A freeze is coming this way, so I’ve been picking oranges and grapefruit like mad, hundreds of them from just two trees. Coral-colored azaleas in bloom around town may suffer, but they have been a pleasure while they've lasted.

Half a dozen cedar waxwings cluster high in the leafless pecans, catching sunlight in the early morning. The yearround residents—cardinals, blue jays, Carolina wrens, red-bellied woodpeckers, mockingbirds—they can be found most any day. There have been more turkey vultures and crows of late. I’ve spotted a belted kingfisher twice this month a mile down the road. Six pine warblers in the pines near the house. There were cormorants as I crossed the Atchafalaya basin today. Most beautiful of all was the hawk with the cream-white underbelly, the sun glowing through its rust-red tail as it glided onto a tree branch.

There is Archbishop Desmond Tutu on TV, at the very end of an interview by Bill Moyers.

I have never seen a human like that, talking like that. I’ve never seen hands or eyes like that, or heard a voice like his.

Every trouble I held moments before falls away, no longer significant. I know of the history of punishment and imprisonment he has received at the hands of others. Yet, here he is, a simple radiance, a tenderness for others without judgment or bitterness. A heart that is accessible so that others may leave their dark confinements. He speaks of forgiveness as the light and fresh air outside; he is an open window.

happy birthday, son!

Fences, walls, barriers, deadbolts.
Are you safe inside?
Are you locked up?

Toujours Moi, a perfume introduced by Corday in 1924, reportedly inspired the British composer Harry Revel to create a set of instrumentals known as Perfume Set to Music. Revel, after being captivated by a woman wearing Toujours Moi in a Paris hotel bar, visited the perfumery in France and created six compositions, each attempting to capture the complex and ethereal experience of a specific Corday fragrance.

Recorded in 1947, the music is available still today on the CD collection, Waves in the Ether, performances by podiatrist instrumentalist Samuel Hoffman. Hoffman played Theremin, an early electronic space-age instrument.

Lake Martin today, just before the storm...

round white linen moon
on blue broadcloth sky
this crisp morning--
a branch falls

It’s as though
a pair of giants
arrived at the door.
The boys are here…

The moon rose tonight, nearly full, partnered by brilliant Mars. They make a striking pair, even when there's quite a bit of moisture and cloud cover.

Before supper, they were impressively tight and then, after supper, the pair were traveling even closer together, higher in the sky. Evidence of the mechanics of the solar system and of our perception from our location. The planet under our feet is always in motion.

The sun has completed its full fan of rising locations for the year. It rose to the left of the field at summer solstice, it seemed dead center by fall equinox, and now is rising to the right of the field at winter solstice. June to September to December, the sun inched from left to right, day by day. Now it will retrace the path back, back to center in March for the spring equinox.

Watching the sky, I feel grounded. It’s like being inside the workings of a magnificent clock, everything moving and interacting in ways that are predictable and logical. So reassuring, especially when the workings on the surface of our planet seem to make no sense at all.

I was heading out to mail a small package--only one post office open in Lafayette on Saturdays--but instead, ended up here at Cathedral with the great oak, the old cemetery, the hanging light fixtures that in first grade I was sure were going to fall on my head.

I am moved here—and confused because I’m not sure what moves me. Like after spending time with redwoods, I sit in my car for a while, doing nothing.

LUST
is a good thing.

Oh--there are people out there who want us to think "Thou shalt not lust" is the eleventh commandment. But really, to say "Thou shalt not lust" is like saying "Thou shalt not be thirsty" or "Thou shalt not be hungry." Lust just is.

A basic biological appetite is not evil. Our powerful appetites keep us and our species alive. Sex and eating and drinking are intensely satisfying for a reason: to ensure survival.

It's how we act in response to the messages from our bodies that can get tricky, especially regarding human interaction. So, we pay attention. Pay attention to what we're hungry for, to when we're thirsty. We don't want to woo someone too young to consent. We don't want to be drunkards or immobilized by too much weight. We don't grab the chimichanga off a stranger's plate when we walk into a restaurant, nor do we sweep him off his feet and onto the floor. We show restraint, we become discerning. But that still leaves a million and ten other options for consuming beverages, eating and fooling around--approximately.

So we eat, drink and choose our sex activities responsibly. And, let's do enjoy life, dahlings.

What if
you can do what’s right
and be very happy?
What if
there are many choices how?
Many ways
to be buoyantly responsible?
Which will you choose?

You are not locked up
in a Scout Handbook.
You are not a leashed dog.
You are not sentenced to this job
or this state or this church or this house--
white shirt and tie an option,
not required.
There are polka dots or shoes with lights.
Pierced eyebrows and pearl earrings.
Be wild and wandering
or hide in your room in a big soft chair--
silent or noisy,
pack rat or ascetic
dad in band, dad in bank.

Have a blast
have high tea
be bad
be you--
there are infinite ways
to be good.

I clicked www.humanclock.com regarding time this evening, and the home page photo that popped up dated November 27 was of a woman on the Muir Woods trail I walked December 7. The location given for the photo was Mill Valley. I stopped at a Mill Valley grocery after the Muir Woods hike, bought a thermos and some food, and then sat in the car in the parking lot for a long time, eating a muffin, then staring in the dark, all addled, until I felt collected enough to drive.

I was given homework to practice shoko-tenso, a meditation that involves holding a sword toward horizon, then toward sky, then back toward horizon. Might as well bring the sword stick to Muir Woods, right?

But the reality felt like a bad idea at first. To carry a ‘weapon’, even one in quote marks, is a burden. Heavy and awkward and obvious and kinda lonely. Sticking out of my backpack, it caught on the car roof as I bent over, tree branches as I walked, attracted stares. And the woods, which felt rather distant to me anyway, seem to grow cooler and more withdrawn with my taking out the sword and starting a meditation. As though I were gauche and way too harsh. It was too much.

Without thought as I followed the trails, my practice evolved away from the wooden blade, so divisive that had felt. Sunlight glinting off silvery bay leaves below, I tried shoko-tenso with the sword contained within its cloth (much less brutal). Walked on. Then, no sword, just hands; to no hands, just eyes; to no hands, closed eyes, just mind. Very good.

In one place I stopped along Fern Creek, the lower trunks of two giants had been scorched black by a fire between them, and sculpted into gaping caves tall enough for me to stand in. The trees were very much alive, healthy, and connected by their mirrored gouges.

Then there were redwood circles, each a cluster of trees born of the burls of a single ancestor in the middle.

The redwoods were so big and so ancient that perhaps our mutual reserve had nothing to do with my sword behavior (or my projection). It's was more like ant meets horse. Ant doesn't see giant animal, horse doesn't notice tiny ant. Just share space, feel energy.

Though by the end of the hike, this was moot. I no longer felt separate from what was around me.

Interesting encounters with park employees, wise, dedicated individuals, came about in part perhaps because of the stick wrapped in the Japanese cloth.

No. Bringing the bokoto wasn't a bad idea at all.

They seemed to fall out of the tree:
two tiny birds who wrestled in the grass.

Were they mating?
Were they fighting?
Were they having a blast?
Were they feeding each other wild strawberries
imbedded in the grass?

In March as I was leaving California, driving to Louisiana, I had a small package to mail. My time consumed by packing and moving, I didn’t get to a post office but was sure I’d find one somewhere along the way. And I did, right in the middle of Yosemite National Park.

It was a wonderful post office from another era, with polished wood interior. When I came forward, a dispirited postal clerk read aloud the street name as he weighed the package. "'Lovejoy.' I could use some of that."

The man behind me in line swept his arm toward the open door to the mountains, the snow, the conifers, the ecstatic air. "Lovejoy is all around you!" And man, it was true.

The postman said, "That wasn’t what I had in mind."

He turned his back to the open door, and tossed the package into a bin.
===

Yesterday morning, I drove across the Atchafalaya Basin to Baton Rouge. The light came off the water like off a medieval hammered metal mirror.

Last night, I couldn’t write. I fell asleep still dressed in my clothes, and woke up around 2 AM. I still hadn’t written for nomadicfishes. I had no ideas, everything blocked, my sleepy brain like Jello, so I browsed my computer files of pics. I picked a file unimaginatively titled 'October 2007'.

There was a picture of light on water I’d forgotten (a forgettable shot) taken as I rode with my dad across the Atchafalaya in October to New Orleans for his naval ROTC reunion. Light on the basin in October just like yesterday in December. And there below it was the only picture I'd taken from a table of artifacts at his reunion.

I'd seen a photo of a remarkably similar Buddha just the other day when I’d received some material to edit. And before I fell asleep in my clothes last night, I’d googled the name of that Buddha, ‘Amida, Buddha of Infinite Light’, curious. And here was an unrecognized Amida in my own file. And the light off the Atchafalaya came to mind. And the light at Yosemite.

I struggled to post something, anything, even just two of the photos. I gave up the wrestling and went to sleep around 4. Woke up after 7, could barely move, so tired, the yard was covered with frost. No no, I wasn’t going to practice boh. But then a teacher’s voice came to me that when you’re having difficulty is not the time to avoid keiko. That’s when it’s most important to show up.

So. I did. And here are the photos and all these words.

lovejoy

Sometimes we're the dam to our own river.

The flow is what matters.

I learned little in my brief google research last night. I did find an LSU rugby team. And I found bits and pieces about Amida, also known as the Buddha of Infinite Life.

Buddha of Unhindered Light.

It may have been a parking lot, with fast food paper cups skidding about in the wind, and the smell of exhaust and asphalt in the air, but the sky was worthy of Paul Gauguin.

Though the air had turned cold, the canvas above was warm with undulating patterns of peach, gold and rose, bright and alive, larger than the activity below.

A happy conjunction of shoppers at the wheel (foot jumping from gas to brake to gas to brake, eyes hard-focused on the bumper ahead) and tropical island, with nothing but sand, sky and salt ocean air, the sound of waves crashing, and sighing, crashing and sighing again, and birds singing from the shore…

--fishes swimming in different directions,

darting or undulating,

hiding in the reeds and coral,

reappearing in watery light--

Words won't come.

Can’t gather them with pen (nor keyboard),

fishes panicked in a net don't tell the ocean's story...

tie the knot
unravel
tie the knot
unravel
it's wrong
it's right
it's wrong
it's funny
tie the knot
unravel

An elf
or a ball of flame
her long hair blowing
under a very red beret
Black and white heels
who knows from what era
of her 84 years?
She’s hopping up and down
in the middle of the street
waving her arm
like we’re the last taxi on the planet.
We’ve only met by phone
but here we are at last
Old Friends
rambling in a van about town.
She tells us
confidentially
at 84
she’s no longer nursing babies
but still follows the doctor’s advice:
a beer a day is a good thing
Just one.
In the morning.
Sons and nephews,
they keep telling her
(she says)
that she needs an itinerary.
“I got no itinerary. Just go
where the wind blows and
tell everyone I meet:
Sending you love, honey,
I’m sending you love."

The sun makes a lower arc as we approach winter solstice.

A Teacher takes a stick
and stirs...

without love
an empty magic trick
with love
Light

The creek flows from a narrow canyon with its sides folded in at different angles. The giant trees aim for sky in many directions, but sky cannot be seen. The bridge tilts high and to one side. No flat land is visible to define where down is, no pointers to up are evident. Everything looked askew.

Though there are the redwoods and the flowing water and the mushrooms and mosses and the yellow-leafed cow parsnip, they do not disguise the enormity and impact of history. This intriguing, jumbled part of Muir Woods gave me vertigo. Perhaps earthquakes disrupted the terrain a long time past.

Yesterday at Muir Woods National Monument, along Fern Creek, it was like standing down a well, the moist, leaf-littered earth beneath my feet, the light so dim among the tree giants. I looked straight up (and up and up and up) a stand of Douglas firs. A vertical tunnel of tree trunks—I never saw anything reach so high. At the very top, a small bowl of blue sky, a branch sparked with light.

Today, with others, I practiced Shintaido winter sword.

Trees, trees, trees.

People, people, people.

I see again and again:

the vertical tunnel of trees, the little bowl of blue…

In class, we

raise the sword.

Look to sky.

Tenso.

Look to earth.

Tenso.

Look to each other.

Tenso.

Little bowl of blue.

One of my favorite reads a couple decades back was a comprehensive book on etiquette by Miss Manners. Extraordinarily logical and non-judgmental, she untangled the trickiest of human situations in a single paragraph, sometimes in a single sentence. Never condemned the participants nor analyzed the dynamics. Just offered time-honored ways to behave in the face of any event, be it joyful, sorrowful, boring or explosive. This is what you do.

Succinctly witty, she could be so funny she brought tears. Yet Miss Manners’ writing was dedicated to peace. It upheld the notion that etiquette is a fundamental element in minimizing misunderstanding, anger and hurt, and in ensuring pleasurable gatherings.

Miss Manners would make an understated, effective, bon-vivant emperoress. Invasions are not polite, my dear. A glass of champagne?

Her buttoned-down appearance belied a free spirit who embraced diversity, found flight in the intricate mastery of rules that govern social interaction among humans.

I emulate however imperfectly the clarity of her writing, her approach to peace. A salute to you, Miss Manners. Cheers.

5:02 PM
sloowwly cross bridge
sun sets
five red leaves, one yellow

There should be a sign at Nervous Dog:
'Come taste divine six-mushroom soup!'

Brought tears to my eyes.

Philosophers' Rock
Barton Springs
Austin, Texas

"I wish you might be here and go with me on a sunny afternoon to Mt. Bonnell or up Barton Creek. Everywhere it is beautiful. I think we could settle most of the world's problems to our satisfaction. And a thousand years from now friends such as we will wander over these same hills inhaling these same scents and feasting their eyes upon the same beauty, and maybe the identical matter that composes our bodies now will nourish the worm that feeds the mockingbird whose songs will go thrill out over the green fields."

Roy Bedichek

I don’t have a camera, only my human eyes and my human words to convince you today, December first, was a beautiful day:

White tulips tall in green frosted glass…

Streets lined by trees arching red and yellow against cold blue air…

Faces, faces, and ears, human ears, some compact, some hung with blue crescent ornaments…

Leaves-tiny yellow fans-sprinkled around our tapping feet…

Leaves of red—not in heaps of varying degrees of decay—but freshly strewn along our path for our pleasure…

Hundreds of sailboats afloat in the bay, stretched far to horizon…

A shining Lady of Guadalupe, her blue cloak spattered with gold stars, borne down Mission Street in the noonday sun, hundreds of people pressed behind her in procession…

Seven hawks so high in the sky, they might all fit on my thumbnail, weaving cloth from many threads…

December day comes to a close, unseen sun rims clouds with gold fire…