harbourside the evening Thursday last around 6 pm, waiting for a date with music and the New Delhi best-Indian-food-around restaurant.

Though the air was chill it was blue sky and boats, white clouds, and us admiring a bronze monument to shipyard workers and the salmon fountain's ingenuity when "What a wonderful world" song came on the public address system. Noone else except Lionheart and myself about, water jumping like salmon magic up the stairs and THE song.... a very strange pinch-me someone moment.Oh and did I mention a huge grey warship behind us.....and I think to myself..... emptiness and a warship. Huh? Contemporary surreal is alive and well in downtown Bremerton. A symphony in blue and grey.

After supper we crossed the Manette bridge to photograph a wired webbed retro TV sign and a shopping centre with a totem pole as the sun was setting after 8 pm. Very cold but still and clear evening: totemic in layers.If you want more pictures, and are one of my family of friends, then see the flickr site. Yes, I know I am posting a few days behind. Busy life with company in the circumstances is my excuse. Love y'all etc.

Backyard lockup: a secret brevity of colour

Living in a house made of dawn I realize I have not shared much of my backyard lockup recently.

My outback is becoming a secret place of cedar walled retreat where currently the season has fern fronds uncoil spirally amid a sudden flare of budding and blooming. An impetuous fiery flagrance of tulip offered to brief sun.

Watching old men vote

I loved you when our love was blessed
I love you now there's nothing left
But sorrow and a sense of overtime
And I missed you since the place got wrecked
And I just don't care what happens next
Looks like freedom but it feels like death
It's something in between, I guess
It's closing time

Yeah I missed you since the place got wrecked
By the winds of change and the weeds of sex
Looks like freedom but it feels like death
It's something in between I guess
It's closing time.
For Madiba and uArch: the song.

Dis-connection: as above, so below

Mornings are virginal here in their purity at the moment. Beauty so profound I can almost bear my melancholy.

Then the day begins. A paralysis of gray stains over everything. I am punctured, vitality leaked away.

Waning moon/fire opal dawn

The garnet longs to pair with opal. The waning moon makes infinite space: winging it in blue.

Reconciliation within the conch imperative

An opalesence of morning with loons and dolphins. The heart-narcotic fragrance of spring blooms on the chill dawn air.

The waterline world today is sacramental: pearly as the inside chamber of the conch's resonance.

On a day like this when everything is made holy by magic, it's only a blinded man doesn't believe in absolution. Heed the call on this day of soul retrieval. The release of waning moon makes space. Eo Mai E!

Working to failure: the impossible autobiography

The quarry of my memory is a bottomless pit, filled with that kind of murky water which hints at shadowed wrecks and drowned bones, jewels and rust, primeval slime.

A seismic shudder is necessary to plumb the the hidden horror of deep stagnant water.

Mining the flooded quarry for biography is a hazardous task. Brings me regularly to the point of failure.

There's an athletic training concept which suggests going daily into that place of no more possibility builds strength.

Huh? Bring on the Superwoman t-shirt! Let me see the blooming beauty of lotus blossoms rising pristine from all this damning muck and feed with the Sacred Ibis in that reflective fishing hole.

Monuments to monsters of the deep gather begging reason. Supreme saboteurs, shark-souled lurking at my back, clip my wings to great effect.

The necessity is for utmost restraint applied with royal ruthlessness.

Today's trump card:

A raven flight feather held in reserve, a heart yet unweighed. Here's to another day of working to failure. Oh Ibis! bird of wisdom! bird of Thoth! take away the flies of pestilence, give me tongue, be my totem now and at the time...

Raven emissary: a higher order of pigeon post

The ancestral album is in shreds. I need a new lineage.

There's nothing but the despatch of a raven with a pearl in his beak.

I wait for your call, dog heart on a short leash.

High tides: Noah, where are you?

Damn! as Lionheart of my Heart knows only too well, I always have had "issues" with water.

I hope y'all appreciate the links in the previous post. They were inserted at the expense of a flood in the bathroom.

Time to start building a boat.

Wahine kapu: circling back to where it is all held safe. A lei of stubborn love

Thinking this morning about the emptiness of Keone'ele, the royal canoe landing cove at the place of refuge for kapu breakers and the old Hawaiian religion alike, Pu'uhonua o Honaunau, on the island of Hawaii.

Thinking too about the guardians standing watch at Keone'ele, it came to me that I should probably give up eating bananas. You would never find me sharing dogmeat with any man be they labourer or king. And I, a healthy natal coast banana girl made strong of late by a taste for the stubby little local fruits.

Instead of some firm resolve forming, however, all that fills a mind is the memory of Rumi lines carved in stone on the walls of the House on Fire where this year began. In another kingdom.

There's some kiss we want with our whole lives,

the touch of spirit on the body.
Seawater begs the pearl to break its shell
and the lily, how passionately it needs some wild darling.
At night I open the window
and ask the moon to come and press its face against mine.
Breathe into me.
Close the language-door and open the love window.
The moon won't use the door, only the window.

Limu in the tideline: crab's domain when the moon is full

Ever have one of those days when you feel like seaweed in the tidal swell? One minute you are castaway abandoned up on the sand as the waves pull back, next, the rushing swirl of embrace pulls you back into the ocean, helpless against the most powerful element: water.

Swallow song swan song: the legendry tattoo

On his death bed the great Zulu king, Shaka, is reputed to have counselled his jostling-for-succession siblings: "You think you will rule this country, but already I see the swallows coming...."

A coyote dreaming kind of day: cosmic joker's wild

Last week I saw coyote again. At the end of my street.

That's one thing for a naturalist. Kinda special. But a poet lives in a parallel universe of symbol and meaning. When cosmic joker looks over his shoulder at me, I know it's time to watch my back. Or lower down as the case may be. The joke is going to be on me.

Last time this happened there was an impromptu fire evacuation at my place of work. The only casualty a very burnt naan bread which was to be my supper.

Today proved the warning well placed.

I had to make a trip to the state capital, Olympia. Semi official business, one of the pies I have had my fingers in recently. Arranged to drive with a friend similarly involved.

We arrange to meet at 10 at a certain library parking lot.

Luckily I have her home number on my cell phone and her husband was home when I phoned because she wasn't where I had arrived. With 9 libraries in the county to choose from we had gone to different libraries. So much for communications. Coyote, what are you grinning about? These are two highly qualified librarians we are dealing with here. People who give out information to people all day. For a living. They're communications EXPERTS! Yeah right, like cobbler's children go barefoot.

Ah well, we finally met and got on the road. Only half an hour late.

Getting there was fine. We had Mapquest. Getting back, well Lionheart of my heart, your directionally challenged mother has an ally....first we lost the highway exit out of Olympia, then we missed an exit to Bremerton and got well and truly lost in Tacoma. Asked several good people for directions, in the process dazzling one nice gentleman so brilliantly that he turned around and started walking back the direction he came from.

Finally we are back at my truck. Goodbyes said, we part. I am happily driving along HWY 3 , about Auto Centre Way, running through a grocery shopping list in my head, when the truck starts feeling odd and heavy and slowing down. Ohoh....red check gauge light. No petrol. Damn! now I remember I meant to put in petrol before leaving home in the morning....

I pull to the side to try to get out of the pressure of evening traffic and notice I am at the Kitsap Way exit. I know there are petrol stations on the other side of the highway but I am here now. I jolt along on the shoulder with my hazard lights on, wondering how this situation is going to resolve itself.

Wouldn't you know a petrol station turns up right there easy for me to roll into! Now I know what happens when my truck is out of petrol: it limps along coughing and spluttering until I find a petrol station! I swear a coyote laugh rings in my ears.

Petrol tank filled, I drive along Kitsap Way looking for a way back onto HWY 3. I see one, start heading up it, then change my mind as I see the traffic on the highway backed up and going nowhere. I detour through Chico Way I think, just following my nose, not knowing where I am going, eventually finding my way back onto HWY 3 the other side of Silverdale.

I later find out find out that a crane on fire on HWY 3 blocked the traffic. It is still blocked an hour later when I am sitting at home reading the news online. I missed getting caught in THAT.

Thanks to trickster coyote who detoured me to fill up with petrol.

Ha! Seems I just got dealt the joker card. And joker's are always wild. High and wild today.

It's time to lighten up and focus on what's enduring.

Hanging on to the only card I have

At last I got to wash the winter dust off the kayak. Put in at Old Man House park and paddled along the shoreline, past the new dock, admiring the newly opened House of Awakened Culture (I cannot work out how to write it in Lutshutseed, pronounced skwehd-zah-dud-culth-altw) aka Suquamish Community House, and the new dock, opened last October, along the way.

Into the calm of Miller Bay. Eagles soared overhead. Fish jumped.

This is the way to mourn passing things. In the medicinal salt water of tears, blood and oceans. Love trumps anger. I have to believe this.

Graceland woza moya

In a context of common loons, dolphins and otters greet at dawn
Tomb sweeping for an ancestral intervention I find a day of clear brightness

A diamond-soled shoes kind of day offsets the window in the heart: woza moya! Nkosi sikeleli Africa and the errant elder equally. Everybody sees you're blown apart

Wild and blue and swallowed by the sky: life's travelogue