the cutest petroglyph

I think he might be kind of confused. Vacantly confused and observant. Baffled but curious. Innocent. Possibly powerful.

Up and to the right of him there was a tiny antelope scratched into the rock. Perhaps he'd dreamt about antelopes the night before and was trying to figure out what the dream meant. He was big, the sweet button-face petroglyph, maybe about a yard across, and he was higher up than my head. Perhaps the artist had had a prophetic dream about the coming of buttons. Or he is a nature spirit, maybe-- he reminds me of the clicking nature spirits in some of Miyazaki's films. 

He was scratched onto the wall of the huge red rock canyon we camped in last weekend in Moab. When we scrambled up to the wall and discovered him, it was nearly sunset, and giant puffy thunderheads were gathered above us in the east. We'd seen petroglyphs earlier that day, smaller, on a smaller rock-- people with wings, snakes, rivers, and footprints. And then this.

sweetgrass smoke

Here is something I wrote this morning:

... a lazy banner of silken sweetgrass smoke waving in this sunbeam. my life feels fluid. dreams drift in and out the window and swirl softly. i feel like i can hold them gently enough that they can change and get better, sweeter, kinder. this is the place to choose the future from.

I'm not feeling that way right now, anymore. I imagine it will come back at some point. Going for another walk.

walk #23

glowing dress on Valencia Street

walk #17

purple-black succulent next to papery roses in the oakland hills

strong and sturdy with sufficient stamina, but friendly and out-going as well

1. Corgis. I don't know why. I've seen about five corgis out and about since rolling back into San Francisco on Tuesday. I was kind of flummoxed when I saw the fifth one last night, because I'd been just been thinking about how many corgis I'd seen in the past few days, and as if reading my mind a guy walks down the street with one one of the little guys grinning and trotting along at the end of a leash. It felt a bit over the top. But then more! Today a friend from work posts a picture of her new corgi pup on her Facebook page. The universe is trying to communicate with me in the form of the Pembroke Welsh Corgi?

2. Another rejection letter yesterday. That, though, is not a sign. That is a necessary part of my job. Do I get to pick and choose what might be a message or not? Yes, I think so. I'm in the rejection letter phase of my writing career. One must use discipline and not say things to oneself like, "I can take a hint, universe," or "this must mean I'm not supposed to (whatever.)" It means that I'm one letter closer to being out of the rejection letter phase of my career. It's tempting to let it be a sign that would get me off the hook. It would be kind of nice if the universe just told me to quit with the fiction writing business. Then I wouldn't have to endure all this cumbersome attempting and the ego-quashing not-achieving. I could shrug and say, "It wasn't meant to be." 

When I was in grad school I was talking to a councilor and I said, "I'm worried about the career I've chosen, it involves a lot of rejection and perseverance. And I'm a person who finds perseverance really challenging." She laughed and said, "Yeah, but isn't everybody? Isn't that the nature of perseverance?" ZZ Packer told us in workshop one day that she always had a story out, and was always waiting to hear back from some publication or residency. "I like to get mail," she said. 

Rejection letters, whatever. Corgis, though? I'm listening, Universe. Tell me more.

kite hill after dinner

there's an open space hill near Chantal's place in the Castro. I went walking after dinner last night and found this little path up there.

I love how in this city you can go a different way every time and find something totally different

Melissa and I were talking, once, about how radical it is to veer from your course. How you're going along and you see an opportunity for adventure and you take it. Even if it's just going around the block in pursuit of some little tiny adventure your mind is suddenly different...

I used to think that San Francisco from a distance looked like barnacles clinging to a rock. All the buildings look white from afar.

desert rattlesnakes are different

the view from Grandma's living room

I stayed with my grandma in the Mojave quite a bit when I was a kid, and I have memories of being terrified and feeling radically alone in the desert, during storms or when the Marines were bombing down the road. The desert opens up like the ocean, and Grandma's house used to seem like a tiny boat, far from land. 

You couldn't really go out at Grandma's house, either, because of the snakes. That was ok, mostly you wouldn't want to go out-- it was nice inside, sitting on the couch while Grandma put her hair up in curlers, the living room smelling like coffee, squishing the curlers between your fingers and making them bounce. When you would go out Grandma would yell after you, "watch out for the snakes!" 

I went to visit Grandma by myself when I was about 25, and at one point she mentioned offhandedly that she's only seen about five rattlesnakes in the 30+ years she's been in the desert. This was a bit surprising to me, I'd kind of imagined a snake shading itself next to every rock at Grandma's.

Not long after that visit I was in Joshua Tree National Park, camping with Jared. Joshua Tree is right down the way from Grandma's, and when we told her we were going she was like, "Oh, honey, I don't know why you'd want to sleep on the ground with all those snakes." 

It's strange with fear– it's not something you can just banish at will. You'd think you could just have a rational conversation with yourself and that would be that, but fear does, in fact, tend to shade itself under every rock and corner of the psyche. So I sat there in Joshua Tree on a big smooth golden rock, I wrote in my journal and watched chipmunks. I felt pretty comfortable on the rock, but I kind of clung to it like a raft. There is so much space in the desert, each sound has space around it, each thing is distinct, and my snake fear started to feel distinct as well, with its own texture and specific dimensions. It felt too big, and kind of silly, like an ugly heirloom that didn't fit with the rest of my emotional decor. 

After a while of starting at this thing, this big stupid fearball, I hopped up off the rock and told Jared I was going for a little walk by myself, and I headed out to find some snakes. I picked a path that looked promising and went. 

I grew up hiking around Northern California by myself, out in the foothills where we have plenty of rattlesnakes.  You keep an eye out for them but you go anyway. It was just in the desert that I felt paralyzed by them.

So I went, taking my throbbing fearball along with me, and walked down the trail alone. I kind of called to them–the snakes– with my mind, and sometimes whispered down at the rock shadows asking the snakes to come out. I just wanted to see one. I just wanted to see one and look it in the eye.

After an hour of rattlesnake hunting, I started thinking of rattlesnakes more like shooting stars, like something rare and exciting. None came out.

teeming with

Last weekend my mom and I were back in the desert visiting Grandma. When my mom and I went on a walk late in the afternoon Grandma called out after us, "this is when they like to come out and cool down!"

And it sucks, because it's not like you have this big rattlesnake-hunting walk in the desert by yourself when you're 25, learn the shape and texture of you fear and then that fear of desert rattlesnakes is just gone. Not quite like that. I went out, though.