The other day I grabbed a notebook from the shelf to stick in my bag, thinking I might want to write. Today I pulled it out to make a list and discovered an abandoned journal begun in September 2009--a few months before I quit my lawyer job, a few months before I started this blog. I was trying to be observant it seems.
Excerpted from 9-10-09
"The trees move in slow motion and are speckled in sunlight that reflects off the moving surfaces of the leaves. Moments and spaces become momentarily empty of color--full of light--in and out of my vision the facets of green and white light--bobbing, shimmering, rippling liquid. Overexposed, full of camera flares."
and later that day...
"It is amazing and beautiful to think of the millions of people in the world going about their lives. To focus in on individuals, to see them look with understanding or sympathy at another person they pass on the street. The woman hustling her children, laughing at their jokes, thinking of her husband, worrying about something at work Her thoughts are informed and colored by her friends and dreams from childhood, by her father's voice, by the scent of her grandmother's house. This exists in different shades and varying gradations a million times over. Each one as full and rich as the universe inside my head. It is humbling and comforting and awe inspiring."
10-21
"Beach, Bolinas. The world is immense, multicolored, and infinitely beautiful. Why does the thought of that hurt so much? A dull ache like a knife in my heart and my breath caught in my throat."
11-6-09
"Neil Gaiman: 'It was beautiful, a desolate beauty that chimed and echoed with the empty places inside Shadow.'"
April 7, 2010
"Montara State Beach.
Shadowy pockets in the cliff, carved in by ages and the slightest trickle of water oozing out of the rock.
The wall is blue grey and then red
frosted with growing things
ice plant with its pastel blossoms reaching up like adolescent girls
mosses and grasses
lone succulents reach out thick roots into the rock and cling against the wind and the spray
cling despite a lack of soil
pulling mineral out of the richly colored rock and thriving.
Out past it all in that immensity of blue
the cliffs so still
the ocean such a constancy of motion in its new-old dance
ever-renewing
ever-staid
...
even the waves are tinged with the grey of age, of ancientness, the muted blue greens of slow-time, silent in their roar
The sand white beige and mottled
...
The layers and chips in the cliff are intricate as lace
I stop and study them for a while
before they go fuzzy and I am lost in thought
I come to and walk again, the ocean to my right, seeking the sun.
--
Streams flow out to the sea from ceilingless caves at intervals in the cliff
Some trail back into pools of murk and mist, inhabited by water bugs seeking the sun like me
The dart back into the shadows at my approach
Back out on the shore I pick up a rock that crumbles in my hand and spy a spray of ice plant in the sand, broken free from the cliffs
Would it sprout roots if I took it home with me?
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